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[Qythyx]

I recently got a new digital camera, my first DSLR, a Olympus E-510. I've started saving my pictures (initially) in their RAW form (.ORF), which I'm happy to say that MC supports out of the box (woohoo and kudos!). I've also noticed that when viewing these images in MC, if I try to open one it takes quite a while (~12 seconds) to display it, while which 1 core of my CPU is maxed out. Are these files really that difficult to decode/display? If so, I guess I can live with that, after all the thumbnails are pregenerated and help a lot for browsing.

But, I've also noticed that if I just move my mouse and hover over any of these images my CPU goes to 50% (1 core at 100%) for a some seconds, as if I'm opening the file. I guess this is MC trying to create the popup large preview of the image. Interestingly, for these images the popup almost never actually appears. So...if these CPU during hover is related to the popup, is there any reason MC can't just use the larges size pre-generated thumbnail instead?

[DarkPenguin]

I dunno but you could turn on the raw image cache which would allow you to save pre generated jpegs of your raw files.

Oh, and RAW files are generally brutal on your system.

BTW, what lens did you get with the e-510?  I want the 12-60 but I do not want to switch to Oly.

[JimH]

Thanks.  The raw files are very big and so the time is probably disk access.  Are the files on a local drive?  A network or USB drive could be much slower.

[DarkPenguin]

Even on my new PC it takes a while to open my Xti files.  They are also 10MP images.  Lots of things happening.

Check the playback options.  You can specify lower quality decodes.  This is usually fine for viewing and cataloging and tend to greatly increase the decode speed.

[Qythyx]

In order:

They're on the network, but looking at Taskmanager's network tab I see that downloading this is quite quick, also that wouldn't explain the extended CPU spike.

I got the 14-42mm lens along with a 40-150. I'm also thinking of other lenses, but since this is my first non-point-an-shoot, I want to play with it for a while before deciding what's next.

I'll try saving the RAW + JPEG format and see if that helps.


Thnaks to all.

[JimH]

CPU useage could also be a virus checker.

[DarkPenguin]

The RAW file being converted will eat CPU big time.

Have you tried changing the settings under Options->Playback->Images?  The "RAW decode quality" setting would impact decode speed.  And there is also the "RAW Cache: With Files (as JPEG)" option if you want to lose some disk space to gain speed in the future.

[DarkPenguin]

The RAW file you sent me takes ~5-7s to display on this machine when the RAW image decode quality is set to Default.  Highest is about the same speed.  If set to fastest it looks to be closer to 2s.  I think you might want to play with that setting.

[Qythyx]

Thanks for the advice. I'll take a look. I did turn on RAW caching and that definitely speeds it up for successive views. Is there anyway to pre-generate these JPEGS?

[DarkPenguin]

Load em up in playing now and leave the room.

[benn600]

I'm getting ~7 seconds for my 8mp Sony prosumer RAW files over the network (100Mbit).

I don't usually shoot raw and have only a handful of images.

Data transfer (15MB) should take ~1.5 seconds.  So CPU is important.

[Qythyx]

The JPEG caching is working well for me now. I did find one bug/annoyance with this, though.

I was trying to do what DarkPenguin suggested to get them all cached. Wanting this to happen as quickly as possible I set the image view time to 2 seconds. I know that's too short for MC to actully load and procees the RAWs, but I assumed it would start the 2 seconds counting from once it actually showed the image. What happened instead is that it worked hard processing one image for about 15 seconds and then showed skipped about 7 or 8 items in the play list (7|8 * 2 = 15 seconds) and marked all the interim images as viewed once. This was annoying because I lost the ability to easily see which ones had been cached. To resolve this I changed the display time to 20 seconds, hoping that would be enough for all images.

Minor issue, but I might as well mention it.

Anyway, after doing precaching them all I'm happy now.

[benn600]

When I loaded my RAW files into MC, in the recently imported playlist they had thumbnails generated before I could even open it!  How are these thumbnails getting generated so quickly?

[DarkPenguin]

We pull the thumb from the raw file.  It doesn't require it be completely decoded.  Or maybe it does it at a lower resolution.  (Both were implemented.  Can't remember which method we are currently using.)

[benn600]

Possibly consider implementing a feature I see on many devices: quickly (and instantly) display the thumbnail full screen stretched and background load the image.

This would help over library server, too.  I usually settle for the small thumbnails because opening an image can take tens of seconds to download.  But a quick full screen, stretched thumbnail would be quick.  Make sure to have an efficient system for canceling downloads and immediately starting the next one if the user skips to the next image.

Also allow this feature to be disabled because it could be less useful on a fast, LAN connection.  Not really necessary there.

[skeeterfood]

Possibly consider implementing a feature I see on many devices: quickly (and instantly) display the thumbnail full screen stretched and background load the image.

This would work great with Nikon D70 NEFs (not sure about the other Nikons), since they include a full-size jpeg basic image in the RAW file.  Load that initially, then show the decoded NEF when it's done.  Heck, for display purposes the embedded jpeg basic image is usually good enough.  I used to use a program to copy the jpegs out as their own files for fast browsing, but until MC has stacks there was no way to tag the jpegs and the NEFs at the same time...

-John