How to make thumbnails load faster / why is digiKam hidding my HDD for thumbnails?

[digikam at sritch.com]

Sorry but English is not my first nor second language...

I was trying to say that: 

configure > views > preview > preview shows embedded 

will speed up the scrolling.

The other thing that makes it quick (for me) is:

1. The digikamrc in my .config (local nvme)
2. The digikam_systemrc in my .config (local nvme)
and
3. The digikam4.db on my local nvme
4. The recognition.db on my local nvme
5. The similarity.db on my local nvme
6. The thumbnails-digikam.db on my local nvme
7. The images on an external USB drive

Thanks

Syv

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:58:51 +0100
Thomas <sdktda at gmail.com> wrote:

> So what are you saying here?
> 
> That enabling "configure > views > preview > preview shows
> embedded" will cause thumbnails to become slow?
> 
> Or that enabling "configure > views > preview > preview shows
> embedded" will fix the issue with slow thumbnails?
> 
> I seem to have embedded preview enabled, which is hinted at being
> faster. However, it is not really fast....
> 
> I was of the impression that this setting was not about thumbnails
> but rather the image shown when doubleclicking an image.
> 
> I am hesitant to switch this setting as I fear this will cause me
> to have to rebuild all my thumbnails. This will takes several days
> (probably several weeks) as I have several hundred thousand images.
> 
> This is my current setting:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2024-12-19 15.47, digikam at sritch.com wrote:
> > I had the very same problem, I even considered switching to
> > xnviewmp which is almost as fast as photo mechanic.
> >
> > Then I discovered:
> >
> > configure > views > preview > preview shows embedded ON
> >
> > and NOT show the full image
> >
> > and now it's quite fast. My laptop does not have a discrete video
> > card, so I can't use opencl and for me now DK is fast enough.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Syv
> >
> > On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 08:32:03 +0100
> > Maik Qualmann<metzpinguin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  
> >> In fact, it was possible that with digiKam-8.x.0 thumbnails were
> >> repeatedly created or the items were scanned again when using
> >> MySQL. With digiKam-8.5.0 this should now only happen once, after
> >> which the thumbnail from the DB should always be used.
> >> The problem with the face thumbnail is known, as we currently
> >> only create these "on the fly". But these also have to be loaded
> >> quickly the second time. Note that MySQL is not really fast as a
> >> storage medium, everything has to be transported over a network.
> >> But here with a local MySQL database, albums with thousands of
> >> images are loaded without delay.
> >>
> >> Maik
> >>
> >> Am Donnerstag, 19. Dezember 2024, 08:09:08 Mitteleuropäische
> >> Normalzeit schrieb Thomas:  
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I am following this as I experience the same. Like you, I also
> >>> have hundreds of thousands of photos in my collection, and it is
> >>> immensly frustrating that when opening some album it will take a
> >>> very long time until I am able to just scroll through the album
> >>> and browse the pictures. In fact, the problem is so severe that
> >>> I have noticed that last few years that I am using DK less and
> >>> less, and instead just browsing pictures using my file manager
> >>> (Finder). It seems to be able to cache the thumbnails better.
> >>>
> >>> The place where the problem is most severe is when using the
> >>> People module. When opening some person, I should be able to see
> >>> the thumbnails with that face instantly. But instead, it takes
> >>> maybe an hour or more to fully load the thumbnails for a person
> >>> with tens of thousand of photos. This makes the People module
> >>> effectively unusable for me which I find very sad.
> >>>
> >>> I have been using DK for more than a decade, and it has never
> >>> been the snappiest user experience. But I feel like the general
> >>> UI responsiveness issues are getting worse. I would love to
> >>> report issues but I find that the process of reporting bugs and
> >>> issues has too much frictiion. Additionally, DK is used to
> >>> manage photo collections. These are by nature personal
> >>> information in that they contain photos of people who did not
> >>> consent to being part of a bug report. This makes it very
> >>> difficult to report bugs and illustrate problems using
> >>> screenshots or screen recordings.
> >>>
> >>> I would love to be able to just show a developer my workflow and
> >>> the issues experienced because I fear that their use case does
> >>> somehow not hit these issues.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> BR
> >>>
> >>> Thomas
> >>>
> >>> On 19/12/2024 07.00, Michael Moore wrote:  
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>>
> >>>> I've got 266,000 photos in digiKam. Photos are stored on a
> >>>> spinning hard drive, the MySQL database is on an NVME M.2 SSD.
> >>>>
> >>>> When I change views, or when I scroll in an album the
> >>>> thumbnails are slow to load and I hear the HDD spinning up and
> >>>> being accessed.
> >>>>
> >>>> I tried using Maintenance -> Rebuild Thumbnails which completed
> >>>> successfully, but digiKam continues to hit the HDD every time.
> >>>> The thumbnails slowly pop up one by one until they are all
> >>>> showing.
> >>>>
> >>>> Is there anyway to make thumbnail loading faster?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks,
> >>>> Michael  
> >>
> >>
> >>  
> >  


-- 
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vyS