Author Topic: Preview processing time  (Read 3452 times)

Offline ron_hiner

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Preview processing time
« on: January 14, 2013, 10:09:46 AM »
I'm generally quite happy with the performance of my Mac Pro.   The only one place it ever feels sluggish is when I'm in the PM Preview screen while in zoom mode.

My image comes up, but its not sharp at first... then a few seconds later, it redraws and becomes sharp.  When I'm evaluating a thousand images for sharpness, those few seconds really add up.   Once an image has loaded once, the latency goes away when I'm toggleing between images.

My images are generally Nikon NEF files that are just under 30mg in file size.

My question is this...  Is my graphics card the bottleneck in that initial rendering?  My current card is NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB, and I'd upgrade if it would make a substantial difference. 

Thanks!
Ron

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2013, 10:41:44 AM »
Ron,

No, your video card is not the problem.  How many megapixels does your camera have?  Basically at 100%, PM has to decode the entire image.  That can take time if you have a slow CPU and large images.

-Kirk

Offline ron_hiner

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2013, 12:31:19 PM »
My camera puts out 24mp.  Nikon D3x.  Big files.   The problem isnt quite bad enough to upgrade the whole computer.
Thanks!

Ron

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2013, 03:30:27 PM »
Ron,

My camera puts out 24mp.  Nikon D3x.  Big files.   The problem isnt quite bad enough to upgrade the whole computer.
Thanks!

You're welcome.  I'd bet that when you bought your computer your best camera had 12 or fewer megapixels.  Am I right?

-Kirk

Offline Dominik Pluess

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2013, 08:01:41 AM »
or maybe, check in Preferences, Raw, that you use the "use embedded JPEG Preview for speed" setup.

Offline ron_hiner

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2013, 11:02:03 AM »
I'd bet that when you bought your computer your best camera had 12 or fewer megapixels.  Am I right?

-Kirk

Um, yes.   Sheepishly admitted.   I had to go research this.   I have what was the best MacPro that money could buy in early 2008.   It has since been upgraded with an SSD primary drive, but otherwise is the same.  I'm not sure if there is anything I can do to upgrade it besides upgrade the video card.  My best camera then was 12 MP.  Good catch!

Ron

Offline hexclimber

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Re: Preview processing time
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2013, 12:43:30 PM »
...what Dominik said...  I was having the same issue.
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame you.