PM Plus catalog formation incredibly slow

[jeremynicholl]

Hello everyone. I've been using PM forever & downloaded PM+ hoping to use it for cataloging instead of Lightroom. However creating the first catalog of my raw images archive is absurdly slow. The archive is 154 nested folders on an external drive and is about 4tb in size. I told PM+ to scan the archive into a new catalog. So far it's been doing this non-stop for almost 3 days & there's no end in sight.

This can't possibly be right: LM takes about a day to create a new catalog of similar size. It's running on a MacBook Pro on Big Sur. Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? At this rate PM+ looks unusable.

All advice welcome,

Jeremy Nicholl

[Bob Russell]

Hi Jeremy,

From my speed tests on my various machines, PM Plus can catalog anywhere between 7,000 to 25,000 images per hour. The speed of the drive with the image files will be one of the bottlenecks in this process.  The location of the Catalog folder will also be another potential bottleneck.  The catalog should be on a local drive, preferably an internal SSD. If the image files are on a NAS device, then this will also add time to the cataloging process.  I have not done a comparison between our different NAS devices since each one seems to be significantly slower than an external HD or SSD.  Where are your images files and Photo Mechanic Catalog located? 

Best regards,

--Bob

[Kirk Baker]

Jeremy,

Hello everyone. I've been using PM forever & downloaded PM+ hoping to use it for cataloging instead of Lightroom. However creating the first catalog of my raw images archive is absurdly slow. The archive is 154 nested folders on an external drive and is about 4tb in size. I told PM+ to scan the archive into a new catalog. So far it's been doing this non-stop for almost 3 days & there's no end in sight.

Do you have RAW rendering (via the Adobe DNG Converter) turned on?  Doing so will make the generation of proxies incredibly slow.  Proxies are already low resolution so spending the time to do the RAW conversions when most RAW files already have a suitable embedded preview is a waste of time.

Where is the catalog folder located?  Is it on a local fast drive or on a network share?

-Kirk

[jeremynicholl]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. Had to give up on it for a week or so because it was just getting in the way of work. I'm going to have another try now. The image files are on an external hard drive & catalogue is on a MacBook Pro internal drive, not an SSD.

Jeremy Nicholl

[Kirk Baker]

Jeremy,

Thanks for the replies. Had to give up on it for a week or so because it was just getting in the way of work. I'm going to have another try now. The image files are on an external hard drive & catalogue is on a MacBook Pro internal drive, not an SSD.

Asking again since one of my questions was not answered:

Do you have RAW rendering (via the Adobe DNG Converter) turned on?

-Kirk

[jeremynicholl]

Hi Kirk,

Sorry about that. No, raw rendering wasn't on. It's plodding on and I think the end is in sight, perhaps this evening.

Jeremy Nicholl