Loosing 'green dots' state in Contact sheets + performances

[Frederic]

Hi
I am a long-time PM user and I really would like to use the Catalog facilities to handle many photos.
But I am facing several problems which make life difficult:
1.
When using PM6+ and a catalog (around 80 000 photos, this is a small one …) to tag photos (color, rating, keywords) with (apparently) no particular problem for let say a few hours of work, suddenly all items in Contact Sheets (all of them) ‘loose’ the green dot and are displayed (in Contact Sheet) with an empty dot (not yellow). The search functions still find and display these elements, but if I change something in them (color, keyword, …) the catalog is not automatically updated. To cure that, I must Sync the whole catalog again.
2.
I find the functions ‘Sync catalog’ and ‘Scan to catalog’ rather slow and very resources consuming.
Note: the checkbox ‘Generate preview & thumbnails…’ is always unchecked on my catalogs.
‘Sync catalog’: around 2 hours to Sync 70 000 photos (on a NAS), most all of the time spent in the ‘Scanning for newer metadata’ phase. Very annoying to use when all your photos are on a NAS and used from several PCs, and you must regularly Sync so your own catalogs are up to date.
3.
Also ‘Scan to catalog’ is writing in a Temp files ton of data (250 Gb when cataloging around 250Gb of photos …), which makes it an SSD killer when your system disk is SSD. It seems that, even when you do not need to generate the preview and thumbnails, that the Catalog is reading the full photo files. This is very annoying with NAS.

To go around the ‘SSD killer’ problem I have created a Junction Point to connect the windows Temp folder to a folder on another (hard-)disk.

4.
How to get rid of deleted items (on disk) which are in a catalog …

Thank you for your patience to read me.
Hope you will bring us solutions. In the meantime, I continue to use PM6+ as it is because I like its (new) functionalities.
Best regards
Frédéric

[Kirk Baker]

Frédéric,

I am a long-time PM user and I really would like to use the Catalog facilities to handle many photos.
But I am facing several problems which make life difficult:

1.  When using PM6+ and a catalog (around 80 000 photos, this is a small one …) to tag photos (color, rating, keywords) with (apparently) no particular problem for let say a few hours of work, suddenly all items in Contact Sheets (all of them) ‘loose’ the green dot and are displayed (in Contact Sheet) with an empty dot (not yellow). The search functions still find and display these elements, but if I change something in them (color, keyword, …) the catalog is not automatically updated. To cure that, I must Sync the whole catalog again.

That sounds like a bug that we'll have to fix.  You shouldn't have to Sync or Scan when making simple metadata changes and the Catalog should automatically update when you make metadata changes in Photo Mechanic Plus.

2. I find the functions ‘Sync catalog’ and ‘Scan to catalog’ rather slow and very resources consuming.
Note: the checkbox ‘Generate preview & thumbnails…’ is always unchecked on my catalogs.
‘Sync catalog’: around 2 hours to Sync 70 000 photos (on a NAS), most all of the time spent in the ‘Scanning for newer metadata’ phase. Very annoying to use when all your photos are on a NAS and used from several PCs, and you must regularly Sync so your own catalogs are up to date.

It is an intensive process.  There's no way around that.  That said, a NAS is generally very slow compared to a local disk and once again there's no way around that.  But you shouldn't have to do those operations frequently.  Due to the bug you're experiencing (which we'll fix once we can figure out what's going on) you're having to do these operations more frequently.

3.  Also ‘Scan to catalog’ is writing in a Temp files ton of data (250 Gb when cataloging around 250Gb of photos …), which makes it an SSD killer when your system disk is SSD. It seems that, even when you do not need to generate the preview and thumbnails, that the Catalog is reading the full photo files. This is very annoying with NAS.

Can you post a directory listing of these files so that we can see them?

4. How to get rid of deleted items (on disk) which are in a catalog …

I'm not quite sure what you're asking.  I take it that you've added items to a catalog, and then outside of Photo Mechanic Plus you've delete them and they still show up in your searches?  If that's correct, then you should be able to select those items and choose "Remove from Catalog" from the Catalog menu.  You can also right-click on the item and choose "Remove from Catalog" from the contextual menu that appears.  In the future, instead of deleting those images outside of Photo Mechanic Plus, delete them directly from Photo Mechanic Plus and not only will they be deleted on disk (or moved to the Trash) but they'll also be removed from the catalog.

To get to the bottom of problem #1, I will need for you to turn on some logging, reproduce the problem, and then create a zipped log file and finally, post it here.

From the Help menu, choose "Edit Debug Settings..." and find the item titled CATALOG_DEBUG_LOGGING and set its checkbox.  Then click the Close button.  Then restart Photo Mechanic Plus and start your catalog scan again.  When you see the building process stalled again then go to the Help menu and choose "Reveal Support Data..." and moments later a Finder/Windows Explorer window will come forward with the zipped log file selected.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your zipped PM log file.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Bill Kelly]

Hi Frédéric,

To go around the ‘SSD killer’ problem I have created a Junction Point to connect the windows Temp folder to a folder on another (hard-)disk.

Just as a side note, I have found software such as the following helpful for "peace of mind" related to monitoring SSD usage.



(I am in no way affiliated with with the developer or publisher of this software; it's just what I use personally.)

The SSD pictured has been in use since 2011 (initially as my system drive, and lately as the place where PAGEFILE.SYS resides.)


Regards,

Bill

[Frederic]

Hi Bill & Kirk,

Thank you for your reply.
It took me sometimes to write and send my initial post. Now I am running version 5277 and the behavior of PM6+ is different:
1. much less load on disk (Temp) folder when Scanning to catalog.
2. the problem with Green Dots has not happened again.

I am still worried about the time it takes to Sync a catalog: our photos are on a NAS, and we update them from different PCs, so from time to time we have to Sync our (local) catalogs. We will just have to change the way we are working.

Thank you for your help
Best regards
Frederic

[Kirk Baker]

Frederic,

It took me sometimes to write and send my initial post. Now I am running version 5277 and the behavior of PM6+ is different:
1. much less load on disk (Temp) folder when Scanning to catalog.

Given that you're not generating previews, I'm still curious as to what is going on with your temp folder.  Can you please post a directory listing showing what files you see being generated by Scan to Catalog?  You can either use a command prompt and copy/paste the text or just use Windows Explorer and take a screenshot and post it here.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Frederic]

Hello,
Attached you have snapshots of the content of Temp folder before and while scanning (files sorted by reverse modification time).

Now with current version of PM6+ (5277) I do not have too much load on Temp folder disk. So for me this point is closed.
Sorry and thank you.

Best regards
Frederic