System Performance Issues

[pgrondin]

I decided to test Daminion on a copy of my photos from a recent trip. In total, the family probably took about 20,000 photos (NEF, CR2, JPG). The directories typically have 150 photos. The largest directory so far has been 750 photos. The largest directory yet to go has 2000 photos.

 

My computer is quite recent, with AMD 3.2GHz Core-6 processor, 8 GB RAM, 2TB 7200 RPM Drives etc.

 

When tagging photos, I am regularly applying tags to a selection of 20 to 100 photos. For each directory, I tag all photos with Country/State/City tags. I will then typically select a group of photos and apply a tag or two; then select a second group, and apply a tag or two, etc. As there is no progress indication, with the file updating occurring "In the background", I apply several sets of tags as fast as I can identify, and select photos.

 

There are several problems:

 

1 ) Enforced Coffee Breaks

The program quite often stops responding for periods ranging up to 15 minutes while it saves data to files. (Nikon .NEF files of about 10 MB each). This is an annoying loss of productivity.

 

I would suggest that the "Background" updating be lowered in priority so that it does not interfere with operator use. The problem may also relate to the size of the pending operation queue.

 

A second possibility would be to have an option to just update the catalogue, and defer writing to file till a "Commit" command, or till the program is "Idle". The "Commit" option may have the advantage that all tags for a photo would be applied at once, rather than the current queue where I may add or change tags for a specific photo several times. I typically apply Place tags to all photos in the directory, then apply tag1 to 30 photos, tag2 to 20 photos, tag3 to 50 photos etc. often updating the Place tags for a specific Location.

 

2 ) Error in pending operation queue

On several occasions, the Properties window blanks out with just a message that says something to the effect that "No photos are selected", even though I have several photos selected.

 

In at least one of these cases, I had specified tags (Call them "Tag-set 1") to be applied to one selection of photos. I selected a second set of photos, got the "No files selected" message, but the program queue of pending operations appears to have been corrupted since it applied "Tag-set 1" to every subsequent sets of selected photos until I discovered the error, shut down, restarted. I have not had a recurrence of the tag mis-assignment. I know, phantom errors are hard to fix.

[franky68]

Hello PG,

 

this topic has already been brought up before and I absolutely second what you said. By all means it should be possible to disable the automatic sync-process.

 

For most users automatic syncing is the most simple solution and they don't have to remember starting the sync later on, so that's fine. However for users like us this is a waste of time and also dangerous:

 

1. The metadata already gets synced before all keywords are set so if you're going to add more in a second run each file has to be touched again.

2. Since this increases the number of write access to each image of course the risk of damaging the file is potentially higher too.

3. Finally since we can not control at what time the sync is done this can seriously slow down our workflow when its done while we still want to work.

4. Not everyone wants/needs the metadata to be synced into the actual image files. Those users might prefer no syncing at all so their metadata is not accidently given away and they don't risk dataloss by writing to their image files.

 

So please:

a. Add an "out of sync" flag to the database

b. Add an option so syncing is done i. immediately (like it is now) or ii. manually triggered (with a reminder box so the sync can be started when the application gets terminated)

[Murat]

Guys, thanks for the suggestions! We are at Daminion team are totally agree that the Automatic Syncing feature should be improved.

 

I hope we'll include to the upcoming build an option to 1. Show the background process, 2. Ability to Pause/Start the background thread.

 

Below is the prototype:

 

[pgrondin]

At least at first glance, the prototype appears to do everything I need it to do.

[kingsfan]

So, will the UI as described in the prototype allow the user to manually sync the entire set of pots where the metadata was touched, without multiple round trips and thus mutliple write operations?

 

Thanks for the clarification.

[Murat]

So, will the UI as described in the prototype allow the user to manually sync the entire set of pots where the metadata was touched, without multiple round trips and thus mutliple write operations?

 

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Yes. Daminion will track all the assignments in a file level. So even if you'll assign tags to a file multiple times, the syncing process (after pressing the Start button) will be launched just once per file.

[franky68]

But will it be also possible to disable the automatic syncing and (if desired) start the sync manually by issuing a command?

 

Also what happens when syncing is disabled/paused/stopped and Daminion is terminated or crashes before the sync is finished?

[Murat]

But will it be also possible to disable the automatic syncing and (if desired) start the sync manually by issuing a command?

 

Yes.

 

 

Also what happens when syncing is disabled/paused/stopped and Daminion is terminated or crashes before the sync is finished?

 

It will works even if the program will be terminated or crashed. The queue is stored in the database (catalog), and the item information will be removed from there only after a successful syncing.