Question D800 files grinding LR down to a halt

godsakes

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Just thought I'd pick some brains

I've got a i5 3.1ghz (sandybridge), 8gb ram, SSD (for OS & programs) and regular HDD (for image files etc)

But when previewing files in lightroom 5.3 (during import) the D800 files grind my PC to a halt - it's basically becomes unworkable to manually preview and pick my files to import. Instead my workaround is to just import my entire memory card onto the (regular) HDD and when go over the images marking which ones to keep and deleting the rest (lightroom works fine previewing images from HDD).

Has anyone else come across this problem? and is there any other workarounds? I assume it's a RAM issue but my motherboard only allows up to 8gb? or is it the card reader that's the bottleneck?
 
Why not enabling Resource monitor to be sure?

In Win7 - CRTL + ALT + DEL > Performance > resource monitor
 
defo ram - everytime I jump between images (even if it's back to a previously seen image bizarrely) about 0.2gb of extra ram gets eaten up
 
D800 files or not you shouldn't have problems with 8GB of RAM. I presume you have 64bit Windows and use 64bit version of LR?
 
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Possible memory leak then. Does it only happen with D800 files, have you tried anything else?
 
You mentioned LR 5.3, why are you not updating it? The latest version is

YLoYs5Y.jpg
 
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If Lightroom is using more than 8GB of ram something has gone quite wrong, I assume it's leaking memory as someone said above as I'm on 8GB and even allowing for the newer operating systems paging as much memory as possible I've never seen it go into the virtual memory even when doing simultaneous video encodes.

John
 
Are you using a USB 3.0 card reader?
 
I can't recall the exact settings but there are quite a few tweaks you can make to LR and PS to help it in these situations

Something to do with the amount of actual ram vs virtual ram with the theory that the slower virtual ram is the issue and hard min/maxing the actual ram sorts this out
 
I have days where LR runs nice and fast, and others when it's as slow as a slow thing. When folk are talking about memory leak, what exactly do you mean? Where does it 'leak' to and how do you stop it from 'leaking'? I've not found PTFE tape very useful o_O:p
 
I have days where LR runs nice and fast, and others when it's as slow as a slow thing. When folk are talking about memory leak, what exactly do you mean? Where does it 'leak' to and how do you stop it from 'leaking'? I've not found PTFE tape very useful o_O:p

Look for a puddle under your computer. Get some plumbers mate.
 
@snerkler A memory leak is a bug where the program tells the operating system it needs a chunk of memory but fails to tell the operating system when it's finished with it; next operation the program asks for more memory, the operating system allocates more memory, which the program fails to return when it's done... At some point the operating system runs out of "real" RAM and starts paging memory on and off disk which causes dramatic performance problems.
It can be very awkward to find this kind of bug but it really, really shouldn't make it out of testing - but as software moves from annual updates to incremental releases it's the kind of problem that can get through.
As a user you can't solve the problem, you can only restart the software and/or the system to clear the RAM.
 
@snerkler A memory leak is a bug where the program tells the operating system it needs a chunk of memory but fails to tell the operating system when it's finished with it; next operation the program asks for more memory, the operating system allocates more memory, which the program fails to return when it's done... At some point the operating system runs out of "real" RAM and starts paging memory on and off disk which causes dramatic performance problems.
It can be very awkward to find this kind of bug but it really, really shouldn't make it out of testing - but as software moves from annual updates to incremental releases it's the kind of problem that can get through.
As a user you can't solve the problem, you can only restart the software and/or the system to clear the RAM.
Thanks :smashin: LR has been plagued with bugs ever since LR5.
 
I'd check the camera raw cache settings and ensure it's not set to 1gb (find it in the preferences under file handling). If it is set to 1gb then Lightroom crawls along.
 
I'd check the camera raw cache settings and ensure it's not set to 1gb (find it in the preferences under file handling). If it is set to 1gb then Lightroom crawls along.
Aha, mine's set to 1GB, what should I set it to?
 
Does the cache clear itself then when you close down LR or something as that would take up my whole hard drive if it didn't :laugh:
 
I was messing with you.
I did wonder :rolleyes: :p

But on a serious note, is it worth clearing the cache now and again to speed it up, or does it clear itself?
 
Aha, mine's set to 1GB, what should I set it to?

I set mine to 50gb but I do have a lot of RAW files, so went for what Adobe recommended somebody try. So try 20gb and see how it goes. You can adjust it until you balance speed of LR with Hard drive space.


The era of the petabyte is looming on the distant horizon. And on the day of the petabyte the 1tb cache shall become a feasible reality.
 
I set mine to 50gb but I do have a lot of RAW files, so went for what Adobe recommended somebody try. So try 20gb and see how it goes. You can adjust it until you balance speed of LR with Hard drive space.
Currently I have 39GB working RAW files, and several hundred GB of RAW files on external drives. I guess that I should up mine to 40GB then.

As I don't really understand how these things work, does cache just fill up to the max and then delete old cache and replace with new when working with new files and so will never drop below say 40GB in my case? Is it therefore worth periodically deleting the cache to keep it running fast, say every time I off load the RAW files I've done with onto my external drives? If so where do I find the LR cache?
 
Currently I have 39GB working RAW files, and several hundred GB of RAW files on external drives. I guess that I should up mine to 40GB then.

As I don't really understand how these things work, does cache just fill up to the max and then delete old cache and replace with new when working with new files and so will never drop below say 40GB in my case? Is it therefore worth periodically deleting the cache to keep it running fast, say every time I off load the RAW files I've done with onto my external drives? If so where do I find the LR cache?

This explains it -
Increase the Camera Raw cache size
Every time you view or edit raw images in the Develop module, Lightroom generates up-to-date, high-quality previews. It uses the original image data as its foundation, and then updates the preview for any processing or adjustments that have been applied. The process is a little faster if the original image data is in the Camera Raw cache. Lightroom checks the cache for the original image data and can skip early stage processing if the image data is cached.

By default, Lightroom sets the Camera Raw cache to 1 GB. If you increase the cache size, it can store more image data, which in turn speeds the generation of previews of those images. Some Lightroom users find that increasing the Camera Raw cache to 20 GB or more can dramatically speed performance in the Develop module. To increase the Camera Raw cache size, do the following:

  1. Choose Lightroom > Preferences (Mac OS) or Edit > Preferences (Windows).

  2. Click the File Handling tab.

  3. In the Camera Raw Cache Settings area, experiment with a Maximum Size of 10.0 GB or more.
    How to improve and speed up Photoshop Lightroom performance
 

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