When browsing a lot of directories with plenty of pictures. After a while PL just suddenly hangs or slow down a lot. Often the only previews I got is the “Loading. Please wait” message. At other times, it flickers with previews before the message appears again. The only thing that has worked for me is to restart PL. Any remedy for this?
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Hi,
I had similar problem a few months ago. First, be sure that your graphics card driver is up-to-date. Then, check whether you are running a graphics card tweaker like Asus GPU Tweak which is particularly harmful.
Thank you for the answer.
I’m actually running Asus GPU tweak, but everything is at default, so I do not understand what issues that program should do. I have actually been running that for several years! Anyway, I will try to shut it down and check if it’s any help.
I’m also switching fro Game Ready to Studio drivers for the card. I will soon find out if this is helping…
The problem appeared with the most recent versions. You don’t need to change any parameter to see the problems appear. It can also affect other apps like the Nik Collection.
Just make sure that it doesn’t automatically starts upon system startup. I have uninstalled it. It’s useless anyway if you don’t play games.
I don’t have Asus GPU Tweak or anything like that, but also have found Photolab to be increasingly slow in the last couple of months.
I’m not sure what is causing it as I’ve not changed any hardware or system settings. I have updated my drivers and have updated to the latest version of Photolab.
It’s very frustrating.
Perhaps you are working in the one folder - to which you are continually adding more and more images (?)
Honestly no, I’m working on different folders and we’re not necessarily talking “hundreds” of photos in each either.
Even exporting is slowing down (measurably); I used to be able to export a shot in 7 seconds, then 12 seconds, and last night some shots took up to 20 seconds (!)
My editing and usage styles haven’t changed drastically… same NR being applied (DeepPRIME not XD).
I’m genuinely wondering what’s different.
@Fineus I had noticed that PL8 has been sluggish on my Ryzen 5900X with an RTX 3060, not after a given period of time but all the time.
Investigating another problem I have just reported to the forum (which turned out to be my mistake, so my confidence isn’t at its highest right now) I ran a test of PL8.0.0 on my Ryzen 5600G with an RTX 2060. The older machine is about half as powerful as the 5900X and the GPU is about 80%, so a substantially slower machine, with no NVME.
I found some images to do my test on the 5600G and was impressed with the speed so I found the same images on the 5900X and was disappointed with the speed of the “faster” machine.
So today I ran some tests initially using
System 1 (PL8.3.2, Ryzen 5900X, RTX3060, SATA SSD, 4k/5k NVME, HDD for images) and
System 3 (PL8.0.0, Ryzen 5600G, RTX2060, SATA SSD, HDD for images)
and then roped in
PL7 on my aged System 2 (PL7.12.0, i7-4790K, SATA SSD, slow NVME, HDD for Images).
Initial tests on a directory with PL7.8 edits and 581 images on the systems as they were.
System 1:- DB - Default location (SSD), cache on fast(ish) NVME = 1min. 3.188 secs to load!
System 3:- DB - Default location (SSD), cache on SSD = 52.203 seconds
System 2:- DB on SSD, cache on slow NVME, PL7.12.0 = 1min 1.736 seconds
Clearly PL8.3.2 on the very much faster 5900X is losing the race!
So deleted the database on System 1 and cleared the NVME cache files and reran the discovery test again and got 15.930 seconds!!!
I need to repeat the tests on the other systems just to see what if any improvements there may or may not be.
I cannot locate my cache on anything faster than the NVME fitted to that machine, except maybe a RAMDisk which would ensure that it was purged every time the machine was shut down!
Given there wasn’t that much data in either the database or the cache on System 1, the database was cleared yesterday for some other tests (by cleared I mean the name was changed so I can still return to those databases if necessary) I am not sure why the deletions should have made such a difference!?
I will repeat the tests on the other two system after deleting (databases and) caches and see what they can do.
All timings are done with a digital stopwatch so that I can start the stopwatch as I select the RAW images for discovery by DxPL.
Update 1:-
Clearing the database and cache on System 3, both on the C:\ drive, a partition of a SATA SSD, resulted in a time of 27.076 seconds to discover the 581 Borde Hill Gardens 22.7MB RAW images taken with my G9 camera. An improvement and more inline with the respective performance of the 5600G in comparison with the 5900X!
Clearing the database from C:\ (SATA SSD) and the cache from N:\ (slow NVME) resulted in a run time of 52.310 seconds with PL7.12.0.
The comparison of the times are now closer to the respective Passmarks of the system, i.e. a bit more representative of the hardware in use!?
PassMark Run 1 Run 2
Sys1 5900X(PL8.3.2) (39064, 3470) 63.188 15.930
Sys3 5600G(PL8.0.0) (19835, 3189) 52.202 27.076
Sys2 i7-4790K(PL7.12.0) ( 8069, 2466) 61.736 52.310
Update 2:-
But then I decided to discover another directory on System 1 and was disappointed with the very slow start of the discovery on that machine and repeated the test on the 5600G and got the following.
PassMark Run 1 Run 2 Run 3
Borde Hill(581) Bodiam(193)
Sys1 5900X(PL8.3.2) (39064, 3470) 63.188 15.930 41.154
Sys3 5600G(PL8.0.0) (19835, 3189) 52.202 27.076 11.347
Sys2 i7-4790K(PL7.12.0) ( 8069, 2466) 61.736 52.310 24.862
The only activity on the 5900X has been writing this post while DxPL sat idle on the Borde Hill directory!
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Hi Bhayt,
Sorry for the delay in replying and thanks for that experimentation and deep-dive! It’s interesting how the program functions (and) on different machines.
It looks like clearing the database/cache from time to time, and keeping the cache on the fastest possible drive on your system, is the best way to ensure the fastest experience possible on any given machine?
@Fineus I am worried about what I have been experiencing with PL8.3.1, while my HDDs are not particularly quick and this is where I store my images then am I seeing some issues getting the data off the drive?
I tested the NVME and that is 4K/5K as advertised for that Integral TLC NVME.
The database is currently on a SATA SSD, so way faster than an HDD but slower than the NVME.
BUT when I was testing, the initial pick up of images was s l o w and then speeded up but not always and that is what is worrying me, why the inconsistency given that all the images are from the same camera and I tend to apply the roughly the same edits, particularly to the group I chose for the tests?
I don’t like inconsistency, is it the hardware or software or …!
The fact that clearing the cache, which is on the NVME “seemed” to improve things is a bit weird to put it mildly.
I have an NVME due tomorrow which will go into the 5600G but currently its (5600G) cache is on a SATA SSD.
So I discovered “Borde Hill Gardens” just now and it was slow loading until image 40 when the discovery rate picked up and it took 71.204 seconds, worse than ever!
Copied the directory to the NVME, left the database and cache alone, the new directory won’t be in either and discovered the images and the process was finished in 25.223 seconds with no hesitation at any point.
Moved to another directory and then back and 6.645 to reload and create 581 Virtual copies!? Repeated the test and 5.760 seconds later I it has discovered 1743 images!!
I need a rest!
Just for the record these are the current ‘Preference’ settings and they haven’t changed during this run!
