I've tried to make this better several times now and usually it works fine if the catalog is not also simultaneously updating its database. Was your catalog fully built? Were there any tasks saying that it was processing batches of metadata or previews?
None of that. However it looks like it fails when PM is still loading the metadata/thumbnails for the visible part of the contact sheet. Which with the next issue was a more significant problem. But it seems to work if I give PM some time to fully load the (visible part of) the contact sheet. It's still a bit iffy, the first time it might fail with that message, but the second time it succeeds. Afterwards when I scroll the contact sheet, the metadata for all the photos does indeed seem already loaded.
This can be turned off in the Contact Sheet page of the Preferences dialog (Rescan on resume).
Saving my life. I did see the option when checking out all the settings, but I didn't gather that that was what it does. Seems more useful for folder contact sheets than catalog contact sheets, isn't catalog view automatically updated on e.g. ingest anyway? Though that might've been the rescan.
The term scan is also used in "scan to catalog", which probably threw me off.
What codec do these videos use?
HEVC, I think that's the issue. Though I installed gstreamer 1.20, supposedly 1.18 includes intel's HEVC decoder, but no luck so far. I'll be converting the clips to h.264 anyway, so this will probably solve itself.
Since your NAS is online and connected, the thumbnails/previews are being generated from the files on the NAS. This is something that can be improved by us in the future.
So for faster viewing, I'd need to disconnect? So the preview feature is purely for if the storage medium isn't available? Now it makes sense, though it'd be greatly appreciated if at least thumbnails can be fetched locally. The previews load plenty fast for me.
I guess the same counts for metadata, the most important stuff should already be in the catalog database anyway. But not a deal breaker, good to know what the feature does. The documentation is a bit fuzzy on this, as it specifies "offline and remote use", I gathered my use case was the latter. I guess for me, I can disable previews for now as my NAS is always available.
One thing I noticed is that "Generate high quality thumbnails" makes a big difference for me (obviously). If it were possible to make this option dynamic based on chosen thumbnail size, it'd be great. As the case where I have many thumbnails to load, is also the case they're very tiny and I don't need high quality ones.
Selecting multiple items in Browse increases the number of results you'll get. Selecting multiple criteria in the Filter reduces the number of items you'll get. I think for your purposes, Filter is what you should use primarily.
Right, I see.
The Metadata Template dialog is the batch editor for the most part. There are also Keywords and Structured Keywords panels that operate in batches. You can also toggle Tag, set Ratings, and set Color Class in batch directly in the Contact Sheet.
Right, I noticed that. My reference is Daminion, which allows you to load aggregate data into the editor for your selection, but I think it does so from the catalog, so it's decently fast. Or for single files, it just prepopulates everything. If I were to wager a guess, PM operates on a file-first method as that was what it was historically based on, rather than the catalog database. Which is useful, as it prevents desyncs, but a bit slower.
Catalog Sync in Full Mode can be set to scan a specific folder.
Oh, in my mind that was the list of "these folders are in the catalog", unaware that that setting doesn't really exist and it's a "sync this now" sheet. That helps a lot. "Include existing paths from catalog" makes sense now, though that button made the dialog freeze. And after closing and reopening PM it seems it was literally including all folders, rather than the root folder. The latter being my expectation. A way to quickly do this from a selection or contact sheet would be useful, but for now this solves my issue entirely.
Using previews when available instead of hitting the NAS should make the need to pause unnecessary.
I guess you're saying that as to suggest it might be a future improvement/toggle? That'd be great.
Something I just noticed, could it be that it remembers scroll position when switching filters? I guess it makes sense in some scenarios, but usually scroll-to-top would be what I need.
After these responses, my biggest issue right now is that batch operations other than those with a dedicated task, pretty much freezes PM for me, with only occasionally the interface updating. Which, to be fair, is a minor thing, but it makes it hard to check out progress.
Understandable. Your use case is not one we optimized for and will improve in the future. I do not have a timetable for that improvement to give to you at this time however.
Thanks for the extensive reply, I hope my post wasn't too negative, but rather felt constructive. For a first version of a catalog feature, it works very well, so I'm quite hopeful it'd works even better in the future. I'm going to finish the trial to fully evaluate it, but it might seem that PM will turn into something essential for me.
