I have exactly the same issues as Neil. My XP sp2 system is very similar. The slow loading of tiffs, single layer, 32 Mb Canon 1Ds files can only be described as glacial. Smaller 20D files are almost as slow, even with LZW compression. The RAW files load in an instant, but the slow tiff performance makes PM vitually unusable for me. The same folder of files would load 10-15 times faster in CS2 Bridge, known to be slow, and probably 50 times faster in BreezeBrowserPro. BB Classic is not far behind. The issue is the same on two different similarly specced workstations.
This is utterly frustrating, as the options & workflow with PM leaves the rest gasping for respectabilty. Kirk, we corresponded on this matter some time ago, I sent you files and even went as far as a tricky registry cleanup. Are there new solutions?
Yes. Version 4.4.3.1 has much faster TIFF loading. I went as far as purchasing components similar to Neil's and built a system very much like his. Neil sent me about 15 usable 71 MB TIFF files. They now load in about 2 seconds each and would load even faster if I had a RAID array like Neil has (my system is similar but not exactly the same.) Neil's system is a Pentium-D system which shows as four CPUs when queried of the OS. This meant that PM was loading up to four 71 MB TIFF files at once. The disk I/O pattern then was fairly random instead of sequential. We did a lot of testing with buffering, going as far as writing a simulator to determine how to most quickly load four 1 GB files. It turns out that it is quicker on both Windows and Mac OS X to load each 1 GB file sequentially. Otherwise each CPU needs a 64 MB (that's right, 64 million byte) buffer to approach the speed of sequential reads. I put in some code to serialize our disk I/O and here are the results on my newly acquired Pentium-D system:
Version 4.4.3.1, loading 15 71MB TIFFs: 30.75 or about 2 seconds per photo loaded at high resolution
Version 4.4.3 and earlier, loading 15 71 MB TIFFs: 48.5 seconds or about 3.2 seconds per photo
This is a performance increase of 63%. The improved speed indicates that this system is capable of sustained reads at about 35 MB/sec.
In Neil's case with a performance-oriented RAID array things were much worse, taking up to 20+ seconds to load a photo at high resolution. With a test version of PM he can now load them in about a second flat.
On my 2.0 GHz G5 PowerMac, here are the timings:
Version 4.4.3.1, loading 15 71MB TIFFs: 22.75 or about 1.5 seconds per photo loaded at high resolution
Version 4.4.3 and earlier, loading 15 71 MB TIFFs: 35.15 seconds or about 2.34 seconds per photo
This is a performance increase of 64%. The improved speed indicates that this system is capable of sustained reads at about 47 MB/sec.
In the case of BreezeBrowser and BreezeBrowser Pro, I expect that they load the TIFF thumbnail and stop there. Photo Mechanic can be told to stop loading photos at the thumbnail stage if you want (Preferences->Contact Sheet tab->uncheck "Generate high quality thumbnails") but I really like to see all of my thumbnails at highest quality so I made sure that the new tunings makes for excellent performance when loading high-quality thumbnails.
Preview performance is also greatly enhanced. I can zoom in on a 71 MB (12 Mega-pixel Nikon D2X 16-bit TIFF) in under two seconds, even faster if the photo's file data is in the system's disk cache.
Basically, loading of TIFF files is disk I/O bound. The improvements to PM 4.4.3.1 mean that you will be able to load TIFFs as fast as you can copy them. So once you have this version you will be getting the fastest performance available on *your* system. If you want it to be faster then invest in a performance-tuned RAID array, as CPU performance is less of an issue.
We also made JPEG loading even faster on multi-CPU systems. I don't have timings, but it is not quite as dramatic as the TIFF loading increase, though the seat-of-the-pants test feels faster.
HTH,
-Kirk
