Lightroom database performance

I've been using Lightroom for a few weeks now and generally find it very convenient. Performance is OK in the 'Development' module. Yet when I add or change keywords to an an image, the program is busy for several minutes (yes, even when I add only _one_ keyword to _one_ single image).



On another forum someone suggested that there must be something wrong with the database, so I started one from scratch again. Still the same problem.



Does anyone have an idea what could be wrong here ? I'm running Windows XP SP2 on a 1.8 GHz Pentium with 1 GB of RAM.



Many thanks in advance



Carsten
Lightroom database performance
... and how many keywords do you have defined in the database? If it's thousands, then others using that many have also complained of slow keyword editing. If you only have a dozen or two, then that's another matter - I don't recall anyone compaining about slowness under those conditions.



- Pierre
Lightroom database performance
Mac OS X 10.4, Dual 1.8GHz G4, 1.5GB RAM



When I moved from iPhoto to Lightroom I was stupid and did not investigate maintaining my keywords. So, I had to re-enter keywords for about 4000 images (not a very large library, I know).



Lr was a bit poky after a few days of this, and memory use really spiked. I didn't see one-minute stalls, but the UI did hang noticeably at some points. The problem (as far as I can determine by educated guesses and judicious use of the dev tools on my Mac) is that the keyword panel appears to be responding to multiple events, which means that the UI thread will sometimes be locked as the view is updated. This does not take into consideration any overhead required to lock and update rows in the database, which I'm sure is a factor.



This stuff can be hard to get right, but it is fixable.



I had better luck by making multiple passes across chunks of my library with the keyword stamper. Lr was still a busy app while doing this, though.

Pierre,



I just counted: 1108 keywords, not a whole lot IMHO.



Carsten

Carsten-



How many images? About how many keywords per image? Is it possible that LR is trying to do house cleaning- updating metadata at the same time?

John,



currently I have about 16,000 images in the library.



The strange thing is that I have another Lightroom installation on my notebook computer, which has a processor of similar power as my desktop machine but definitely slower harddrives. Changing keywords here is a matter of seconds (sometimes it takes 4 or 5 seconds, mostly it's faster). This library contins about 7,000 images. So the performance difference between the two machines for the operation of entering a single keywords is a factor of about 50-100...frankly said I have no idea what could cause this. I have configured my Norton Antivirus software on both machines not to check the Lightroom database files.



Carsten

Carsten-



Yes, it is very odd that this should be so, and I am afraid I have no idea where to go from here, other than perhaps running remove unused keywords? I am now on a brand new computer that has nothing installed except Safari, so I can't check my LR, and I am about to partition this one and reinstall everything. I don't think there's a separate file for the keywords, but if there is, opening it in a text editor would be worthwhile.



John

Carsten

Under Preferences%26gt;File managment Do you have Automatically write changes into XMP checked?

Tim,



of course I tried switching off the automatic writing of XMP data; didn't make a noticeable difference. In fact it shouldn't really take long to write a single keyword to a single image file in the first place.



Carsten

It finally turned out that I had to include the Lightroom files not only in the automatic scanning exclusion list in Norton Antivirus, but also from another list buried in the menus below 'threat categories'... Made a HUGE difference in performance.



Many thanks to everybody for their suggestions.



Carsten

Carsten-



A couple of folks reported that running Purge unused keywords had a good effect.



Not being a Norton user since Mac os 8.x, could you mention what list that might be (unless it'd be obvious to any Norton AV user.)

John,



it's under 'Options' -%26gt; 'Threat Categories' -%26gt; 'Exclusions'



Carsten

Some people have reported significant performance improvement after compacting the database. See http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc39c07/0.



If it helps, please post and tell us.

Hi,



I'm glad that you've solved the problem. I myself have just over 1000 keywords and am also finding that keywording is very slow, in the order of 15 seconds to add a keyword.



However I'm on a Mac, and I'm not running an antivirus, so that isn't the cause for me.



Tim

Tim,



I'm down to about six to eight seconds for adding a keyword...before I solved the Antivirus problem it took about five _minutes_ !!!



Carsten

Carsten, Tim, Jerry-



Could you try ''Purge unused keywords'' at the bottom of the Metadata menu drop down and see if that speeds things up in this area? Please post back yea and nay observations.

John,



didn't make a lot of difference on my system, but then, I didn't have many unused keywords in the first place.



Carsten

Thanks. I am hoping that the Purge command rebuilds the internal list, hence making it faster, whether or not there are many apparent unused slots... but it's only a guess.

Keywords are critical to any photographer managing his library.



If it takes any percept-able amount of time to add a single keyword, that's unacceptable. This is my biggest problem with LR.



We have around 25k images, and we just started building our keyword library (%26lt;30 total). it takes 20 seconds to add one keyword. In my opinion, this is bogus. With today's hardware, adobe should be able to write a 6 character string to a property on a file in less than 20 seconds.



I understand the issue with keywords and related keywords from a database perspective. I'm not an expert. But I've written code to manage keywords.



This product is billed as a workflow enhancer. Adding keywords to a photo is a key aspect of that workflow.



Adobe MUST fix this problem !



The problem is LR is trying to do the whole process at once, taking up all the cpu cycles for stuff that doesn't make sense in the workflow



My suggestion:



- write the info to the files as fast as possible.

- use a background process at a lower priority to update the database in the order it would be most useful.

1. basic filtering off the GUI

2. advanced search filters

- optimize the database last in a way background process.



Current operation is totally unacceptable. I am going to get my money back for my product...then watch the forums for an update on this issue....

Matt, first off, we don't know what the core problem is here, so it's hard to really say that a specific fix is in order. But if we were going to recommend a fix, there is NO WAY from a transactional perspective that files should be updated ahead of the database. The database is the master storage of all information in LR, and so must be updated before any files are updated.



Note that updating files ONLY occurs if you have configured LR to do so via the preferences.