Select/rate images in sets, without eating laptop Bat

[Gert-Jan1]

What a Delight, my surface book 2 replaced my desktop without much of a performance penalty in C1.

I was hoping that I could use the laptop for off line selecting images in my sessions. It turns out that C1 hits the CPU heavy when an image is selected, it doesn't matter if it is shown in the browser or not.

selecting an image gets the CPU to 70% for 1-2 seconds. It looks like C1 is doing a lot of preprocessing even if you don't do any adjustments. if you return to the same image a minute later, it starts again, there is no caching.

In this situation battery life on this wonderful machine is maximum 3 hours when only selecting images in C1.
Mind you, there is no processing taking place.

I am willing to bet even that processing one image is less CPU intensive than 'touching' an image, even if you dont'do any editing.

Tests I've done:
GPU accelaration: no effect
Preview size: no effect
Are previews somehow regenerated? No
Run on different machine: no effect
C1-10 or 11, no difference

The only energy effecient way to select photo's in large sets is working in the lightbox and only hit the rating stars.

I understand that processing RAW files is heavy lifting but I can't understand all the 'Running all day on a laptop' stories. I bet they are plugged in more often than suggested.

I hope for some nice tips to be able to do some of the work offline without worries.

Thanks,

Gert-Jan Maas

[SFA]

I think you may find that it is trying to organise the active cache and preload images images anticipating a certain type of typical (linear selection by whatever the current sort criteria might be?) work flow.

Catalogues offer an "Offline" edit mode (some restrictions as I remember when reading about it but I don't use catalogues so I'm not sure.) That, having established which files it cannot see, applies edits to teh previews held n the Catalogue file rather than using the original (typically larger) file. I would image there would some energy savings in that.

I'm not aware of anything similar for sessions. You can set up "sets" in the viewer and jump by set but I don't recall whether that makes any difference to the CPU use. However I would image there might be significant gains to be investigated from screen brightness settings review as well as moving files in and out of memory.

It would be interesting to know if there is anything technique that can be used to reduce power consumption significantly although in my case that would not be a regular problem since I am plugged in most of the time.

My Mobile Workstation with a good quality but not 4k power sucking screen and 2 internal SSDs usually seems to give between 2 and 3 hours on its quite large battery capacity with C1 active and a couple of other apps running mostly in the background. That would probably change quite a bit if I set the power settings to Max Run time. (For example.)

Whether this helps you I don't know. But I would be interested to hear about whatever you discover.


Grant

[C-M-B]

CaptureOne like many other RAW editors does not really look at your battery needs but it tries to perform as fast as possible, meaning it will use the ressources it has.

Laptop batteries are really stressed with current hardware, 6core CPUs and modern GPUs suck them dry in a few hours and with a bright high-res display it will take even less time.

So what you can do is use apps like Throttlestop to undervolt your CPU and limit the Turbo, which means the CPU will use less power in general but it will also reduce its max clock speed. You can also lower your display brightness, which (depending on how bright it was before) will also give you a noticeable boost in battery life.
You could also look into undervolting your GPU but I've never done that in a laptop.0

I don't think that there are any CaptureOne specific settings that will improve battery life, turning off hardware acceleration is a matter of debate as it will take longer to render stuff and use more CPU and therefore won't really lower battery use.

[Gert-Jan1]

I'm trying right now to use the offline mode with catalogs.

Also a nice way to get used to the catalog system.

Update will follow

[SFA]

As a matter of interest what RAW file sizes are you working with?

As I mostly use older cameras the file sizes are reasonable - small by current standards.

But today I read a report on some speed tests for file writing and reading with one of the recently introduced mainstream manufacturer cameras and I was especially struck by the file sizes involved as well as the cost of the memory cards required to be able to make sensible use of any high fps the camera offered.

When the system is processing the temporary files being shuffled around in memory must also be proportionately large and that likely means a lot of file fragments to be read, combined, modified and written in a fairly constant flow. Plenty to keep the processing devices busy.

I have never had a portable device that would realistically deliver, in its day and working with the files and technology available in that time, a real working time of more than about 2 hours. I could get about 3.5 hours from one machine that offered an option for two batteries.

For what it is worth I would not particularly recommend the use of catalogues - I much prefer the sessions concept.

However if you find the off-line editing does offer you some benefits for your particular needs then it may be worth using a catalog but keep it small - effectively using a catalog in the way one would use a session - for use on the road with a portable device.


HTH.


Grant

[Gert-Jan1]

I compared the cpu load in browsing offline and online with the use of a catalogue.

It looks like browsing offline saves about 50% in CPU load.
Online it maxxes out the cpu completely, offline avg 50%.
GPU load not much of a difference.

I use Canon 5d II and III, no excessively large files.