Unresponsiveness
I'm having trouble with Capture One constantly becoming unresponsive, not only in the usual situations such as searching/filtering, deleting keywords from the keyword library, etc., but also when doing things that didn't use to cause Capture One to become unresponsive, e.g.:
• Switching to Capture One from another application
• Switching between tool tabs in Capture One
• Applying a keyword to an image
• Rating an image
• Applying/removing a colour tag
• Editing metadata
It doesn't happen always, but most of the time. I've been unable to detect any pattern to it. It makes no difference whether I have other applications open or not, and restarting Capture One doesn't help. Whether or not external hard drives are connected makes no difference either. Neither does changing hardware acceleration settings. I've verified the catalogue, and nothing appears to be wrong with it.
I've been in contact with support about this for about a month, but no help so far.
Has anyone had similar issues? I suspect this is a problem in Capture One, but if anyone's found a solution/workaround, I'd very much like to hear about it?
(MacBook Pro M1 Max, 64 GB; macOS 12.5.)
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> Thomas Kyhn: ...Capture One constantly becoming unresponsive
Alas, I know next to nothing about macOS, but it is still BSD, isn't it? I wonder if tools like top, htop, sysstat, sar,... would let you see what consumes resources and/or keeps your C1 threads waiting. You may perhaps find troubleshooting hints in this page for Linux: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/troubleshooting-slow-servers
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Thanks for the suggestion.
I've looked at samples and spindumps from macOS’ Activity Monitor as well as at log files, but I'm not sure exactly what to look for or what to do with it.
While doing the things mentioned above (rating, applying keywords, etc.), Activity Monitor says that Capture One uses 0.0% GPU and around 100% CPU. When I open Capture One, it reaches 300% CPU, and it only takes around 10 seconds to open, so it's strange that something as simple as applying a keyword to an image often causes Capture One to become unresponsive for around 40 seconds while using only about 100% CPU. When inactive, CPU usage is as low as 2-3%.
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> Thomas Kyhn: ...unresponsive for around 40 seconds
A long time on a modern system. System statistics with sar, sysstat may not be available for the M1. The current Activity Monitor may be of limited value according to this article: https://eclecticlight.co/2022/05/02/dont-trust-activity-monitor-on-m1-macs/
A macOS guy may be far more useful than I am in this matter :-)
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Thanks for the reference!
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As an example, here's a screen recording of colour tags being applied to two images. First, Capture One becomes unresponsive when a colour tag is applied (39 seconds), and then, after the tag has been applied and I try to open the colour tag menu of the second image, it also becomes unresponsive (33 seconds). The same thing happens when a colour tag is applied to the second image and, subsequently, when I try to select this image.
Link.
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> Thomas Kyhn: ...screen recording
Horrible!
It is impossible (for me at least) to see if it is a system issue or a C1 issue. It looks like clicking to set the tag starts a "blocking" functions of some sort, meaning it waits for some input. I have seen similar things happen when an application needs a response from the network (DNS lookup, say) to continue, but I am on really really thin ice here.
The C1 logs may perhaps provide some clues. They may be overwhelming, but logs tend to have timestamps and it may help to note the system time when you click to set the tag and when C1 again becomes responsive. Next extract log lines for that period from all C1 log files and also from computer system logs. Then look for clues.
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Thanks for the suggestion.
One thing that comes up repeatedly in the com.captureone.captureone15.log file when it stops responding is:
"Autosaving [file path]/[catalogue name].cocatalogdb
Waiting for background saving to complete..."It seems that at every action the catalogue is being autosaved.
And in the CaptureOneIC.log file, these two lines come up quite often:
"IsDxOPureRaw: Missing tagSoftware"
"Could not load tags in CTileExecutionManager::acquireRawData"
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> Thomas Kyhn: Waiting for background saving to complete... ...IsDxOPureRaw: Missing tagSoftware
Appears C1 is waiting for some other software to do its thing. See if you can get comments from C1 support.
Does your C1 expect DXO PureRaw to be on your computer? If you have DXO PhotoLab installed, it may potentially trigger C1 to look for PureRaw, which would probably be a C1 bug because PureRaw is not included in PhotoLab (although PhotoLab Elite includes PureRaw's features) https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4429162864017-Is-DxO-PureRAW-included-in-DxO-PhotoLab-
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I've had trial versions of DXO software on my computer, but that's months ago and everything should be deleted now – a search for visible and hidden files brings up nothing related to DXO (except for lens and camera profiles installed with Adobe).
I've tried removing everything related to Capture One and reinstalling it, but it makes no difference, it still becomes unresponsive, and "IsDxOPureRaw: Missing tagSoftware" and "Waiting for background saving to complete..." still come up in the log files as before.
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> Thomas Kyhn: ...visible and hidden files brings up nothing related to DXO
Possible leftover references in one or more of the C1 config files? They are typically xml, thus human readable.
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I've searched the content of every Capture One related file I could find, and there's no mention of DxO or Pure Raw. Very strange.
I've asked support about it, but it's probably going to take a while as usual before I they respond.
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So far it seems a lot better with the latest version, 15.3.2. Nothing related is mentioned in the release notes, but I assume it could be a silent update.
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@Thomas, did the latest update bring the performance back to normal levels or is it still lagging albeit less?
If so, have you tried creating a new test catalog with only about 100 images and then making the same adjustments? Also, how large is your catalog?
In your screen recording, also seems like your source files are offline based on the question mark. Do you have them potentially stored on a disconnected network drive and C1's trying to find it but fails and eventually just updates the catalog? Do you see the same lagging behavior when the source files are online?
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Unfortunately, I still have this issue after updating to 15.3.2. It's difficult to say whether it's better or worse. As before, sometimes Capture One is reasonably responsive, and sometimes it becomes unresponsive constantly. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to when it's prone to become unresponsive and when it isn't.
As for image files being online/offline, I'm unable to detect any difference. I see the issue in both cases.
I haven't tried creating a smaller test catalogue as I suspect the issue is with Capture One's handling of larger catalogues (the catalogue I currently use contains around 54,000 images).
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Yeah, I'm afraid it could be the larger catalog. Although, you can first try importing the old catalog into a new one and see if this fixes it. If that ends up with the same issues again, creating a small test catalog would give you confirmation that size is the problem. If it is size, splitting up the catalog into smaller ones could be an option. Either create a catalog each for different genres or even a catalog for each year. Or, switch to sessions.
At first, I was dead-set on using a catalog until I ran into my own problems with performance and other issues. It got better once I started breaking up the large catalog into smaller ones. Once I discovered that the search and keywording in C1 were so slow and crash-prone, basically the main reason why you'd want a catalog that contains everything, I started taking a closer look at sessions and give up on the idea of search and keywording in one place. Since switching to sessions, I have never had performance or corrupt database issues again. I now create a session for almost every day I shoot, sometimes multiple per day if the events are different enough. I frankly do not miss the catalog anymore.
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Thanks for the suggestion, I'll see if Capture One has the same issues with a new catalogue.
I'm hoping for improvements to Capture One's handling of catalogues. It really is a pain as it is. Using several smaller catalogues is, of course, a potential workaround, but this would make it difficult to keep keywords completely identical across all images/catalogues. And using another application for keywords would make it impossible to handle variants with different keywords. Also, if you rely on being able to search through all photos, having several smaller catalogues would make things complicated, and if you use another application for searching it wouldn't be possible to view photos as they appear with edits in Capture One. I already use Photo Mechanic Plus because of the limitations of Capture One, but it can't really replace the catalogue function of Capture One.
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On the product download page it says the latest version of C1 good for OS up to 12.4. I have 12.5 too and I am concerned about the level of compatibility.
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@Eric, I created a test catalogue containing 340 images and don't see any of the unresponsiveness I have with my main catalogue; searching/filtering and editing keywords are very fast too. But the thing is that with my main catalogue the level of unresponsiveness varies; sometimes Capture One behaves like it did before I started seeing these issues, i.e. slow but not unusable, and sometimes it becomes unresponsive all the time – when switching to Capture One from another application, adding a keyword to an image, selecting a different tool tab, etc. In my experience, searching/filtering and editing keywords in a larger catalogue have always caused Capture One to become unresponsive though.
@Bob Mannix, I had the same issues with unresponsiveness before upgrading to 12.5 and haven't noticed any changes since upgrading.
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@Thomas, I'm glad you are so optimistic about potential improvements to the catalog =). The first time I started using CaptureOne was with version 7 and it was already then a problem that was heavily criticized. We're now at version 15, almost a decade later and it hasn't much improved in that regard. They've done some patches and workarounds that help mask the worst performance issues but under the hood, it's still all the same. I believe they'd have to rewrite the whole app from scratch to implement a performant catalog. I understand that it's a big undertaking but at some point, that bullet has to be bitten. Adobe had to as well with LR. It takes years and the new LR is still not up to all the features of LRC. Although had PhaseOne started with this a decade ago, we'd by now have a C1 with a performant catalog. Ironically, PhaseOne had a great DAM that would have supported huge catalogs, if they could have only married this with C1. But nope, they killed the DAM completely.
As for your test, I figured that would improve things. The obvious question now is how much do you really rely on keywording and searching? I was able to sidestep it with external tools and Finder tagging but this does not work for everyone and every use-case (i.e. your variants example).
I have read from others that mainly use sessions, that they also import the selects/keepers from the sessions into a master catalog for searching/keywording. At least that cuts out a considerable amount of images that would not end up in the catalog and keeps the size smaller.
The only other thing I can suggest is creating a new catalog and then importing the old one into it. This can take a while but that way your main catalog gets a completely new structure that's optimized for the latest C1 version. Technically, every C1 update is supposed to upgrade the catalog but I'd argue that's not always 100%. Similar to upgrading your OS, a clean install is always better than an existing OS upgrade. Maybe that could improve performance somewhat and get rid of the randomness.
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Well, I'm hoping, but not sure exactly how optimistic I am, seeing how fundamental issues tend to be ignored (such as the malfunctioning keystone tool that went unfixed for 9-10 years until the recent update, which fixed its malfunctioning but not its many limitations). I'm sure you're right that the application, at least the DAM part of it, has to be rewritten if it's to be able to handle larger catalogues. I assume many of the limitations to handling of variants, albums, etc., that users have complained about for years, can only be fixed after this has been done, at least that would explain why these complaints have so far been ignored.
Just to see if it would make any difference, I've created a new catalogue and imported the old catalogue into it. I'm still waiting for Capture One to finish generating previews, so it's too early to tell yet if it will reduce any of the unresponsiveness.
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Results so far. At first Capture One seemed to have become less unresponsive, but unfortunately I now see the same unresponsiveness after small actions like rating or colourtagging an image, switching between tooltabs, etc.
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Argh, I'm sorry to hear that. :( I wish I had another suggestion but I don't know anything else other than maybe asking CaptureOne how they themselves handle large catalogs. I'm afraid that they may suggest a smaller catalog.
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Thanks for your suggestions in any case.
At least it works some of the time without becoming unresponsive.
Another user is complaining about unresponsiveness (here) on an M1 Mac and with a much smaller catalogue, so I assume there could be a more general problem with M1 Macs.
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Well, I do have a M1 Mac Studio and I don’t have any of those issues. But, I use sessions, which has its own drawbacks. However, I just came across this cataloging software that might solve the drawbacks of multiple sessions or catalogs. It’s a great concept, I will have to give it a try. You can check it out here: https://cyme.io/peakto-photo-organizer-software/
This the demo of it: https://youtu.be/mG_InuG-bRg
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That looks interesting. Only thing is I've just bought Photo Mechanic Plus, which I take it makes this partly redundant. But it looks promising and less clunky than Photo Mechanic. I should probably give it a try anyway.
Do you know if it will show variants from Capture One?
Addition. It seems that you have to actually buy a subscription in order to try it and then request a refund before the "trial period" ends. Obviously not a good way of offering trials.
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I wrote the company and got the following information:
Capture One variants are displayed in Peakto.
Sessions aren't supported yet but will be added next week.
In about two weeks there will be a free 15 days trial version.
Editing metadata in Peakto will be gradually introduced over the next few months.
Next release will have additional improvements for Capture One. And they're working on improving preview quality in Peakto for Capture One catalogs (som info about preview quality here).
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@Thomas, thanks for the update, that sounds promising. Although, that preview limitation of CaptureOne is, how can I put it lightly, typical. Previews in CaptureOne itself are already the worst quality among all the editors and then they make it proprietary. SMH. That's probably the exact reason why they are so bad.
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Still not a word from the R&D department, except – through Christine Monberg (Head of Customer Success) – that the case is unique and therefore other issues may be prioritized, which sounds more or less like it's been put aside so that they can focus on more important things.
If anyone is experiencing similar issues with unresponsiveness, please contact support about it (for reference, my support request is #147215).
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> Thomas Kyhn: ...the case is unique
I understand, from your post in an other forum thread, that R&D can not reproduce the slowness issue on their Mac system(s), and that R&D is no longer investigating it. They apparently concluded that the slowness is not related to Capture One, but is more likely unique to how your Mac system operates.
They could, potentially for a fee, have offered you a (team viewer) session with one of their Mac experts to try to locate bottlenecks on your Mac when you use C1. You may be able to find that kind of assistance elsewhere. First though, you may be able to find useful info on web sites frequented by Mac users, I can see google returns candidates for a keyword combo: mac m1 slow.
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My impression is that the issue is with Capture One. When Capture One is unresponsive, everything else runs fine, neither the OS itself nor other applications are affected in any way. If I switch on Rosetta for Capture One, so that it runs as an Intel rather than Apple silicon/M1 application, its unresponsiveness is less severe. And considering that other users have complained of issues with Capture One on Apple silicon Macs, it seems likely that Capture One isn’t yet entirely compatible. If this is so, you should think that the R&D department would be a little more interested in locating the cause of the problem, as they're bound to have more such compatibility issues as more users switch to Apple silicon Macs.
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