strange preview behavior

[ron_hiner]

I did a shoot today that seems to cause strange PM behavior...   

In preview mode, some shots show up on the thumbnails below, but the preview screen is just black ... 


And sometimes its just the opposite... the thumbnails are black, but there is a picture on the preview screen




Mac 10.5.5 w/10 gb memory, not much remaining disk space, Nikon D3 raw files, PM 4.5.3.2 

I should add that the contact sheet view works that same as always... the pics that don't render right in preview mode are just fine on the contact sheet.


Thoughts?   Thanks!

Ron

[Kirk Baker]

Ron,

I did a shoot today that seems to cause strange PM behavior...   

In preview mode, some shots show up on the thumbnails below, but the preview screen is just black ... 


And sometimes its just the opposite... the thumbnails are black, but there is a picture on the preview screen




Mac 10.5.5 w/10 gb memory, not much remaining disk space, Nikon D3 raw files, PM 4.5.3.2 

I should add that the contact sheet view works that same as always... the pics that don't render right in preview mode are just fine on the contact sheet.

The contact sheet loads its images first (well unless you open a contact sheet and immediately begin previewing) so that may explain why the contact sheet appears to have no problems.

I expect that the issue is that there isn't enough disk space for caching the thumbnails and previews.  What does your Caching settings look like?  Post a screen shot of the Caching tab of the Photo Mechanic Preferences dialog when you can.

-Kirk

[ron_hiner]

Here are the PM settings...


And the relevant volumes....



I'm embarrassed to say that with my 10 flipin' GB of memory, I've only got 512mg allocated for Pm's cache!

[Kirk Baker]

Ron,

Here are the PM settings...

I'm embarrassed to say that with my 10 flipin' GB of memory, I've only got 512mg allocated for Pm's cache!

Try emptying your cache on Exit, at least for the time being (you can turn it off later).  Also, you shouldn't really give PM more than about 2GB of Memory cache, no matter how much RAM you have.  Photo Mechanic is a 32-bit application and can only address 4 GB of RAM anyway.

You have plenty of remaining disk space.  I don't usually recommend a 10 GB disk cache but it shouldn't cause any problems other than long startup and exit times.

-Kirk