Thumbnails continually rebuilding

[ycardozo]

I got an update for ACR (CS6) today and installed it. Suddenly, EVERY time I open Bridge or return to it from another page, it starts thumbnailing my images from scratch. We're talking hundreds of images in this folder. This is new. It did not do this yesterday. What is going on and how do I fix it.  If I leave bridge (even if it's still open) and I go back to Bridge, it starts doing the thumbnail extractions all over again and THEN starts on the full size extractions all over again. The result is that all of Photoshop has slowed to a crawl. This is the second time in a month that an update has caused new problems that did not exist before. It's beyond frustrating.

that's cute. I just sat through 10 minutes of full size extractions counting down. it got to zero and STARTED AGAIN. Okay, guys, what's going on? I have 50 gb of images from Asia I need to process. I truly don't have time for this. And the thumbnail extractions just started over again.

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[Yammer]

This yesterday:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/unneccesary_bridge_thumbnail_and_preview_extra...

[Yammer]

ycardozo wrote:

A question for Yammer P and d Huez...are either of you on the cloud? If not, I wonder if that would make a difference. Yammer, when you say you are exporting the cache to folders, do you mean you are clicking on:  "tools/cache/build and export cache"

No, I'm not on the Cloud (spit).

It's not relevant to this discussion, but I have now ticked the 'Export cache to folders if possible' box in Cache preferences. I have been using Bridge for 6 years.

What this does is create a duplicate cache in the actual image folder. Normally, this has no use, and just consumes a lot of disk space. Bridge always uses its central cache. However, if there is nothing in the central cache for a particular folder, Bridge will copy the exported cache (if one exists) in preference to building one itself.

I have 500GB of free space on my photo RAID, so I thought "why not?" It's easy enough to remove, if I decide it's useless.

I purged both my Bridge and Camera Raw caches yesterday, after playing with ACR 8.1. I usually rebuild overnight. In the ACR forum, it was mentioned that a 10GB cache was rebuilt in 15 minutes, from exported folders, and I thought, "I'll have some of that."

[Hudechrome]

Ok, so the question is:

How (or maybe why) did the sidecar get generated in the first place? If you have these files to begin with, trashing them and reset Prefs to what to prevent them from generating again?

Generating side car files is a rather complex process, at least from understanding what is happening and why. It doesn't seem possible in Bridge, to avoid this from happening. LR has more options for handling metadata, but then, it's a DB and Bridge is a browser.

[Yammer]

BTW FYI: Even if you clear all of an image's settings and metadata in Bridge, the sidecar remains. I think this is a prcaution to avoid deleting accidentally something it shouldn't.

[AnnShelbourne]

The Sidecar holds your ACR edits but if you choose to use a Central DB instead, there is no need for the Sidecars.

If you have already created Sidecars, you could trash them but you would lose all of your existing ACR edits for those files; and would have to re-edit all of your RAW files.

If you have always used a Central DB, you won't have any Sidecars anyway.

[Hudechrome]

Some thoughts after observing in greater detail, what is happening when a cache is rebuilding.

First, I'm the person who said that, after upgrading ACR, I purged the cache and it took only 15 minutes to rebuild. That was true for looking at only a few files but definitely not true for the entire collection. In fact, they did not rebuild until after opening them at a later time. The files I looked at were small and I jumped to the conclusion that they all rebuilt. My bad!

Second, some of this sense of what is going on depends on how I have my setup. My screen looks like this. The film strip is vertical and shows but a few images. Now here is what happens when I open a file after purging the cache. The first few images in the series are immediately available. The cache is rebuilding as I look at the screen. If I scroll down really fast, I come upon a series of grayed out positions, but only for a moment. The thumbs show quickly. If I continue to randomly scroll this occurs, but they fill quickly.

What appears to be going on is that Bridge seems to know I want to open an image somewhere in the sequence and jumps to that position in the sequence. How do I know this? Because if I use the filmstrip mode with the strip at the bottom, the cache rebuilds sequentially. If I scroll that further to the right it immediately shows those, out of sequence.  So it appears that the files are being rebuilt quickly.

Third, I watched the metadata during the rebuild of a long sequence. Notice what I have as thumbnail metadata. Those lines don't show up completely filled in when the blank fills in. The last line to fill in in my system is the Date Created line. I can watch this happen if I switch to the Filmstrip mode. All the thumbs are visible but Bridge is filling in the Date Created line sequentially. I can conclude it's taking forever to rebuild the cache!

So depending on how I have configured Bridge, I either have a problem or I don't, in terms of what I see happening. In the Lawrence 2 mode, things happen quickly enough so I can work with minimum wait time (split seconds) as the cache rebuilds. If I use the filmstrip mode, only the first few frames show up and the rest of the line is blank while the cache starts the rebuild process. It is really apparent with a file size of several hundred images. But switch to Lawrence 2 and the process seems reasonable and seamless.

[Yammer]

CameraAnn wrote:

If you have always used a Central DB, you won't have any Sidecars anyway.

Of course, but if the DB goes belly-up, you've lost many hours of work, which is why I use sidecars, which are backed up with the images.

[ycardozo]

The trigger is the .xmp sidecar. It definitely happens with my Canon 7D and G11 and I think someone also reported the problem with a Sony camera and also using DNG, which isn't camera specific. I opened a test folder without the sidecars and the regeneration no longer happened. I am not sure how it works if you use the central database. What is the difference? Where is the information stored and does it make a difference with the image? Obviously, with thousands of images already edited, I can't delete all my sidecars and start over. But I could change my procedure going forward. I wish I understood the difference and the end result a bit better. Can you explain this?

As I see it, you open Bridge, go to preferences, then click edit, then camera raw preferences (not simply preferences) and the lst thing that comes up in 'general' gives you the option to 'save image settings in' and the choices are sidecar or camera raw database

[AnnShelbourne]

The Central DB won't go Belly-up and even if it did, you should already have a back-up in your regular System Back-up set and also in Time Machine if you have a Mac.

[Yammer]

My workspace has an Explorer-like window of thumbnails in the middle panel, and a preview top right.

I have noticed too that, if you visit an uncached folder, thumbnails are rebuilt giving the currently visible files a priority. If you drag the scroll bar down to another group of files, they are then given priority. If you click on a file, it takes priority (as does the image either side of it).

I now apply metadata on import to Raw images, but I didn't always do so. I have seen the repeat extractions bug for several years, but not on this scale, post-ACR7.2. Whatever is going wrong has been going wrong for a long time--maybe even CS4 or before, the new versions of ACR just exacerbate it.

I deal a lot with Collections. I always notice the repeat extractions a lot more with large collections of several hundred Raw images. Presumably the same applies to folders with similar numbers of images.

[Yammer]

CameraAnn wrote:

The Central DB won't go Belly-up and even if it did, you should already have a back-up in your regular System Back-up set and also in Time Machine if you have a Mac.

So what happens if your Mac bursts into flames or is stolen, and what happens when you buy a new Mac? How do you transfer the settings to a new machine?

[AnnShelbourne]

Your Central DB should be found in your Users Library:

~Library/Preferences/Adobe Camera Raw Database

If you don't think your regular back-up provides enough security, you can make copies of it manually from time to time onto an off-line HD

[Hudechrome]

I have one Collection of 115 images, so I opened it and it ran quickly. More to the point, if I can access the image I want simply by scrooling while rebuilding is going on, what is the beef?

[Yammer]

CameraAnn wrote:

Your Central DB should be found in your Users Library:

~Library/Preferences/Adobe Camera Raw Database

If you don't think your regular back-up provides enough security, you can make copies of it manually from time to time onto an off-line HD

And you can just copy that to a new Mac? Does that work?

[Yammer]

Hudechrome wrote:

what is the beef?

CPU levels shoot up and I can hear the fans speed up while the regeneration occurs. I can still use Bridge, but I can tell I'm not firing on all four cylinders. It was a lot worse a couple of months ago, when I was running on a Core2Duo. Fortunately, I am now running a beast of a PC. However, that doesn't mean I want Adobe to carry on over-utilising my shiny new PC.

[AnnShelbourne]

Absolutely it does! You can copy your DB anywhere.

I always keep a complete System back-up on an off-line HD which I think most people probably do.

[Yammer]

CameraAnn wrote:

Absolutely it does! You can copy your DB anywhere.

Sorry, I'm skeptical. Have you ever tried it?

[AnnShelbourne]

Yes.

And it worked perfectly when I started with a completely reformatted HD; installed OSX 10.8 from Scratch; Reinstalled major software; and then restored all of my previous settings, Prefs and also my Central DB.

No problems at all.

I also copied my DB from my previous Mac to this one when I bought it. Perfectly easy drag and drop.

[Hudechrome]

Ok, I don't have that particular problem. So now we are getting down to HW, configuration etc.

I did another run on a file with 300 images. I opened the Resource Monitor and the PC probe for CPU usage, temp and fan speeds.

Rest numbers are:

CPU Temp 40C

Fan 1640

CPU Usage 1%

Cache Rebuild:

CPU Temp 46C

Fan 1915 RPM

CPU usage, 50%, peaking at the beginning of the run briefly to 100% (less than 1 second).

All four cores running

I don't consider this to be particularly a burden.

[Hudechrome]

So why pick Central DB over side car? The choice is available on PC as well and I believe sidecar is default.

Message was edited by: Hudechrome

[AnnShelbourne]

Sidecar is the Default (which is what bit me when I had trashed Prefs on one occasion and didn't notice immediately that my Pref for DB instead of Sidecars had been changed.

I am inclined to use enormous Folders (over 7,000 images in a single one covering a particular expedition until I eventually get around to refining the whole lot down into smaller folders) so to have Thumbnails rebuilding themselves everytime that I access one of these larger folders would be intolerable.

[ycardozo]

A disturbing thought just came to mind. If I change my preferences from saving in a sidecar to the general database, what happens to all my previous .xmp sidecar files? Someone mentioned 'getting burned' but I now can't find the post. I have thousands upon thousands of images with sidecar files. If they were to suddenly disappear, it was be catastrophic. Or does the procedure simply change from that point on? ....

CameraAnn, you said:

Your Central DB should be found in your Users Library:

~Library/Preferences/Adobe Camera Raw Database

Can you give the entire tree? I gather you are on a mac and I wonder if this is different for a PC. What is the 'library' in and what comes before that? I have looked under program files and common files under every adobe folder I see and can't find 'library,' 'users library' or preferences.

If I sound paranoid/hesitant/whatever, it's because I have been burned in a very bad way by blithely changing things on my computer in the past.

[Yammer]

I googled and found this path (which doesn't exist on my computer, but then I don't use a central database):

C:\users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Database

[AnnShelbourne]

If you changed to use a Central DB now, all of your existing Sidecars would be retained anyway but any RAWs which you edit in ACR from this point onwards will not have a Sidecar.

On a Mac, we have HD/Users/your name/Library/Preferences/Adobe Camera Raw Database

I can't help you with Windows systems but I imagine that your Prefs are saved somewhere and you would find your Central DB (probably named "Adobe Camera Raw Database" among them.

[Yammer]

Hudechrome wrote:

I did another run on a file with 300 images. I opened the Resource Monitor and the PC probe for CPU usage, temp and fan speeds.

Rest numbers are:

CPU Temp 40C

Fan 1640

CPU Usage 1%

Cache Rebuild:

CPU Temp 46C

Fan 1915 RPM

CPU usage, 50%, peaking at the beginning of the run briefly to 100% (less than 1 second).

All four cores running

I have a collection of about 900 photos which triggers a regen of about 30 previews every time Bridge gets focus (e.g. if I switch to already opened Bridge from this browser). That's just running ACR 7.2. MY CPU goes up to about 50%, using all 8 virtual cores for 8 seconds. That's to do absolutely nothing on an i7-3770K overclocked at 4.5GHz.
You can imagine how annoying that would be on a Core2Duo with ACR 7.4, which seems to cause about 3–4 times more regenerations.