Performance Issue - iView Pro 3/Portfolio 8/Bridge/Lightroom

[chrisgreen]

i have spent the past couple of days working with a demo version of iview pro 3.0.2. so far, i like many features that i don't find in portfolio 8, which has until recently been my primary dam software. the one thing that i have not yet learned how to deal with in iview is what seems to me to be the inordinately slow performance characterisics compared to portfolio, bridge, and lightroom.

for example, i do a lot of editing of ratings with a filter on. i'll pull up a screen of images, assign them all 5 stars, and then knock images down to 4 or less stars. i have the program set to remove anything less than 5 stars from the field of view. pretty standard i would think. it seems in iview that i end up waiting for several long seconds for a rating change to be applied, and for the image to be removed from the field - all the while waiting for the program to allow me to move on. is this because the program is writing to the rating metadata field before it completes the action?

i have successfully used the same type of editing process in bridge and lightroom, and a version of it in portfolio. i see bridge writing metadata down at the bottom of the screen after i make a change, but i can keep moving along making edits without waiting while the embedding appears to occur in the background. lightroom is very snappy with editing, i suppose that since it isn't writing metatdata to the file (i have experimented with having it write to xmp files, and that doesn't seem to slow me down), that should not be a surprise.

with portfolio, i know that the metadata doesn't get embedded until you tell the program to do it. it can take a fair bit of time to embed the metadata, but at least i make time for it, and i can go check email. i am wondering whether the slow performance of iview that i am experiencing is directly tied to the way it writes metadata.

i want to like iview for some of it's nice features, but i am wondering whether it is going to slow me down. i am not a big fan of bridge, because it seems to be an underdeveloped interface for editing (primarily in the area of working with images in multiple folders), it's kind of ugly, and it seems that the future is lightroom. lightroom seems pretty wonderful, but it's not mature, and who knows when solid dam principles will be fully implemented. portfolio doesn't let me do things the way i want to sometimes, but i usually figure out how to get it done, and it doesn't slow me down. still, i feel that the direction of portfolio may not be promising, and other programs, like iview might provide a better way for what i do. btw, i haven't used aperture, and i don't have the $500 to pony up for a go.
 
anybody feel like pitching in on this?

thank you, cg
 

[peterkrogh]

Chris,
Are you setting it to only display the 5 Star by clicking on the 5 Star designation in the Rating area of Catalog Fields (in the Organize panel)?  I just tried this in my catalog with 32,400 images, and it is nearly instantaneous.

How are you filtering out the ones you remove? 
Peter

[chrisgreen]

yes, i am selecting that way... here's the details...

i have 9500 total images in this catalog. i have 208 images with 5 stars. i go to the Catalog Fields pane and select the 5 star images in the Rating pane. now i have 208 images displayed as thumbnails. i change the rating of one of the images to 4 stars by clicking on the rating stars underneath the thumbnail, and the star rating changes to 4 immediately, but the image remains in place for a full 10 seconds before it is removed. during that 10 seconds the cursor changes briefly to a spinning beachball, and the program is unresponsive.

i am running a demo of iView Pro 3.0.2 on an iMac G5 (pre-intel 1.8 Ghz, 1 gig ram, 10.4.5).

thank you for helping!

cg

[peterkrogh]

Chris,
I was trying that on 3.0.1, running on 10.3.9.  I just tried it on 10.4.5 and it seemed a little slower (even though the computer was faster). Do you have "Union of terms in Repeating Fields" checked in the Catalog Fields flyout? THis seems to slow down these actions, and removing that speeds it up.
Peter

[chrisgreen]

i just deselected both union of field hierarchies and union of terms in repeating fields. no change. response is impossibly slow. 10 seconds.

i hope i am doing something wrong, but i am wondering...

a) isn't 3.0.2 the new universal binary update? is it maybe not working properly?

b) is the 3.0.2 demo not functioning as well as a licensed copy?

if this program worked properly, i think it would be wonderful. as is, it is unusable.

thank you, cg

[chrisgreen]

i have made a discovery that i should report. i have been using iview in the 'Organize' mode while experiencing the above described slow performance. i just tried the same method in the 'Info' mode, and performance is near instantaneous. this is what i was looking for. i don't fully understand it, but i think this makes the program work properly.

cg

[chrisgreen]

here is a further update. the program performs poorly in Organize mode. any action in that mode is too slow for the program to be very useful. it's responsiveness in Info mode is ok.