All Images - The Pie Progress - What is C1 Doing?

[SFA]

David,

If you plan to use sessions anyway I think you have other workflow options open to you, with or without Lightroom as the search engine.

One option I have considered, since I don't see any personal need to put my shoots into single or even multiple catalogues for processing purposes, is to catalogue only jpg outputs. Small files but keyworded.

If I'm going to process 1000 new images I really do not need 100,000 old ones available at the same time. But for archive searches I can see the purpose of a catalogue - though only if I spend a lot of time working on the metadata and keywords of the older files.

It's tempting to do so ... in theory. But for a handful of uses a year I'm not sure I can justify the effort. It could result in quite a compact catalogue if I had a need to take it on the road.

Alternatively simply keep the Catalogue open. I leave sessions open for days at a time (weeks sometimes) when I am working with them, avoiding opening and closing unless a program or Windows update comes along and insists on restarting the system. My experiments with small catalogues from time to time seemed to be OK if I left the catalogue open as well - though perhaps a small catalogue is not a fully representative test.

HTH.


Grant

[David532]

David,

If you plan to use sessions anyway I think you have other workflow options open to you, with or without Lightroom as the search engine.

One option I have considered, since I don't see any personal need to put my shoots into single or even multiple catalogues for processing purposes, is to catalogue only jpg outputs. Small files but keyworded.

If I'm going to process 1000 new images I really do not need 100,000 old ones available at the same time. But for archive searches I can see the purpose of a catalogue - though only if I spend a lot of time working on the metadata and keywords of the older files.

It's tempting to do so ... in theory. But for a handful of uses a year I'm not sure I can justify the effort. It could result in quite a compact catalogue if I had a need to take it on the road.

Alternatively simply keep the Catalogue open. I leave sessions open for days at a time (weeks sometimes) when I am working with them, avoiding opening and closing unless a program or Windows update comes along and insists on restarting the system. My experiments with small catalogues from time to time seemed to be OK if I left the catalogue open as well - though perhaps a small catalogue is not a fully representative test.

HTH.


Grant

Hi Grant
I only got into catalogs because that's the way Lightroom works and that encouraged me to start keywording. So when I started using Capture One more and more and the catalog function started to mature that seemed the way to go. I have kept my complex folder structure so I have no trouble going to the set of pictures I took at say Prescott speed hill climb on lets say 29th June 2003 and it is then a matter of moments to find a particular car without the use of keywords. I have only keyworded 30% of my pictures so a purely session workflow in Capture One is a possibility

Dave

[easycass]

I have notice that during the 6 minutes of thumbnail creation (if that's what's going on) the keyword list in the Library Tool Tab populates immediately but selecting a keyword does not show the associated pictures till the orange disk action has got round to them which if they are at the end of your selected sort order could be a long time.

Looking at three areas of interest, 1) program start, 2) the thumbnails, and 3) program end: -

1) Program Start

When I start the program and All Images is selected, looking at the Resource Manager, I note the following activity:-

a) If an external drive of original images is attached, the program goes through and reads a small part of each image file on the external drive, taking several minutes. This seems to only happen if the program is started for the first time since the last system reboot, so for subsequent program starts, this doesn't happen. If no external drive is attached, this whole process does not occur.
b) The pie-progress counter runs for a few minutes. It can be that this pie counter runs even when a) above has ceased or not occurring, as in, when there is no disk read or write activity. So, the pie-progress counter appears to be a memory/cpu/virtual-memory based task, with the CPU around 50%, dropping to <5% once the pie has stopped.

2) Thumbnails

On my system, it appears that the thumbnails are not generated on import when the preview files for all raw/original files are generated. I note that the thumbnails are generated when an image is displayed in the thumbnail browser that hasn't been viewed in the thumbnail browser previously. When thumbnail generation occurs, I see the following activity: -

a) If an external drive of original images is attached, and thumbnails are generated, the thumbnails are generated from the raw/original files. If no external drive is attached, the thumbnails appear to be generated from the COP preview files in the cache.
b) The pie-progress counter runs for a few seconds, depending on how many images.

3) Program End
In my case, after closing down the program, which takes initially a few seconds to close the windows, and then I see the following activity: -

a) Database and other file access/read/write activity goes on in the background for at least one minute afterwards.

So, from the above, when the pie-progress counter is showing, there appears to be something going on in memory rather than on disk. So, it may not necessarily be associated with thumbnail creation, but may be some kind of data/metadata checking.

All just guesses, and of course doesn't change much

[SFA]

David,

If you plan to use sessions anyway I think you have other workflow options open to you, with or without Lightroom as the search engine.

One option I have considered, since I don't see any personal need to put my shoots into single or even multiple catalogues for processing purposes, is to catalogue only jpg outputs. Small files but keyworded.

If I'm going to process 1000 new images I really do not need 100,000 old ones available at the same time. But for archive searches I can see the purpose of a catalogue - though only if I spend a lot of time working on the metadata and keywords of the older files.

It's tempting to do so ... in theory. But for a handful of uses a year I'm not sure I can justify the effort. It could result in quite a compact catalogue if I had a need to take it on the road.

Alternatively simply keep the Catalogue open. I leave sessions open for days at a time (weeks sometimes) when I am working with them, avoiding opening and closing unless a program or Windows update comes along and insists on restarting the system. My experiments with small catalogues from time to time seemed to be OK if I left the catalogue open as well - though perhaps a small catalogue is not a fully representative test.

HTH.


Grant

Hi Grant
I only got into catalogs because that's the way Lightroom works and that encouraged me to start keywording. So when I started using Capture One more and more and the catalog function started to mature that seemed the way to go. I have kept my complex folder structure so I have no trouble going to the set of pictures I took at say Prescott speed hill climb on lets say 29th June 2003 and it is then a matter of moments to find a particular car without the use of keywords. I have only keyworded 30% of my pictures so a purely session workflow in Capture One is a possibility

Dave

Ah!

I got out of LR (after V1.4) because it forced the use of what seemed to be a closed catalogue (at the time) and my much preferred RAW converter and editor of choice was far more open - sort of like sessions but without a Session database file.

I suspect our subject material is quite similar.

VSCC meetings are relatively easy to keyword if you have the competitor number in shot and take a little time to create a hierarchical list from the entry list (plus any last minute modifications).

The rest can have some consistency event by event up to a point but it's difficult to guarantee continuity over a season. And of course when shooting circuit based events the competitors keep coming round ... or not. Both of which can be a challenge in their own way for KW efforts.

When I read the recent posts of a Soccer photographer I felt quite envious of the limited number of names and numbers that would have to be worked with during a match for KW purposes!


Grant

[easycass]

So, in answer to my own question, after further research, I noted that when, for some reason, C1 occasionally decides that it needs to recount EVERYTHING from scratch in the Filters Panel (as in keywords, places, dates, labels, etc, etc), the 'Pie Progress' CPU activity is directly tied to the time it took from the start of counting to when the counting within the panel was completed.

So, essentially, the Pie Progress counter appears to indicate some sort of database/metadata check or in some cases, rebuild. And the fact that it takes so long to do, needs to do it so often, and does it for no apparent reason, indicates further that the database is most certainly badly designed, arguably, not robust, and without a doubt, a big reason why the DAM creates usability issues for those that need to use the software to catalogue many images.

So, I will persevere for now, wait for a few more updates, wish for the best from PhaseOne, and I guess keep my eyes open for alternatives should the best not arrive...

Thank you for everyone's input...

[JuanS]

WE CAN NOT LET THIS THREAD DIE!!

I'm ready to blow my brains out. This performance is killing me. If they don't want to redesign the database, can they at least disable whatever C1 is doing in the backgroup. Stop loading whatever it is.

[easycass]

The trouble is, after playing around with v 12, things are not much better...

[IanL]

We can keep this thread alive all we want but this is user to user help forum. I don't think any of us can help or do anything about this. We all need to report our performance concerns to support.

[easycass]

We can keep this thread alive all we want but this is user to user help forum. I don't think any of us can help or do anything about this. We all need to report our performance concerns to support.

I would certainly agree with that. I have been reporting issues, with exact descriptions of behavior, since version 10 (one report more than 5 pages of issues I found, with full descriptions). So, now that version 12 is out, and I have seen some of the very same issues, I am losing hope.

I am sure the user posts here are monitored by PhaseOne, there is loads of direct evidence on the internet easily searched for, many people have sent the support people comments, and the developers can see for themselves, and yet, here we are, still not that much further on. I am sure there have been some small updates, some streamlining, but many issues both in DB stability and DAM features remain after many version updates.

I still think Capture One is a great bit of software, but I have about lost hope on DB/DAM improvements, and will be staying with version 11 until 'something' better comes along.

[David532]

We can keep this thread alive all we want but this is user to user help forum. I don't think any of us can help or do anything about this. We all need to report our performance concerns to support.

I would certainly agree with that. I have been reporting issues, with exact descriptions of behavior, since version 10 (one report more than 5 pages of issues I found, with full descriptions). So, now that version 12 is out, and I have seen some of the very same issues, I am losing hope.

I am sure the user posts here are monitored by PhaseOne, there is loads of direct evidence on the internet easily searched for, many people have sent the support people comments, and the developers can see for themselves, and yet, here we are, still not that much further on. I am sure there have been some small updates, some streamlining, but many issues both in DB stability and DAM features remain after many version updates.

I still think Capture One is a great bit of software, but I have about lost hope on DB/DAM improvements, and will be staying with version 11 until 'something' better comes along.

Totally agree, my view is that Phase should put the catalogue function out of its misery and concentrate on the session work flow.

With regret

Dave.