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

[Thomas]

Yeah, I have all those. Except for no. 7 - I have my photo collection on 
a network share.


BR

Thomas


On 19/12/2024 20.02, digikam at sritch.com wrote:
> 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
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>   
>