Applying IPTC

[JS]

Hi,

I'm having a core duo,2,0 Ghz imac. OS is 10.5.7. PM 4.5.3. Iptc applying is toooo slow! What hardware upgrade would improve the speed? Suggestions appreciated. I would even switch to windows,if there was a faster way!!!

Regards JS

[Jerry H]

Hi JS,

Please upgrade Photo Mechanic to version 4.5.4: http://camerabits.fileburst.com/PhotoMechanic4.5.4.dmg.gz

The version of Photo Mechanic that you're running was never meant to run on Leopard. Let me know if 4.5.4 does not help speed things up.

HTH,
Jerry

[JS]

Hi Jerry,

sorry, I was wrong. I already run 4.5.4. I can not blame it for being really slow, it's just too slow for me. And I wondered if some hardware upgrade would make it faster.

Thanks for the answer.

Regards JS

[Hayo Baan]

How much memory have you got installed, and also, how much free space is on your drive? Both can impact performance quite severely.

[JS]

Hi,

I got 2 MB Ram and about 20 Gig left on my harddisk. To make it more concrete: Would a core 2 duo 2,66 Ghz bring more performance in this particular matter?

Regards JS

[Hayo Baan]

I reckon you mean 2GB of RAM  This is about the minimum I would recommend, but does not seem the main reason to me.

20GB free on your HD is pushing it I think. Even though HFS+ (Apple's file system) is pretty good at keeping file fragmentation at bay (certainly compared to windows' file systems), it is not immune to it, and especially not to fragmentation of the free space. The less space there is on your HD, the harder it gets for the OS to keep (large) contiguous pieces of free space available, eventually leading to more and more fragmentation and a general slowdown of your system.

Try freeing space, for instance by moving files to a secondary HD.

Upgrading the processor is most likely not going to help you at all; applying IPTC info is not CPU intensive, just I/O (disk) intensive (all files need to be read and then written again).

As a further question, what are your PM cache settings? Perhaps you can gain something by tweaking those a bit as well?

[JS]

[/img]

I reckon you mean 2GB of RAM  This is about the minimum I would recommend, but does not seem the main reason to me.

20GB free on your HD is pushing it I think. Even though HFS+ (Apple's file system) is pretty good at keeping file fragmentation at bay (certainly compared to windows' file systems), it is not immune to it, and especially not to fragmentation of the free space. The less space there is on your HD, the harder it gets for the OS to keep (large) contiguous pieces of free space available, eventually leading to more and more fragmentation and a general slowdown of your system.

Try freeing space, for instance by moving files to a secondary HD.

Upgrading the processor is most likely not going to help you at all; applying IPTC info is not CPU intensive, just I/O (disk) intensive (all files need to be read and then written again).

As a further question, what are your PM cache settings? Perhaps you can gain something by tweaking those a bit as well?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kirk Baker]

[/img]

I reckon you mean 2GB of RAM  This is about the minimum I would recommend, but does not seem the main reason to me.

20GB free on your HD is pushing it I think. Even though HFS+ (Apple's file system) is pretty good at keeping file fragmentation at bay (certainly compared to windows' file systems), it is not immune to it, and especially not to fragmentation of the free space. The less space there is on your HD, the harder it gets for the OS to keep (large) contiguous pieces of free space available, eventually leading to more and more fragmentation and a general slowdown of your system.

Try freeing space, for instance by moving files to a secondary HD.

Upgrading the processor is most likely not going to help you at all; applying IPTC info is not CPU intensive, just I/O (disk) intensive (all files need to be read and then written again).

As a further question, what are your PM cache settings? Perhaps you can gain something by tweaking those a bit as well?

Try setting your Memory Cache down to 512 MB instead of 778 MB.  With only 2GB of RAM 778 is really pushing it and you're likely starting to get virtual memory paging during the loading of the contact sheet and this will definitely impact the speed of all operations on your system.

-Kirk

[JS]

I reckon you mean 2GB of RAM  This is about the minimum I would recommend, but does not seem the main reason to me.

20GB free on your HD is pushing it I think. Even though HFS+ (Apple's file system) is pretty good at keeping file fragmentation at bay (certainly compared to windows' file systems), it is not immune to it, and especially not to fragmentation of the free space. The less space there is on your HD, the harder it gets for the OS to keep (large) contiguous pieces of free space available, eventually leading to more and more fragmentation and a general slowdown of your system.

Try freeing space, for instance by moving files to a secondary HD.

Upgrading the processor is most likely not going to help you at all; applying IPTC info is not CPU intensive, just I/O (disk) intensive (all files need to be read and then written again).


As a further question, what are your PM cache settings? Perhaps you can gain something by tweaking those a bit as well?


If I/O(disk) means the harddisk, wich runs now at 7200 RPM, a upgrade to 10000 RPM could help?

Thanks for all answers

Regards JS

[Jerry H]

Hi JS,

Are you running any applications other than Photo Mechanic?

Regards,
Jerry

[Hayo Baan]

JS,

If I/O(disk) means the harddisk, wich runs now at 7200 RPM, a upgrade to 10000 RPM could help?

Yes, this means the harddisk (as well as the cache). Unless your harddisk is really old and really slow, going from 7200 to 10000 RPM disks is not going to help dramatically. With your current setup you should definitely be able to get a fairly quick response from PM.

Things already mentioned that can cause PM to run slower than it can:
* heavy disk fragmentation (only having 20GB free space is an indicator this is at least a very likely reason)
* PM cache settings
* running other I/O and/or CPU intensive programs

Have you already tried to analyse the bottleneck yourself, by looking at the various panels of Activity Monitor?
This will quickly show you if it is CPU, I/O, or something else that's causing the slowdown.

[JS]

So, I put the m.cache to 512 now. Let's see. And I will built in a bigger harddisk next time. Generally I use beside PM only Safari. Thanks for all suggestions.

Regards
JS