Capture One version 4 seems S-L-O-W in writing JPEG files

[roydonian]

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I currently use Bibble 4 to process the DNG files from my M8, but yesterday I decided to install a copy of Capture One version 4.8.3 under Windows XP SP3, and am running it under the 30-day evaluation period. I’m using a 1GHz Pentium 4 with 2Gb of RAM.

 

In most respects I like Capture One, but the program seems painfully slow in outputting edited JPEG versions of my M8 image files.

 

A TIFF file seems to output in about 10 seconds, and a compressed TIFF takes not much longer.

 

But when I select a 100% quality JPEG, the file can take 10 minutes or more to output, with the horizontal progress bar regularly stopping for long periods of time beginning about 15% of the way in.

Even a 50% quality JPEG does not go smoothly, with the horizontal bar making a long stop at around the 75% mark. I'm writing to a large hard disk than has several hundred Gb of free space.

 

Best regards,

 

Doug

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[Jamie Roberts]

Doug--I don't know what to say except that your machine might just be underpowered for the program. C1 v4 or 5 on my machine takes seconds to output both a full-res JPEG and TIFF; I've never seen it take minutes.

 

Might be time to upgrade the processor...

[wparsonsgisnet]

Doug, does it make a difference if you use a different physical disk for the writes than you use for storing the images?

 

I believe that C1 only imports thumbnails into memory, and may be reading the image file as you work on it (read: write [couldn't resist,sorry]).

[delander †]

My C1 ver4 takesa about the same time to ouptut a jpg or a tif. Might be worth checking the size (pixel dimensions) of the jpg you are trying to generate

 

Jeff

[roydonian]

Thanks for all the advice offered. In practice, I may have (accidentally) solved the problem.

 

Since either Bibble or Capture One looks set to be my normal RAW-processing program, last night I de-installed about four or five earlier image-processing programs that had been supplied with various digital cameras I’ve bought over the last 10 years.

 

Many of these programs are the sort that insist in having some code permanently running in memory, so the list of processes that automatically run on startup has shrunk quite significantly.

 

Capture One can now save a file in any graphics format in about 10 seconds.

 

Over the holiday break, I intend to do a major ‘reformat and reinstall’ operation on the computer. This should remove much of the electronic detritus that has built up on the hard disks since 2005.

 

(BTW, there was an error in my original posting. I’m running a 3 GHz Pentium 4, not the 1Ghz version. The 1 GHz processor is now in another machine used largely for word-processing.)

 

Delander - are you from Deland, Florida? It's a town I used to visit regularly.

[delander †]

 

Delander - are you from Deland, Florida? It's a town I used to visit regularly.

 

Fraid not I'm in the UK.

 

Jeff

[jaapv]

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Thanks for all the advice offered. In practice, I may have (accidentally) solved the problem.

 

Since either Bibble or Capture One looks set to be my normal RAW-processing program, last night I de-installed about four or five earlier image-processing programs that had been supplied with various digital cameras I’ve bought over the last 10 years.

 

Many of these programs are the sort that insist in having some code permanently running in memory, so the list of processes that automatically run on startup has shrunk quite significantly.

 

Capture One can now save a file in any graphics format in about 10 seconds.

 

Over the holiday break, I intend to do a major ‘reformat and reinstall’ operation on the computer. This should remove much of the electronic detritus that has built up on the hard disks since 2005.

 

(BTW, there was an error in my original posting. I’m running a 3 GHz Pentium 4, not the 1Ghz version. The 1 GHz processor is now in another machine used largely for word-processing.)

 

Delander - are you from Deland, Florida? It's a town I used to visit regularly.

 

I found that for programs like C4 and especially Photoshop CSx you need quite a decent PC, 4 GB of RAM, a recent dual core and quite a bit of hard-disk space. If you deinstalled a number of older programs, it pays to use a program like slow-PC fighter to clean the register. That usually speeds things up quite a bit

[roydonian]

Something very strange is happening. I decided to try version 5, so de-installed 4.8, downloaded version 5, then installed the new version. I selected 30 day trial and the program seemed to open OK, but none of the major facilities (sharpening, colour correction etc) seemed to work. And in the bottom right where thumbnails of my images appear, every thumbnail has what looks like an eyeball mark – which according to some postings I’ve found via Google seems to indicate a non-valid RAW file.

 

So I de-installed version 5, and reinstalled version 4. Instead of opening with a screen that asks me which version I want to try, it now jumps straight into the programme, which now displays the same symptoms that I saw with version 5 - eyeball marks on the thumbnails, and no sharpening or colour correction etc.

 

With little to show for two days messing with software, urgent work is now rearing its head - this exercise is going to have to go on back burner.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Doug

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

 

So I de-installed version 5, and reinstalled version 4. Instead of opening with a screen that asks me which version I want to try, it now jumps straight into the programme, which now displays the same symptoms that I saw with version 5 - eyeball marks on the thumbnails, and no sharpening or colour correction etc.

{snipped}

 

First, I'd stick with V5...

 

Next, you usually only get the "eyeball" when you have a file that's been re-written by another program. You didn't "convert" your DNGs in Lightroom, say? And you're sure you're not looking at JPEGs?

 

Or RAW files on a CD or other read-only disk? That's another no-no; C1 needs to write temporary files.

[roydonian]

First, I'd stick with V5...

 

Next, you usually only get the "eyeball" when you have a file that's been re-written by another program. You didn't "convert" your DNGs in Lightroom, say? And you're sure you're not looking at JPEGs?

 

Or RAW files on a CD or other read-only disk? That's another no-no; C1 needs to write temporary files.

 

Good evening, Jamie, and thanks for trying to help.

 

 

>First, I'd stick with V5...

 

Having been a regular computer user since 1981, I follow the golden rule of never relying on the X.0 release of *any* software. (If I hadn’t succumbed to temptation and messed with 5.0 yesterday, I would not experienced any problems.)

 

 

>Next, you usually only get the "eyeball" when you have a file that's been re-written by another program. You didn't "convert" your DNGs in Lightroom, say? And you're sure you're not looking at JPEGs?

 

No and Yes respectively.

 

 

>Or RAW files on a CD or other read-only disk? That's another no-no; C1 needs to write temporary files.

 

No – these files are on one of my HDs.

 

 

 

This morning I decided that the best tactic would be to give up looking for a fix and to restore the HD from a recent backup made before installing C1 – thus eliminating the problem.

 

I then reinstalled Net 3.5 and C1 4.8.3. All is working once more. The eyeballs have vanished and C1 is doing its stuff as normal.

 

Though I do notice something strange about my 4.8.3 installation...

 

The Color profiles/DSLR folder shows a file called LeicaM9-generic.icc, but when I go to Quick/Base characteristics/ICC profile/Show all, I’m offered settings for all the other cameras in the folder, but not the M9. Not a big issue in practice, given that I have no plans to buy an M9 (unless the denizens of Solms eventually produce a silver-chrome/vulcanite version preferably with the traditional Leica script on the top plate), but it bugs me that for some reason the M9 is not appearing in the ICC options. My engineer’s brain has long accepted that small discrepancies in the behaviour of a complex device are often warning sign that something isn’t working correctly ‘under the hood’.

 

So I think I may stick with Bibble for the moment, and see how C1 behaves after I've done the massive 'format & re-install' job over the Xmas break. Then it will be running on a fairly clean machine rather than one that has been subjected to five years of software experimentation.

 

S’funny – I feel much more ‘at home’ in C1 than I do in Bibble, although I’ve had the latter programme for a couple of years.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Doug

[roydonian]

OK - problem solved.

 

I went through the list of processes that were automatically starting up when Windows loaded, and pruned it down some more. Now C1 seems to run just fine.

 

I guess that long-overdue 'reformat and re-install' is badly needed. Over the last five years I've evaluated several packages for speech recognition, OCR, and video editing, so any leftovers from these have probably made their contribution to system clutter. Also I've upgraded my operating system. Time to clean out that hard disk, I think...

 

But at least I can now check out C1 against the version that came with my M8, and against Bibble, then make my final choice of RAW-processing package.

 

Best regards,

 

Doug