PM slooooowwwing doooowwwnnn….

[Craig_S44]

I have recently been experiencing a slow down with PM.

It occurs when I select a group of images for editing in Photoshop, I edit them and then when I return to PM to select the next group- It can take upwards of a minute or more to become responsive again (while I sit and watch the spinning beach ball of doom) - There has always been a small lag to redraw the previews - but it has never been like this.

I am using Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 15800 (e6ecc1c)

Photoshop CC 2014.0.0

And I am running it all on a MacPro 5,1 2.8ghz Quadcore with 10GB ram and  have run all diagnostics on this machine with Diskwarrior and Techtool Pro

I have not made a dramatic changes to my system recently, the only issue that I can see is that my Boot Drive was getting rather full but I have cleared a lot files off it and the issue persists.

I have tried reinstalling the software but that made no difference and while I have noticed a small lag in some other programs - it is nothing like this, and mostly that has cleared up since freeing space on the HD.

Thank you for any assistance.

[Kirk Baker]

Craig,

I have recently been experiencing a slow down with PM.

It occurs when I select a group of images for editing in Photoshop, I edit them and then when I return to PM to select the next group- It can take upwards of a minute or more to become responsive again (while I sit and watch the spinning beach ball of doom) - There has always been a small lag to redraw the previews - but it has never been like this.

I am using Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 15800 (e6ecc1c)

Photoshop CC 2014.0.0

And I am running it all on a MacPro 5,1 2.8ghz Quadcore with 10GB ram and  have run all diagnostics on this machine with Diskwarrior and Techtool Pro

I have not made a dramatic changes to my system recently, the only issue that I can see is that my Boot Drive was getting rather full but I have cleared a lot files off it and the issue persists.

I have tried reinstalling the software but that made no difference and while I have noticed a small lag in some other programs - it is nothing like this, and mostly that has cleared up since freeing space on the HD.

Thank you for any assistance.

Photoshop uses a lot of RAM.  By default, it will use up more than half of your RAM unless you adjust its preferences.

PM will use up to 4 GB of RAM but usually uses far less than that.

It sounds like when PM is resumed, most of its memory has been paged out to disk because you don't have enough physical RAM on your system for both apps to get the RAM they need.  The virtual memory system in the OS is doing its best to accommodate both the needs of both applications.

You can use the Activity Monitor to see how much virtual memory paging is going on in your system.  Virtual memory paging is a fairly slow operation and PM can't do anything to avoid it.

-Kirk

[Craig_S44]

Photoshop uses a lot of RAM.  By default, it will use up more than half of your RAM unless you adjust its preferences.

PM will use up to 4 GB of RAM but usually uses far less than that.

It sounds like when PM is resumed, most of its memory has been paged out to disk because you don't have enough physical RAM on your system for both apps to get the RAM they need.  The virtual memory system in the OS is doing its best to accommodate both the needs of both applications.

You can use the Activity Monitor to see how much virtual memory paging is going on in your system.  Virtual memory paging is a fairly slow operation and PM can't do anything to avoid it.

-Kirk

Hi Kirk

Thanks for your response. 

I should have stated that using photoshop was only one example.  This activity also occurs when PhotoMechanic is the only program running.  It seems that anytime I do any action, such as create a new folder within a folder, and then go back to access thumbnail images, it takes about 35 seconds to respond, sometimes over a minute.

Even if I have only PM and a web browser running, and I make PM the background app, while I check something on the web - when I return to PM, it takes about 35 seconds before I can actually do anything.


Pretty much any task that I try to do, I have to wait a long time between doing it, and being able to do anything else.

Craig

[Kirk Baker]

Craig,

Tell me more about what you're doing in PM, where your images are stored (what kind of drive, local or network), what sort method you're using in your contact sheets, how you're creating these folders, how many images are in your contact sheet(s).

If you would like faster service, please contact our customer support folks at +1 503-547-2888 during business hours.  This medium is not suitable for quick support (I don't check the forums but once an hour or so during work hours, and even less frequently during non-work hours).

-Kirk

[Craig_S44]

Hi Kirk

That sounds great, but what time zone are you in?  I am in Perth Australia, +8GMT, so working hours for you is probably mainly sleeping hours for me - but there is likely some reasonable cross over period.

I will answer your questions below.

1) Images are stored on a separate drive internal drive (WD Caviar green, btw) from PM but all drives are in the same machine

2) Sort method is just all files, by filename.  I do have different files tagged different colours, but it does not seem to matter and in any case I am not filtering them.

3) Creating new folders - just some background - we shoot high school graduations. Each school is a little different and when It comes time to ready their images for the website, I create new folders as needed by selecting the parent folder in the sidebar and control clicking it to reveal the "Create New Folder inside this folder" option the pop up menu.

4) Number of images in contact sheet varies from school to school, the one I am working on at the moment is 2700+ but the same issues were happening with a much smaller school, only 289 images.

It does not seem to be related to any one thing I am doing, as it does not matter what I am doing.  Even if I go back to PM now, with only it and Safari open - I will get a spinning beach ball for about 35 seconds before I can access the program.

Cheers

Craig

PS, in the old days I would have said Trash the prefs, but there seems to be a number of them and I am not even sure if this is a valid option anymore.

[Kirk Baker]

We're on the west coast of the USA.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Craig,

Could you go to the Help menu and choose the "Reveal Support Data..." command?  Once the zip file is created, could you post it here?  There may be some clues in the log.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Craig_S44]

Craig,

Could you go to the Help menu and choose the "Reveal Support Data..." command?  Once the zip file is created, could you post it here?  There may be some clues in the log.

Thanks,

-Kirk

Here is it 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22158931/Client-Uploads/2014%20Client%20Uploads/PM_log.zip

[Kirk Baker]

Craig,

Thanks.  You have a number of errors like this at the end of your log:

[Thu Oct-30-2014 14:31:01.133][ac71c2c0][2900588] DiskUtils.mm:1623 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Schools-2012/SCHOOLS 2014/SCHOOL GRADS 2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014-WEB-CD-SIZE/BQW0212.jpg"
[Thu Oct-30-2014 14:31:01.167][ac71c2c0][2900588] NRF.cpp:1712 do_NRFGetImageInfo(): Error calling DiskUtilsGetFileStatus('/Volumes/Schools-2012/SCHOOLS 2014/SCHOOL GRADS 2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014-WEB-CD-SIZE/BQW0212.jpg')
[Thu Oct-30-2014 14:31:01.168][ac71c2c0][2900588] CachedImage.cpp:2096 Error returned by NRFGetImageInfo("/Volumes/Schools-2012/SCHOOLS 2014/SCHOOL GRADS 2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014/BQW-MINDARIE-GRAD-2014-WEB-CD-SIZE/BQW0212.jpg"): 5

This indicates that when the directory scan completed, the BQW0212.jpg file existed, but when PM went to open the file to read its metadata, the file no longer existed.

Any ideas why files would go missing?

-Kirk

[Craig_S44]

Hi Kirk

Generally, when I am editing images -they stay in the "master folder".  Occasionally I will spot one that should have been dumped and get rid of it.  However I have been doing that as long as I have been using PM (9 years) So I am not sure what is going on there.

However.  The issue has inexplicably ceased to be.   The machine has not even been turned off since this thread began.  The only thing that I did was stop ClamXav's sentry program.  When first I did that though, the problem did continue - so I thought it must not be related. I guess that PM has been shut off and restarted in since this thread began - even though the computer has not - so perhaps that was the issue. 

Later today, I will start ClamXav again and see it the problem resumes.

Craig

[Craig_S44]

And it would appear that that ClamXav's Sentry program is the culprit.  It boots when the machine is restarted and when I did that today - PM went all to hell again.

[Craig_S44]

Perhaps I spoke too soon.  The behaviour has resumed but CalmXav is not running.

[Kirk Baker]

Perhaps I spoke too soon.  The behaviour has resumed but CalmXav is not running.

And if you quit PM and relaunch it, does the speed return?

-Kirk

[Craig_S44]

Yes, kirk I have done so several times - but no change.

Just now I went to make it the active application (switching from safari) it took 61 seconds before I could do anything with it.

[Kirk Baker]

Craig,

Yes, kirk I have done so several times - but no change.

Just now I went to make it the active application (switching from safari) it took 61 seconds before I could do anything with it.

Look in the bottom corner of the contact sheet window.  The area along the bottom shows information at various times.  Does it say anything during this time where it is inaccessible?

-Kirk