Catalogue performance issues
I know this is a topic that seems to have a lot of comments but has no clear resolve.
A major part of my interest in C1 was to also be able to manage my images and provide searches etc, and then edit, develop if needed etc.
My collection is only just over 16000 images so not huge by any sense, but now when editing and stepping between tools C1 ends up getting very laggy or crashing. I can easily cure it by splitting the catalogue out into years, that loses me the abilty to perform a global search so defeats the object. Yes I can have a master catalogue that has all the images so I can search, but then any edits or exports are only in one catalogue, that has the potential to get messy and makes for a cumbersome workflow.
Sessions don't really work as an archive.
Surely as C1 goes on, we get more images and the catalogue grows tis is going to get more and more problematic. Getting really frustrated with the system now and having to spending time fighting it.
Nesting catalogues would be a really useful feaure, keep the size down but work from one overall catalogue and be able to search the lot when needed.
Is there a neat solution to the lack of performance, placing the catalogue on a fast NVMe makes zero difference.
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I've had problems with Capture One's handling of catalogues for a long time (regular unresponsiveness). I haven't found any solution that doesn't involve splitting up catalogues and using third-party software for searching/browsing.
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Dissapointing isn't it, I can see me ending up back at Digikam as my master catalogue which is free and proudly states it will handle over 100,000 images with ease. That grates a little when I have bought into a professional program, which as a RAW processior does a fine job when it decides it will work without the sliders being a second or two behind the pen.
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I didn't know about Digikam. I use Peakto, which is far from free, but can handle Capture One catalogues, including variants, metadata, etc.
Addition. I assume you know about this improvement request already: https://captureone.ideas.aha.io/ideas/FR-I-964
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I don't think Digikam will handle the catalogue directly, after a lot of research and testing one of the contributing factors of choosing C1 was the ability for image management. That in hindsight may not have been the right decision, and perhaps it is time to rethink. I only moved to the subscription for C1 last year so when that's due for payment I can make a choice. I find myself also considering LR, I know I will miss the layers C1 offers. Let the processor / raw editor do what it is good at, and let a cataloguing applicaton do its bit. It would be nice to know what the C1 devs are doing, and where the applicaion is going.
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I've seen posts before of people who choose to combine sessions and export folders with a professional DAM like Digikam
Digikam in combination with C1 sessions works. You don't need the session file but only your image folders with the CaptureOne subfolder.
Digikam can stack the raw and jpg file if the jpg is right next to the raw, in the same folder, so you can see the final jpg incl. your adjustments as the representative of that stack. Hence I recommend to have the export recipe output folder in image location, and the format JPG Quickproof, which exports the C1 preview, as it is blazingly fast.
Cataloging / metadata edits would be done in digikam. If you search/filter for images in digikam and you want to edit them in C1 you can do so one by one, but it is sometimes advantageous if you have them all in a C1 session at the same time, for easy copy-and-apply of adjustments. You can achieve this by drag&drop to a running C1 session (on Windows up until v15.2 or 15.3, in a later version the devs killed this functionalitity, but I assume it still works with the Mac version, so not future-proof on Windows).
Instead of digikam, you can also use a C1 catalog for having your overview and searching your images, drag&drop them to a running session for editing. In this case all edits, incl. metadata, needs to be done in the session. After editing, remove the (session-)edited images in the catalog and sync the top folder. No need for a "jpg representative", as the catalog understands and displays the imported adjustments.
EDIT: Drag&drop from a C1 catalog to a C1 session still works in v16, they only killed the drop functionality from an external application, digikam, Windows Explorer etc.
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One possible explanation is that Capture One is very focused on the working pro and the digitech and it seems that a majority of those use sessions (one session for each job) and thus just don't encounter the issue with large catalogs.
Another possible explanation is that the relatively small development team (when compared to Adobe) just has to focus elsewhere to remain competitive and large catalog performance just never makes the priority list vs. the other things they think they need to work on.
Sounds very likely to me (though perhaps it would be the working pro in specific areas). I've been in contact with support for a couple of years now about unresponsiveness when using larger catalogues, and there's been no indication that this part of the application has any priority at all.
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Catalog performance in my experience is closely associated with the operating environment. I have 66K images in a single catalog. Performance is acceptable. The catalog resides on internal SSD storage. The references files reside on external SSD storage that is connected over Thunderbolt 3. Internal and external SSD have plenty of free space. I have plenty of RAM.
I'm running on macOS Ventura on a 2019 MacBook Pro Intel 16-inch w/ 32GB of RAM and 2TB internal SSD.
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I use a MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB. My catalogues are on the internal SSD, and most images on an external SSD connected by USB-C. My largest catalogue contains around 28,000 images. Earlier I used one single catalogue, but I ended up splitting it up to reduce unresponsiveness. Capture One still becomes unresponsive regularly though. When searching, when switching between albums and folders, when switching between tool tabs, etc.
Moving to my current computer from an older one did make a difference, but not as much of a difference as I would have expected. Moving my image files from an HDD to an SSD didn't make much difference. And whether or not the image files are online of offline doesn't make much difference either. As far as I can see, the problem is with Capture One alone, and there isn't much to do about it except to keep catalogues as small as possible. Which, of course, creates other problems.
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Can you describe your scenario when it is unresponsive. I have seen performance issues only when filters are enabled and you make any changes that affect filters (ratings, color labels, keywords, etc). When no filters are enabled I have zero issues. If you have selected a Smart Album I consider that having a filter enabled.
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It happens when I switch between certain tool tabs (e.g. Library > Adjust). The bigger the catalogue, the longer the unresponsiveness. It makes no difference whether any filters are enabled. The same goes for searching, e.g. pasting a file name in the Filter tool's search field, or filtering by clicking on a colour tag, keyword, etc., in the Filters tool.
As mentioned elsewhere, I've tried making new catalogues several times, I've tried deleing all keywords and smart albums (using a test catalogue), I've reinstalled everything on my computer from scratch (twice) to see if this would make any difference, but the unresponsiveness is the same.
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My catalogue has quite a few smart albums in, again it was a feature I found and still find very useful to have a predetermined view of my images. I tend to edit off of the main file tree, not from a smart album direction. The unresponsiveness is exactly as Thomas says for me, if I switch between editing tools it will slow down. I can easily force the issue by a few repeated edits/resets of white balance, exposure, levels and HDR.
I run an i7 processor based system, Win 11 and 32GB RAM, the OS is on a fast NVMe, data is on a spinning drive. Having the catalogue on the NVMe or spinner makes no difference.
I'm happy to create an empty catalogue with no smart albums etc and see what it does, but seems Thomas has already done that. I have spent hours as well trying all sorts and I end up back in the same place.
I want to be with the camera and working on my images, not fighting the software/computer.
I work in a software and device environment and one of the things I promote is that you should not have to adjust how you work to compensate for software, within its sensible capabilities it should work how you need it to.
Hopefully the devs will pick up on this thread and start to look for a solution to take the product onwards.
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one of the things I promote is that you should not have to adjust how you work to compensate for software, within its sensible capabilities it should work how you need it to.
Hopefully the devs will pick up on this thread and start to look for a solution to take the product onwards.
I agree, you shouldn't need to compensate for software deficiencies. While workarounds of some sort are necessary with most software, you shouldn't have to make as inconvenient changes to your setup as splitting up your catalogues into several smaller catalogues to get basic functions to work properly.
As none of the countless previous threads on this subject appear to have had any influence on software development priorities I doubt this one will, but you can always hope.
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Spam alert.
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Thomas Kyhn - noted, thanks.
Ian
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I have removed every smart album etc from my catalogue and performance is still hopeless to say the least. I can easily end up with an auto adjust on an image taking 90 seconds to complete. Large catalogues and C1 seem a no go, I suspect a clean build catalogue will start off good as it has minimal adjustments to cope with but sure it will degrade over time.
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Define "large" for your catalog. Mine is 66K images and I have no such issues.
One option to test .. create a new empty catalog, them import the poorly performing catalog into it. See if the new catalog performs poorly. Let the new catalog fully rebuild all the previews and thumbnails before trying operations. Rebuilds might cause a performance issues until they are done. Also make sure you regularly run a Verify / Repair on your catalogs. This also optimizes their indexes and compacts them.
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I don't really see any lag when using auto-adjust or making adjustments of any kind. It seems that these performance issues vary from user to user / setup to setup.
I've tried creating new catalogues and importing old catalogues many times to see if this would reduce unresponsiveness, but it hasn't. Verify/repair also doesn't seem to have any effect in this regard.
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@... has good suggestions. Also look at what ELSE is running on your system. Do you have any cloud backup software that might be trying to grab files as soon as they change? Do you have any anti-virus or malware software that might be scanning your files in real-time and interfering with performance? This seems very system specific. It is not a widely reported issue.
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Walter Rowe - you may just have hit the nail right on the head there. My system is very focused on photographic work and not the other general office clutter, I have another system for such tasks. However Amazon backup is running on it, and of course is trying to sync changes in the background which would explain as changes arrive they are getting stacked up while it's sorting itself out. I will disable it and see what happens. In the scale of things 16000 ish images isn't a huge number.
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FirstName LastName .. also .. if you have auto syncing of metadata enabled that is a performance killer. Turn it off.
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I have stopped Amazon syncing my photos, and removed some of the smart albums I don't use from C1. Re generated the previews and so far so good. Best C1 has performed for a few weeks. Thanks to everyone for the good constructive discussion.
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I wonder if the Amazon syncing was consuming all your storage performance.
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It is certainly very odd, as moving the catalogue to the OS drive which is a high spec NVMe made no difference and that is not in the Amazon sync either. Looking at the disk I/O stats for the D drive did not show huge constant activity, whether it put locks on the files or a shadow copy that may have been upsetting C1 remains to be seen. I'm going to re enable it in a controlled way to see what has an impact, you can limit performamnce the Amazon control panel. For now it's back to exploring my new EOS R6m2, hopefully we get a dry few hours over the Easter weekend as I have a plan.
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