When you switch back into PM from another application, PM rescans all open contact sheets for new/renamed/deleted files. This can take some time if you have multiple contact sheets open, have a lot of files in a single contact sheet, or a lot of files spread over several contact sheets. Also, network volumes take a lot longer to scan than local disks. There is a way to speed this up somewhat by telling PM to ignore specific file types that you never work with.
Optimized folder rescanning and added the ability to control what file associations should be searched. The following flags can be added to a text file named PMDebug.txt which should be placed in Photo Mechanic’s preferences folder:
IGNORE_EXTENSION_THM (THM files are used with the CRW RAW format. If you don’t have CRW files then you can safely enable ignoring this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_LZN (LZN files are for the open source RAW editor Lightzone. If you don’t use Lightzone, then you can safely enable ignoring this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_FLT (FLT files are for the QImage printing application. If you don’t use QImage, then you can safely enable ignoring this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_BIB (BIB files are used by the Bibble RAW editor application. If you don’t use Bibble, then you can safely enable ignoring this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_RDSF (RDSF files are used by the RAW Developer application. If you don’t use this now extinct application, you can safely ignore this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_NKS (NKS files are used by Nikon Capture NX-D. If you don’t use this application, you can safely ignore this extension.)
IGNORE_EXTENSION_XIP (XIP files were generated by older versions of Photo Mechanic prior to the existence of XMP sidecar files. Unless you’re browsing folders that were edited by a much older version of Photo Mechanic, you can safely ignore this extension.)
Ignoring these extensions will significantly reduce the amount of network traffic utilized by Photo Mechanic when browsing a network drive. If you want to ignore any of the above extensions, simply place them, one per line, in your PMDebug.txt file followed by ON, YES, or 1. Restart PM and those extensions set to be ignored will now be ignored and will no longer be associated with your files if they exist. This means that if you rename/move/copy an item, the ignored files will not be processed in the operation and will not be renamed/moved/copied.
As for Preferences taking a long time to close, does it matter what changes you've made? Is it equally slow if you make no changes and OK the dialog?
-Kirk
