Viewer performance Issues

[thibaud]

Xnview might well be one of the most full featured and highly customizable image management application that I know, it's viewer performance unfortunately is among the worse you'll find.

One of the common use of a image viewer/manager is navigating through a folder with the viewer (often in fullscreen) and reviewing each pictures in it with the next/previous navigation controls (in my case, the mousewheel).
If you happen to have a few (or more) high-res image in the folder you're viewing. this simple viewing session will end up to be more painfull than it should, You will quickly loose track of where you are in the flow because you have absolutely no visual feedback of which image the viewer is painfully loading (and eventually also resizing with it's "ubber fast" high quality resize algorithm).

so Pierre, could you please do xnview a huge favor and:
1. give it's viewer an instant preview. (just displaying a magnified thumb while it's loading would do)
2. Can't the high quality resize algorithm be optimized somehow ? (maybe caching the resized version of the image might just do the trick)

Though I would love to see xnview use the available ressources of current hardware more effectively,(it is kind of sad to see xnview perform just the same on a 8cpu+16GB ram workstation and on my 3 years old laptop) I'm not asking for improved multithreading or gpu optimisations here, but just for a few "small" fix that I'm certain would greatly improve the perceived xnview viewer performance.

[xnview]

1. give it's viewer an instant preview. (just displaying a magnified thumb while it's loading would do)

So something like a low res and after high res?

2. Can't the high quality resize algorithm be optimized somehow ? (maybe caching the resized version of the image might just do the trick)

If you take XnViewMP, there is no more 2 pass for high quality...

[thibaud]

So something like a low res and after high res?

Yes.

[JohnFredC]

Very good idea!

For me, it would not be necessary to show the low-res preview full screen.

Suggestions:

• Display a small, popup dialog with a thumb-sized image + filename while the next image loads.
  
  The dialog would appear over the existing displayed image. It would only display if the file size exceeded a user-defined limit.
  
  The loading image would not replace the displayed image until completely read.
  
  It would be useful for the dialog to have a "skip to next image" button.
  
  It would be useful for the dialog to remember its (user-defined-by-dragging) position.
  
  The thumbnail image could be retrieved from the cache.
  
  Etc.

[thibaud]

Display a small, popup dialog with a thumb-sized image + filename while the next image loads.

The dialog would appear over the existing displayed image. It would only display if the file size exceeded a user-defined limit.

The loading image would not replace the displayed image until completely read.

It would be useful for the dialog to have a "skip to next image" button.

It would be useful for the dialog to remember its (user-defined-by-dragging) position.

The thumbnail image could be retrieved from the cache.

maybe, but why go for a stretched way which usability has not been tested, when you can go for the dead simple and straightforward way also commonly adopted by other viewers. (picasa3, acdsee,etc..)

[tarc]

Xnview might well be one of the most full featured and highly customizable image management application that I know, it's viewer performance unfortunately is among the worse you'll find.

Agreed!

A fast loading preview or a thumbnail would be much appreciated.

[xnview]

Xnview might well be one of the most full featured and highly customizable image management application that I know, it's viewer performance unfortunately is among the worse you'll find.

Don't forget that i'm not ACDsee or Picasa (not the same amount of developers)