Photo Mechanic > General Discussion
Slow reaction time switching back to PM
HB:
I am also experiencing considerable slowness and was wondering if I have too many images in the folder I'm working with; there are about 700. I'm running PM 4.4.3.3 on a PC with Windows XP Professional (not sure how much RAM). There is a delay of 10+ seconds when I switch between PM and other programs and also between the preview window and contact sheet within PM. I'm going to try limiting the number of files/folder unless anyone has other advice.
Thanks,
HB
Kirk Baker:
--- Quote from: HB on October 05, 2006, 06:52:07 AM ---I am also experiencing considerable slowness and was wondering if I have too many images in the folder I'm working with; there are about 700. I'm running PM 4.4.3.3 on a PC with Windows XP Professional (not sure how much RAM). There is a delay of 10+ seconds when I switch between PM and other programs and also between the preview window and contact sheet within PM. I'm going to try limiting the number of files/folder unless anyone has other advice.
--- End quote ---
You have 700 images. What kinds of images are in the folder? Just JPEGs? RAW files? TIFF files? How large are they? When you switch back into PM from your other apps, have you modified any of the images before your return to PM?
You say that it is slow to switch from PM to another application. When you switch next time, make note of any heavy disk activity (the hard drive light on the front of your computer is a good indicator.) Heavy disk activity can indicate that your system is low on memory and is paging memory to/from disk. Virtual memory paging is extremely time consuming if there is a lot of it going on.
What are your Caching settings inside the Photo Mechanic preferences? Please list them. Also, it would be really helpful if you would open up the System Control Panel, and click on the General tab. At the bottom of the pane is a section titled "Computer". It will list your processor speed and how much physical RAM you have. Please tell me your CPU speed and how much RAM you have listed.
What are the other applications that you are running at the same time as PM?
-Kirk
HB:
Kirk,
Thank you for your patience. Here are answers:
Image type: JPEG
Size: most are 1-3 MB
Am I modifying images outside PM? No
PM Settings
Disk cache size:? 512 MB
Reserve at least 100 MB
Empty cache on exit is checked
Memory cache size 64 MB
CPU speed: 1.61 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Other applications in use: generally MS Word, Mozilla browser, Mozilla e-mail, Open Office spreadsheet, Picasa
Have not been working much in PM today, so will monitor the hard drive light next time I do (though the setup of my desk makes that difficult).
Thanks,
HB
Kirk Baker:
HB,
--- Quote from: HB on October 05, 2006, 10:36:55 AM ---Thank you for your patience. Here are answers:
Image type: JPEG
Size: most are 1-3 MB
Am I modifying images outside PM? No
PM Settings
Disk cache size:? 512 MB
Reserve at least 100 MB
Empty cache on exit is checked
Memory cache size 64 MB
CPU speed: 1.61 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Other applications in use: generally MS Word, Mozilla browser, Mozilla e-mail, Open Office spreadsheet, Picasa
Have not been working much in PM today, so will monitor the hard drive light next time I do (though the setup of my desk makes that difficult).
--- End quote ---
You can also use the Windows Task Manager's Performance tab to tell if a lot of swapping is going on.
I can tell you reasons why PM would take some time to resume (it has to rescan the currently open folders to check for new, updated or missing files. But slowness in switching out seems likely only to be caused by virtual memory issues.
Keep an eye on it. You can also use the Processes tab to see how many apps you have running and see how much memory each is using. The Mem Usage and VM Size columns are the most informative columns. Check to see if any of them is using really large amounts of RAM.
HTH,
-Kirk
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