Very slow expansion of folder tree in navigator

[whistlerdan]

On my Drobo i have my photos organized by year and then within that I have a folder for each day of shooting.

When I click on the year folder to expand all the shoot date folders it's taking upwards of 5 or 6 minutes to expand the folder tree !  This can't be right ?

10.7.1 with 4.6.8

[whistlerdan]

There has to be something going on here. All I've done this morning and half of yesterday is sit and watch the spinning beach ball on PM.  

I opened a folder containing 2000 photos , which opened not so slow, but now simply trying to display all the photos that are colored as red and it's sitting here now for more than 5 minutes again thinking about it.  Out of 2000 photos in this folder there are roughly 120 that are colored red.  Why is this taking so long, it's unusable to me on this computer.  Please help , I want to love this program  


EDIT: After 10 minutes of waiting , and OSX saying Application Not Responding I have force quit PM. 

[Kirk Baker]

On my Drobo i have my photos organized by year and then within that I have a folder for each day of shooting.

When I click on the year folder to expand all the shoot date folders it's taking upwards of 5 or 6 minutes to expand the folder tree !  This can't be right ?

By default the Navigator and Favorites are set to scan folders for sub-folders (so the little triangles only appear on folders that contain folders).  This can be very slow on server volumes.  You can change this preference.  Right-click on any item in the Navigator and choose 'Preferences...' from the contextual menu.  Turn off the checkbox that reads: 'Always check sub-folders for folders on servers'

Things should speed up quite a bit.  Though I will caution you that PM does not work extremely fast on servers for browsing in general.

-Kirk

[whistlerdan]

Thanks , I will try that.

Are you saying it's normal for the program to take so long to simply display all files that are tagged with a certain color, that OSX assumes the program has gone unresponsive?

[whistlerdan]

There simply has to be something else wrong here.....

I just went into the preferences file to make a change and simply clicking the OK button to save the change froze PM again.

[Kirk Baker]

I just went into the preferences file to make a change and simply clicking the OK button to save the change froze PM again.

Did you right-click on an item in the Navigator and choose Preferences from the contextual menu that appears or are you bringing up the Preferences dialog from the Photo Mechanic menu?

-Kirk

[whistlerdan]

I went to preferences in the main dialog and changed the order PM reads xml and IPTC files because changes I was making in Lightroom were not showing up so I switched it to XML then IPTC.  On pressing the OK button to confirm, I got the spinning beachball and after 5 minutes of unresponsiveness I force quit PM.

I just seem to be getting intermittent periods of unresponsiveness that seem uncharacteristic of a program which comes so highly recommended from so many people.  


Once I re-opened PM I did indeed try your suggestion of telling it not to hunt for sub folders when browsing the navigator and that fixed the previous problem I was having.  Instead of taking 5 minutes+ to expand my folder tree it was suddenly instant ( though of course now lost ability to see when there is a sub folder). It seems like a workaround, and I've never experienced any program before , let alone one that is fairly expensive, where simply expanding a folder tree can take 5 minutes regardless of whether the folders are on an external drive.

And a simple sort to find the files tagged with a specific color is still taking upwards of 5 or 6 minutes.

EDIT: In fact as I sit here now trying again to perform that same task to simply show me only files tagged red, it's now been spinning the ball for ten minutes.  This can't be normal behavior is it ?  I no longer know when it's crashed or when it's just doing something very slowly.

[Kirk Baker]

I went to preferences in the main dialog and changed the order PM reads xml and IPTC files because changes I was making in Lightroom were not showing up so I switched it to XML then IPTC.  On pressing the OK button to confirm, I got the spinning beachball and after 5 minutes of unresponsiveness I force quit PM.

I just seem to be getting intermittent periods of unresponsiveness that seem uncharacteristic of a program which comes so highly recommended from so many people.  


Once I re-opened PM I did indeed try your suggestion of telling it not to hunt for sub folders when browsing the navigator and that fixed the previous problem I was having.  Instead of taking 5 minutes+ to expand my folder tree it was suddenly instant ( though of course now lost ability to see when there is a sub folder). It seems like a workaround, and I've never experienced any program before , let alone one that is fairly expensive, where simply expanding a folder tree can take 5 minutes regardless of whether the folders are on an external drive.

And a simple sort to find the files tagged with a specific color is still taking upwards of 5 or 6 minutes.

EDIT: In fact as I sit here now trying again to perform that same task to simply show me only files tagged red, it's now been spinning the ball for ten minutes.  This can't be normal behavior is it ?  I no longer know when it's crashed or when it's just doing something very slowly.

Using the Color Class filter or the Star Rating filter takes just as much time to execute as sorting by Capture Time.  Each file has to be parsed for the data used for the sort (in this case Color Class and 5-Star Rating) and it takes time.  If your files are not on a local hard drive then this can take a really long time.

I'm sorry but there is no workaround for this issue at this time.  You either have to endure the wait, or don't color/rating filter, or browse fewer files at a time.

Are your files locally available?  Are they on your Drobo device?  Does your Drobo device have the latest updates to its software/firmware?

-Kirk

[whistlerdan]

The files are on my Drobo, yes it has all the latest updates.

Not color/rating files is not an option, how else can you sort things ?  If I run through all the files from a shoot and tag the ones that need to be uploaded , then at the end I'm going to want to show only those tagged files so that I can select them all and upload.  If that means a ten minute wait just to show me which files I've already tagged then I don't know what to do. 

[Kirk Baker]

The files are on my Drobo, yes it has all the latest updates.

Not color/rating files is not an option, how else can you sort things ?  If I run through all the files from a shoot and tag the ones that need to be uploaded , then at the end I'm going to want to show only those tagged files so that I can select them all and upload.  If that means a ten minute wait just to show me which files I've already tagged then I don't know what to do. 

Are you running a trial version of PM, or have you purchased it?  If you're running a trial version, I suggest waiting until PM has a database backend for searching and sorting.  If you've purchased it already you can contact sales@camerabits.com and ask for a refund.

-Kirk

[whistlerdan]

It's a trial at the moment.

The problem is that I can appreciate how well it does ingesting and initially tagging the IPTC stuff.  It's almost worth the purchase just for that.  But after it's finished the ingest I just run into things that slow me down.

When will there be a database version ?

[Kirk Baker]

It's a trial at the moment.

The problem is that I can appreciate how well it does ingesting and initially tagging the IPTC stuff.  It's almost worth the purchase just for that.  But after it's finished the ingest I just run into things that slow me down.

When will there be a database version ?

Several months from now.  I don't have a firm date, but we're going to make an announcement in a few weeks.

-Kirk

[whistlerdan]

ok thanks for your assistance