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MetaData Plugin impact on LR Performance

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Author Topic: MetaData Plugin impact on LR Performance  (Read 780 times)
paulwasserman
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« on: April 08, 2011, 05:32:15 pm »

Before I install this, can you tell me what impact it has on LR performance with a large Database?  I'm at 80,000 images and growing.

Paul Wasserman
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areohbee
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« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2011, 05:39:18 am »

Very little drain on CPU. If you have auto-update enabled, then it checks every 1/3 second or so if an update is in order, but it only checks two tidbits of metadata, so its very fast - literally insignificant. If an update needs to be performed, then it will take a moment though. If auto-update is disabled, then no drain on CPU whatsoever. Or perhaps I should say, if you are in library mode then there is a tiny drain to fetch the exif metadata and display it in the library panel when you first switch to a photo (assuming exif metadata display is enabled in the tagset you are using). If you enabled all X-thousand items, it would be a noticeable drain, but most people only enable a few dozen, or less, which only needs a tiny slice of CPU. Anyway, I personally leave auto-update off, and just update exif-metadata manually after import, (or after a rare editing of raws in Nx2, since it modifies exif metadata). But some people really like the auto-update...

UPDATE 2011-10-15: I reworked auto-update not too long ago to be more efficient and handle errors better, I now leave it on all the time - whole catalog in background...

Summary:
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- Drain is normally insignificant, although if you enable hundreds or thousands of exif metadata items, the cpu drain may become significant in Library mode if you are switching between photos very rapidly.
- And in any module, if auto-update is enabled, it will take a moment to update the most selected photo when exif-metadata is out of date, although its done asynchronously, so I've never actually noticed any performance penalty.

Note: things that will make metadata out of date are:
- exif metadata has never been computed before, or
- the complement of fields enabled has changed since last update.

You could always make a copy of your catalog, then install ExifMeta, and try it out with the copy before committing.


UPDATE 2011-08-24: Option to check if selected photos need to be updated (and update them) has been re-introduced, and option to check/update entire catalog has been added as well. The check/update frequency is only 1 per second, so the drain is normally very low. There will be a potentially noticeable hit though if all or many of your photos need updating, in which case, consider doing a manual update to get it over with in one sweep, or turn off the idle-mode auto-updating if it doesn't agree with your sensibilities. Also, I've been running with all auto-checks enabled, and not having any problems, which is good news for many who like the auto-update feature, because the stuff I use regularly myself tends to work the best (and I normally don't do manual update anymore Wink).
« Last Edit: October 15, 2011, 06:29:11 pm by areohbee » Report Spam   Logged
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