[BBD] Film strip not preloading

[Mees Dekker]

For some peculiar reason the filmstrip is not preloading any longer. So when sending 1 file to the viewer, the viewer shows all thumbnails in the filmstrip, but the usual green tics are no longer appearing. Every single image has to be loaded, which makes scrolling and culling cumbersome.

A I doing something wrong, did I perhaps a setting?

[Mario]

Don't know.
There is a setting under Edit > Preferences > Application: Viewer > How many files to preload.
The default is 0, which usually works fine.

The Viewer, Quick View Panel etc. dynamically adjusts the preload based on the number of visible tiles and available memory.
Memory full perhaps? Check Task Manager > Performance tab. If memory utilization is > 80%, the Viewer reduces or disables preload.

Any warnings in the log file?

[Mees Dekker]

Thank you for the reply, as always superfast.

It was indeed the memory: PS is a major consumer of memory and especially when AI is used. And it keeps hold of that memory as long as it is "open", even when nothing is happening or done.

Closed PS and all is fine now.

[Mario]

Yes. Photoshop is a well-known memory hog and it allocates memory in a "non-cooperative" way - basically taking it away from Windows and not allowing Windows to swap memory to disk in case of a memory shortage.

By default, Ps is configured to allocate 50% of the system RAM. Depending on how much RAM your system has available, this may cause memory utilization of 80% without Ps actually doing anything....

[Jingo]

Indesign can often be even worse...I typically work with files filled with high resolution TIFF images.. Indesign will often take up 85% of my available memory if I'm working with several of these large files... even just opening them to export for production PDFs.  

The really bad thing - Indesign doesn't restore the memory even after I close the files. Bad, bad lazy programming! 

Since I use Indesign everyday, most of the day - I tend to keep it running .. but, I often have to force myself to shut it down just to clear some memory and especially after I'm working on larger files.  If my system starts to get "wonky" - it is often Indesign abusing the memory!

[Mario]

InDesign and Ps are from the old Windows days, with less RAM and memory fragmentation being a problem/curse.
They are designed to allocate a large chunk of memory when they start and do their own memory management within that block. It's efficient, but also prevents Windows from swapping out the memory to disk when other applications need memory.

On the other had, memory is cheap these days. Even my laptop has 32 GB, and that's plenty. If you have older hardware is 16 GB or even 8 GB, things can become grim. And you get used to run Ps/Indesign or other software. Not and.
It also depends on what you do, of course. Dealing with many large TIFF files while making a composite uses a lot of RAM. Doing some retouching work on a RAW image, not so much. So far the 32GB in my computers always was enough.

What limits me the most these days is the VRAM (the memory on the graphic card).
It is the main factor on the size of AI models you can run efficiently locally. When the AI has to run partially on "normal" RAM instead of VRAM, things suddenly become 10-20 times slower. Unfortunately you cannot add more VRAM to graphic cards, and VRAM is also really expensive.

[Jingo]

InDesign and Ps are from the old Windows days, with less RAM and memory fragmentation being a problem/curse.
They are designed to allocate a large chunk of memory when they start and do their own memory management within that block. It's efficient, but also prevents Windows from swapping out the memory to disk when other applications need memory.

Agree.. and since I have 32GB of memory - Indesign can (and should) use it while I'm working on a document. The problem is - when I close the document(s), Indesign retains most of the memory until the program is shut down.. THAT is bad (or as you said.. OLD) programming!

[Mario]

It's not really OLD programming, It's a decision to allocate memory in a non-cooperative mode to optimize performance. It makes sense, for their purpose. I guess they are afraid to not get their memory back from Windows once they release it, so they keep it, even if no document is loaded. Design decision. Although I guess users starting InDesign and letting it idle without loading an actual document is pretty rare

Affinity Designer uses ~360 MB on my machine when no document is loaded...

[Jingo]

Although I guess users starting InDesign and letting it idle without loading an actual document is pretty rare

I do have other documents loaded and in use (I use Indesign all day long) - I just wish the software re-allocated used memory back to the system when I close a document. I don't mind it starting out with say 16GB loaded even with a small document open.. but if I open 3 huge documents and then close them, the software should release the extra memory it took to open them.   

[Mario]

Agreed. As I wrote, other vendors do it differently. Designer only allocates what it needs and releases memory when you close the document. InDesign and Photoshop are very old code bases. IMatch, too   But I rejuvenate it constantly.