slow Viewer performance

Joe Austin · August 19, 2014, 04:23:48 PM

Does anyone else experience very sluggish performance in the Viewer?

I open the Viewer, wait for the images to load. When I start to select, or dive zoom on images, the first couple of clicks usually work promptly, but then I start to see 2-3 second delays when just moving to new files in the filmstrip. It might also take 2 or 3 clicks to make the change. Same thing with dive zooming, sometimes it works quickly, but most of the time I have to click-hold 2 or 3 times before I get a zoomed image.

Also repainting the screen when returning to the Viewer window from the help page, or another window, is slow. 3-4 seconds where each image in the window is slowly repainted.

I have tried with, and with out, loading full scale images and get this either way. The files I have been viewing are 18mp .CR2 images (19-24mb)

My machine is an I7 3.0ghz with 6gb ram and the database on an WD Velociraptor , GTX660 video

What makes it seem really odd is that I can dive zoom in the Quick Viewer with little or no delay at all. In its current state the my Viewer is useless for checking sharpness. I can review and zoom images much faster by selecting them in the file window and dive zooming in the Quick View panel.

jch2103 · August 19, 2014, 06:13:28 PM

What are your Cache settings?

Mario · August 19, 2014, 07:08:30 PM

Log files?

Your cache Settings?

If you use on-demand cache, are all files already cached?

Joe Austin · August 19, 2014, 09:51:58 PM

Attached is an image of my cache settings and the log from a session that I ended after the Viewer required 3-4 attempts to change images, or dive zoom.

[attachment deleted by admin]

jelvers · August 21, 2014, 02:25:33 PM

Quote from: Joe Austin on August 19, 2014, 04:23:48 PM
Does anyone else experience very sluggish performance in the Viewer?
......................................
What makes it seem really odd is that I can dive zoom in the Quick Viewer with little or no delay at all. In its current state the my Viewer is useless for checking sharpness. I can review and zoom images much faster by selecting them in the file window and dive zooming in the Quick View panel.

This is indeed my experience as well. Even when I see the green dot it takes a while until I can see the photo in the viewer after clicking. Attached a screenshot of my cache settings.

No problems whatsoever with the quick viewer, though.

Regards, Juergen

[attachment deleted by admin]

Mario · August 21, 2014, 04:23:21 PM

When you use the Viewer in fit-to-window mode, and you left-click, it first loads the 100% cache image and displays it. Typical times for this are 0.5 seconds. While the image is already displayed, IMatch performs color management and sharpen in the background and swaps the images when this is done. Depending on the size of the images you work with, this can take between 1 and 5 seconds. Quick Viewer does the same.

Please attach log file in debug mode so I get some info. Without a log file I cannot even tell if the problem is the database or the viewer or the disk or it's just slow because there are too many things running in the background, or there is a memory frag. issue or...

Joe Austin · August 21, 2014, 05:37:34 PM

I attached a debug-log file above. Is that one inadequate?

meyersoft · August 22, 2014, 07:49:19 AM

Quote from: jelvers on August 21, 2014, 02:25:33 PM
Quote from: Joe Austin on August 19, 2014, 04:23:48 PM
Does anyone else experience very sluggish performance in the Viewer?
......................................
What makes it seem really odd is that I can dive zoom in the Quick Viewer with little or no delay at all. In its current state the my Viewer is useless for checking sharpness. I can review and zoom images much faster by selecting them in the file window and dive zooming in the Quick View panel.

This is indeed my experience as well. Even when I see the green dot it takes a while until I can see the photo in the viewer after clicking. Attached a screenshot of my cache settings.

No problems whatsoever with the quick viewer, though.

Regards, Juergen

The same here. Completely removing category formulas and setting Data Driven Categories to update on demand helped, but it is still somewhat slow.
I have mostly jpgs.

Mario · August 22, 2014, 08:49:46 AM

Quote from: Joe Austin on August 21, 2014, 05:37:34 PM
I attached a debug-log file above. Is that one inadequate?

The load times for the cache files are between 0.2 and 1.0 seconds, which looks good.
Please give me some steps to reproduce this here. And details: screen resolution, viewer mode (full-screen, window), image size and format etc. Your Viewer settings under Edit > Preferences > Application. Which panels you show in the Viewer. Everything is important.

Yesterday I processed a complete shoot with D4 NEF files, indexed them, culled them in the Viewer and produced outputs in the Batch Processor. We used dive zoom quite often we did not notice unusual slowness here. IMatch 5.1.14.

Joe Austin · August 22, 2014, 01:24:58 PM

Quote from: Mario on August 22, 2014, 08:49:46 AM
The load times for the cache files are between 0.2 and 1.0 seconds, which looks good.
Please give me some steps to reproduce this here. And details: screen resolution, viewer mode (full-screen, window), image size and format etc. Your Viewer settings under Edit > Preferences > Application. Which panels you show in the Viewer. Everything is important.

Yesterday I processed a complete shoot with D4 NEF files, indexed them, culled them in the Viewer and produced outputs in the Batch Processor. We used dive zoom quite often we did not notice unusual slowness here. IMatch 5.1.14.

Did some experimenting.... this seems to happen as a result of using "Display Option / Toggle Filename" in the Viewer. Other display options slow performance by a small amount, but 'Toggle Filename' makes any mouse click (selecting an image, right click, dive zooming) erratic. May work on the first click, but usually takes 2-4 clicks, and sometimes many more.

Steps to reproduce are simple: load a few images in the viewer with 'Display Option / Toggle Filename' enabled , start trying to select, dive zoom.

Screen resolution is 1680x1050
images are typically .CR2's with 4000x3000 dimensions
viewer settings attached

[attachment deleted by admin]

jelvers · August 29, 2014, 06:13:36 PM

Would like to share the following observation. By putting "Always load full-scale image" to "No" in the preferences for the viewer, the viewer works as expected: crisp and sharp and fast! Although the zooming in via pressing "z" is a tiny bit slower, at least for me this is the solution to the sharpening and also speed issue. So the viewer is now back in my working tool basket.

Hope this will work for others as well, who have had the same sharpening/speed issue.

Regards, Juergen

[attachment deleted by admin]

Mario · August 29, 2014, 07:31:32 PM

Quote from: jelvers on August 29, 2014, 06:13:36 PM
Would like to share the following observation. By putting "Always load full-scale image" to "No" in the preferences for the viewer, the viewer works as expected: crisp and sharp and fast! (...)

This is the default setting. If this is on, the Viewer is forced to load the 100% file all the time, even if the user is using the fit-to-window mode usually. This not only causes the load times per image to be 4 to 10 times slower, but the Viewer cannot cache as many files in advance, which slows down scrolling etc.