Making the ingest process quicker?

[big0mike]

I'm a pretty long time user and for what I often use PM for it's great: ingesting and captioning NBA games. I'd like to use it for everything but ingesting is astonishingly slow for a different segment of the jobs I do. And I'm not sure why...

I'm an event photographer that covers marathons & Ironman races in charge of anywhere between 6 and 20 or more photographers. We capture 50k+ images or more each race. Even though it's completely unnecessary I'd like to be able to rename the images as I ingest them as well as add some very basic IPTC data. Doing so could be useful in some rare circumstances.

Ingesting while trying to rename and add IPTC data is at least 3x as slow as just copying the files from media to disk. I say at least because for a card that took 6 minutes to copy it took well over 18 minutes to ingest and I didn't even wait until it was done. And, I'm using a pretty quick i7 with USB 3 readers. I expect this to take some time but not that much more.

I even tried ingesting without doing ANYTHING. No rename, no IPTC, no nothing. And it was still 3x as slow.

I'm curious if there's anything to be done about the ingest speed?

I don't know what version of 5.x I currently have but I've always upgraded to the latest so I'm not using a really old version.

Thanks,

Mike

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

It would be useful to know what OS you run Photo Mechanic on.  Ingest should be on par with copying the files with the OS, even when renaming or applying metadata.

-Kirk

[big0mike]

Win7. PM Version 5 build 16299. Did some more testing just so I have my figures certain.

Class 10 SD Card with 5996 images. Using the built-in SD reader, not USB3. Incremental is UNchecked.

Explorer: 5:30 minutes
PhotoMechanic: 7:30 (straight copy)
PhotoMechanic: 7 (append name to the filename on copy)
PhotoMechanic: 7:30 (append name add Stationery Pad)

Well, shit... Don't know what was happening the last time I tried this but I do know for a fact it was taking 18+ minutes to download what Explorer copied in 6. It wasn't that long ago and I'm almost positive it was a flavor of version 5.

I do remember that I did notice that UNchecking the incremental box seemed to save a lot of time because it was several minutes before it actually started copying files. So, I started tonight with it UNchecked. And, of course, I can't ingest that card incrementally now 'cause PM already knows it's been downloaded.

Guess I have something to try next event.

Sorry about the distraction...

Mike

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

Win7. PM Version 5 build 16299. Did some more testing just so I have my figures certain.

Class 10 SD Card with 5996 images. Using the built-in SD reader, not USB3. Incremental is UNchecked.

Explorer: 5:30 minutes
PhotoMechanic: 7:30 (straight copy)
PhotoMechanic: 7 (append name to the filename on copy)
PhotoMechanic: 7:30 (append name add Stationery Pad)

Did you eject the card between each test?  If not, then the system may have been caching some of the files (on the card) in system memory which would make the subsequent copies faster than they should be.

-Kirk

[big0mike]

No, I did not eject it. I didn't eject it between attempts in my original test months ago, either. I'll try that tonight.

Is there a way to make PM think the card hasn't been ingested before so I can try the incremental test again?

Mike

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

No, I did not eject it. I didn't eject it between attempts in my original test months ago, either. I'll try that tonight.

Is there a way to make PM think the card hasn't been ingested before so I can try the incremental test again?

There is a file called ".pmingest.dat" that will be on the root directory of your camera card that you can delete.  It may be hidden.  You can delete from the command prompt if you can't see it in Windows Explorer.

-Kirk