PM regularly freezes when switching between applications

[Nadine van Biljon]

Hi,

I'm using PM 5.0 on a Mac running OS X v10.9.5.  Ever since I installed PM I get the dreaded spinning wheel when I switch to use another application and then head back to the PM contact sheet.  It routinely takes between 30 seconds and 1 minute before its ready for me to start using it again.

I read up on some other threads on the forum and have reset the Preferences but that hasn't made any difference.

Can you please advise what else I could try as this is really killing my productivity and negating the whole reason I elected to use PM.

Many thanks

Nadine

[Nadine van Biljon]

…and just to add to that, its not always after I've switched back from another application.  It regularly just happens when I'm in the contact sheet.

[Kirk Baker]

Nadine,

It sounds to me like your system is running very low on RAM.  When your system runs low on RAM, the system will take the least recently used pieces of memory and page them to the system's virtual memory file.  When you switch to another app that has had its memory paged out to disk, those pages must be swapped in (and some other pieces of memory will be swapped out).  This is very time consuming and can result in the behavior you have described.

I suggest quitting any open applications that are not needed and if you're running Photoshop, reduce its memory cache.  By default, Photoshop will use at least half of your system's available memory.  You can free up a lot of memory by reducing the "Memory Usage" value in the Performance section of Photoshop's Preferences.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Luiz Muzzi]

Hi,
Would it be necessary to reduce Lightroom's memory usage too? I could not find the option in the Performance section of LR.
TIA,

-Luiz Muzzi

[Kirk Baker]

Luiz,

Would it be necessary to reduce Lightroom's memory usage too? I could not find the option in the Performance section of LR.

Well, basically if PM (which can only use a maximum of 4GB at this time) can't get its memory needs met immediately, then it will suffer reduced performance.  If LR or any other application is using up so much of your system's RAM that virtual memory paging is occurring then those applications need to either be quit or forced to reduce their memory footprint.  Generally one doesn't have to quit an app, one can simply close some of its documents and memory will be returned to the system.

-Kirk

[Nadine van Biljon]

Hi Kirk,

Thanks for your help so far.  When I launched the Activity Monitor I could see that my iMac was using pretty much all of its 8GB memory so closed down every application including Mail and Safari which is not ideal really but happy to work with it if it fixes the issue.

I'm sorry to report thought that I'm still having the same issue, even with only 3.3GB of the memory in use.  If I'm viewing the large preview screen for an image in PM, and then click on the next image in the contact sheet I still get the rainbow wheel for about 30 seconds or more.

Any further ideas?

Many thanks

Nadine

[Luiz Muzzi]

Luiz,

Would it be necessary to reduce Lightroom's memory usage too? I could not find the option in the Performance section of LR.

Well, basically if PM (which can only use a maximum of 4GB at this time) can't get its memory needs met immediately, then it will suffer reduced performance.  If LR or any other application is using up so much of your system's RAM that virtual memory paging is occurring then those applications need to either be quit or forced to reduce their memory footprint.  Generally one doesn't have to quit an app, one can simply close some of its documents and memory will be returned to the system.

-Kirk

Thanks, Kirk
It is really impressive how LR uses by far most of the memory.
I have attached a pic of Activity Monitor as an example.
Regards,

-Luiz Muzzi

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kirk Baker]

Nadine,

Thanks for your help so far.  When I launched the Activity Monitor I could see that my iMac was using pretty much all of its 8GB memory so closed down every application including Mail and Safari which is not ideal really but happy to work with it if it fixes the issue.

I'm sorry to report thought that I'm still having the same issue, even with only 3.3GB of the memory in use.  If I'm viewing the large preview screen for an image in PM, and then click on the next image in the contact sheet I still get the rainbow wheel for about 30 seconds or more.

Any further ideas?

What kind of images are you working with?  If they're RAW images, do you have RAW rendering turned on and are you having PM show RAW previews instead of the embedded JPEGs?

Also, please send me the PM log file from your system.  Go to the Help menu and choose "Reveal Support Data...".  A Finder window will come forward showing you the zipped log file.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your zipped log file.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Nadine van Biljon]

Hi Kirk - thanks for your reply. 

I am working with RAW files but I believe the settings I'm using should be rendering the JPEGs for previews rather than the RAW files, but I've sent you screen shots from my preferences so you can see if there is something awry there.  I've also attached the PM log file you've requested.  Its really, really bad now - its stalling every 5 images or so, or if I go back to a previous image so would be great to get to the bottom of this. 

Many thanks



[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kirk Baker]

Nadine,

Thanks for your settings and your PM log file.  I see a number of these messages repeated in your log:

[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.156][a14911a8][1438484] CachedImage.cpp:2112 CCachedImage::GetImageInfoPtr() unable to get shallow iip for '/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6362.CR2'
[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.157][b3329000][1438484] DiskUtils.mm:1590 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6362.CR2"
[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.157][b432d000][1438484] DiskUtils.mm:1590 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6365.CR2"
[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.157][b5b33000][1438484] DiskUtils.mm:1590 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6363.CR2"
[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.157][b3329000][1438484] DiskUtils.mm:1590 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6366.CR2"
[Sat Jun-13-2015 19:40:45.158][b2b27000][1438484] DiskUtils.mm:1590 DiskUtils::GetFileInfoStat() failed with error: No such file or directory on "/Volumes/Public/Master Files/Photography Work/Clients/2015 Clients/2015_04_11_WED_Allison & Sean/2015_04_11 (L) Allison & Sean REJECTS/IMG_6364.CR2"

What is the drive "Public" and why would it spontaneously not have files that PM expects to be there?

-Kirk

[Nadine van Biljon]

Hi Kirk,

'Public' is the default name for the external hard drive I use to store all my files - its an 8TB WD My Cloud EX2 - I have no idea why it would think those files aren't there.  When I copy all my files over from my CF cards, I put them all into a file with the format "date of client event, client name, REJECTS".  Once I've culled them in PM, I then move the chosen images to another file with the same naming convention but KEEPERS at the end, and those are the ones I take into Lightroom.

All the files, REJECTS and KEEPERS stay on that hard drive until I decide to delete or move them.  Allison & Sean are recent clients so those images should definitely still be on my hard drive.  However, I have finished editing that wedding a while back so not sure why PM is currently trying to access those files, if indeed it is.

Hope that sheds some light?

Nadine

[Kirk Baker]

Nadine,

Those errors were from Saturday, June 13th.

What happens if you don't use that external drive for editing?  Do the speed problems go away?

-Kirk

[Nadine van Biljon]

I've just copied a set of images over to my desktop and it seems fine if I operate it from there.

For performance reasons I don't particularly want to clog up my desktop with loads of RAW files as I'm shooting a lot at the moment and it can be quite a few shoots later before I get to edit the first event.  Is this the only solution?  Is it a known issues with accessing files on external drives - this particular one is getting quite full - 600GB left of its 8TB capacity if that's a factor at all?

Nadine

[Kirk Baker]

Nadine,

I've just copied a set of images over to my desktop and it seems fine if I operate it from there.

For performance reasons I don't particularly want to clog up my desktop with loads of RAW files as I'm shooting a lot at the moment and it can be quite a few shoots later before I get to edit the first event.  Is this the only solution?  Is it a known issues with accessing files on external drives - this particular one is getting quite full - 600GB left of its 8TB capacity if that's a factor at all?

Photo Mechanic in general works just fine with external hard drives.  Depending on the interface (the cable type, USB/FireWire/E-SATA etc.) the speed can be much slower than an internal drive.  Slow drive speeds means PM has to wait a long time for data to arrive.

It may also be that your drive is malfunctioning (that would explain the issue where files that previously existed no longer exist) and that could be a major contributor here.  I suggest running the DiskUtility on the drive and have it check for errors.

-Kirk

[Nadine van Biljon]

Hi Kirk,

Its directly connected to the back of my iMac using an ethernet cable which seems to be quick enough for most other applications.

The bizarre thing is though, that when I pull up the disk utility, the external hard drive doesn't show up in the list of drives on the left hand side (it does show another external LaCie drive and my internal drive of course) even though its clearly connected as I'm currently using it!

I did connect it to my MacBook Pro and it registered fine on there…when I clicked Verfiy Disk or Repair Disk it whizzed through and didn't pull any up any errors, although I would have expected it to take a little longer analysing it given the volume of data on there, and show some entries in the history window which it does if I run Repair Disk on the LaCie drive, so perhaps that's not working either but I have no idea what I could do differently?

Sorry this is turning into a bit of a saga…at this rate I'll be going back to culling in LightRoom which would still be quicker than my current set up 

Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I really would like to get PM working properly.  Might a re-install help?

Nadine