A challenge for programmers (not P1) -- *please read*!
💡
I've an idea that will earn you brownie points, bring good karma and possibly new clients and jobs: writing a utility that finds and deletes the C1 4 cache and previews folders automatically. P1 could do this far more elegantly (and should have done - C1 4 is broken IMHO without this function!), but in the meantime such a utility will suffice, and should be straightforward to create (I hope - I'm not a programmer).
The cache and previews folders have definite names and a hierarchy, and always contain the same file types, so they can be found easily and unambiguously. Also, if the utility has an internal routine to confirm these folder/file type parameters, there's no chance of a non-C1 4 folder being accidentally deleted.
Further suggestions for the utility:
• To save searching entire hard drives, thus making the entire process quick, an option to define the top-level folder where someone stores their photos.
• An option to delete the previews and/or the settings - you may want to delete everything or you may wish to delete the previews only but keep the settings. (I believe the settings/previews are stored together - I can't remember what the beta did, or check, as I haven't installed C1 4 since I found the beta unusable owing to its caching behaviour!)
• Allow it to be called up periodically by Windows Task Manager, and run automatically in the background, closing itself down afterwards
Any takers ❓
I've an idea that will earn you brownie points, bring good karma and possibly new clients and jobs: writing a utility that finds and deletes the C1 4 cache and previews folders automatically. P1 could do this far more elegantly (and should have done - C1 4 is broken IMHO without this function!), but in the meantime such a utility will suffice, and should be straightforward to create (I hope - I'm not a programmer).
The cache and previews folders have definite names and a hierarchy, and always contain the same file types, so they can be found easily and unambiguously. Also, if the utility has an internal routine to confirm these folder/file type parameters, there's no chance of a non-C1 4 folder being accidentally deleted.
Further suggestions for the utility:
• To save searching entire hard drives, thus making the entire process quick, an option to define the top-level folder where someone stores their photos.
• An option to delete the previews and/or the settings - you may want to delete everything or you may wish to delete the previews only but keep the settings. (I believe the settings/previews are stored together - I can't remember what the beta did, or check, as I haven't installed C1 4 since I found the beta unusable owing to its caching behaviour!)
• Allow it to be called up periodically by Windows Task Manager, and run automatically in the background, closing itself down afterwards
Any takers ❓
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Excellent idea Rich!
Until then, a simple batch file with 'del e:\\*.cop /s' (where e: is my drive with my images) works. Still retains the empty proxies folder' but it's better than nothing.0 -
Hi-
Suggestions, ideas and Feature requests should be written up in a support case.
http://www.phaseone.com/HOME/Content/Su ... 20-%20Main
That way suggestions like yours are tracked and logged to our R+D Department.
JRA
Phase One Technical Support0 -
[quote="JRA" wrote:
Suggestions, ideas and Feature requests should be written up in a support case.
Phase One Technical Support
My suggestion was not aimed at Phase 1 but to non-Phase 1 programmers.
My proposed "utility", let's be honest, would be a usable bodge for us to use whilst we wait for P1 to (hopefully) release a new C1 4 version that cleans up after itself.
I would hope that Phase 1 programmers would use a more efficient method to implement this clean-up-cache function... 🙄
So, anyone willing to take up the challenge?0 -
After reading the first message in this thread I had a look at a couple of my drives.
W h o a ! I haven't used C1 a lot yet, but there are now a LOT of those .COP, .C1w, and .C1p files, which I hadn't paid attention to before -- already 950 of them, totalling 1.75 GB!
I can easily come up with a 4NT or Perl script that'll clean out the directories where those files are found. BUT ... at what point is it ok to remove them and at what point is it NOT adviseable to remove them? That is, will removing .COP/.C1w/.C1p files for photos that might be worked on in the near future cause a loss of settings that would take a lot of time to restore? Or cause unnecessary slowdowns in using C1 to display image files?
(I get the feeling that deleting the files while C1 is running wouldn't be considered a "best practice". :-)
Your idea about a dedicated utility for this purpose is a good one. (I would think it should check the current process-list to ensure that C1 isn't running -- before it takes any action.)0 -
Mike
The settings are in the .COS files, and they should be left alone where they are. It's the .COP files that need to be removed. (Can't remember v3 but you don't need to worry about that because the cache can be cleared out within the program.)
As I said in my earlier post, you can just run a batch file, 'C1.BAT' for example, with the line
'del e:\\*.cop /s'
(where e: is the drive that your images are on) to remove the proxy files whenever you want. Not complicated.
Iain0 -
As for the substantial collection of .C1p and .C1w files -- judging by where I found them on the hard drive and by their modification dates, they were all written by C1 LE v.3.7 ... do you know which -- C1p vs. C1w -- can be safely removed, without causing any loss of critical information?
As for removal of the .COP files, I'd probably use a 4NT script -- something like this (untested as yet):setlocal
set tempfile=%@unique[]
tasklist captureone > %tempfile
iff %@filesize[%tempfile] gt 0 then
echo.
echo Can't delete .COP files while CaptureOne is running.
else
:: go to some directory here and...
global /i /q (
iff exist *.cop then
echo.
attrib /q -r *.cop
del *.cop
beep 0 9
endiff
)
endiff
del /q %tempfile
.0 -
[quote="MikeArst" wrote:
(...) C1 LE v.3.7 ... do you know which -- C1p vs. C1w -- can be safely removed, without causing any loss of critical information?
OK, off topic (since not CO4 related): Both LE and Pro of CO3.x create the c1p and c1w files. There are not related to either LE or Pro specifically and are interchangeable between both versions. By default, c1p and c1w files are stored in a central location, independent of the user logged on to the computer (this has changed in CO4).
The c1p files are the preview files, that do not contain any adjustments. They will be re-generated the next time you open a folder (Collection) in CO if they were deleted. Deleting c1p files can be done from within CO3.x itself. See Preferences, Previews tab. BTW: preview files in CO4 tend to be significantly smaller.
The c1w files contain your adjustments, so you like to save them. These are NOT deleted by CO3.x's function on deleting preview files as mentioned above.
CO3.x/Win has an archive function, with which you can store a raw file with its c1w file. Also note that deleting a raw file from within CO3.x will clean up both the c1p and c1w file, which is therefore good practice.0 -
Paul made a comment above about archiving CO v3.x setting files (c1w); on that note, because they are all stored in one place, they can be zipped up in an archive really easily (WinRAR is even far more efficient - they squish to virtually nothing). Periodically I make a RAR compressed archive of these and they are so small that I keep the last few backups just in case (and have had to call upon them before). Having said that, it is close to impossible to backup v4 settings in the same way, the folder structure pretty much forces the user to back them up alongside the RAWs. 0 -
[quote="photogenix" wrote:
Having said that, it is close to impossible to backup v4 settings in the same way, the folder structure pretty much forces the user to back them up alongside the RAWs.
Why would you want to? Surely there isn't an issue with the way v4 stores the settings files. It makes perfect sense to keep them alongside the RAW files. Any changes to the settings will get backed up in any incremental setup. Most apps work that way, ACR, LR, Bibble, RAWShooter, etc.
It's the preview files that are the issue.
Even so, use the cache clear function in v3, or use my simple one line command (above) to remove them in v4 until PO come up with a neater solution.0 -
For something a little more intuitive than BAT files, I've found this:
http://www.geocities.com/ppescher/meripaga/Killer.zip
It's a straightforward, free utility that'll search a hard drive and/or a folder you designate for files (in this case the file type *.cop, i.e. C1 4 cache files), and move them to the Recycle Bin when you press the "Kill 'em" button.
http://www.richcutler.co.uk/_oddments/Clipboard01.jpg
http://www.richcutler.co.uk/_oddments/Clipboard02.jpg
Note the apt name of the utility 😂 ...
It doesn't delete folders, so we're still left with empty "Cache\\Proxies\\" folders, but it's a start!
The program is tiny, and doesn't appear to write anything to the registry. There's no installation, so for those of you not that familiar with the workings of Windows, I suggest un-Zipping the files to a suitable folder somewhere sensible (e.g. C:\\Program Files\\File Killer\\, then creating a shortcut from the EXE file (right-click on the EXE file, create the shortcut, then move it to wherever you want, e.g. your Desktop or in your Start Menu).
If anyone finds a similar simple utility that, in addition, deletes folders, do let us know!
In the meantime, I guess we keep on waiting for P1 to address this problem properly...0 -
Thanks Rich for bringing this program to our attention. It is a killer app! 😂 0 -
Thanks Rich. As a general tool that app is pretty useful. Still, in this specific case, there is no substitute for the simple one line, one-click bat file I suggested.
With Killer, you have to open the app, find the path you want to search, load the filter you want, find files, then select kill-em, confirm request and then exit the app!
Don't you think the one-click is a lot easier?0 -
[quote="imacken" wrote:
Still, in this specific case, there is no substitute for the simple one line, one-click bat file I suggested.
Me, I'm an ancient command-line junkie. Another possible 4NT solution, starting from the root, is also a one-liner:
global /i /q if exist *.cop (attrib /q -r *.cop %+ del *.cop)
"Global" sweeps all subdirectories from the starting-point. The same could be done with a cmd.exe "for" loop, though the syntax is way clumsier IMO. In either case, a command like that can be pretty dangerous -- one typo could ruin your whole day (and a few other days besides), and I've seen people ruin their days that way...
Still, if I know that I don't need the *.cop files, this is a mighty quick way to go about removing them permanently (no trash-folder in this case -- immediate removal).0 -
[quote="MikeArst" wrote:
In either case, a command like that can be pretty dangerous -- one typo could ruin your whole day (and a few other days besides), and I've seen people ruin their days that way...
I agree Mike, that's why I put the images folder into the little (13 character!) bat file - much less dangerous.
Also, I have to say that for anyone using Vista, Explorer is a lot quicker than that Killer app mentioned earlier.
Vista Explorer has an excellent search facility - quick and easy. Much better than XP. Just type in *.cop in the search box, all the files come up (instantaneously for me), ctrl-a to select them all and delete. Gone!
Stil, as we have all said, it's no substitute for the old built-in v3 facility.0 -
[quote="MikeArst" wrote:
[quote="imacken" wrote:
Still, in this specific case, there is no substitute for the simple one line, one-click bat file I suggested.
Me, I'm an ancient command-line junkie. Another possible 4NT solution, starting from the root, is also a one-liner:
global /i /q if exist *.cop (attrib /q -r *.cop %+ del *.cop)
"Global" sweeps all subdirectories from the starting-point. The same could be done with a cmd.exe "for" loop, though the syntax is way clumsier IMO. In either case, a command like that can be pretty dangerous -- one typo could ruin your whole day (and a few other days besides), and I've seen people ruin their days that way...
Still, if I know that I don't need the *.cop files, this is a mighty quick way to go about removing them permanently (no trash-folder in this case -- immediate removal).
thanks
should i use this only stringglobal /i /q if exist *.cop (attrib /q -r *.cop %+ del *.cop)in a bat file to purge the cache?0
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