Cache maintenance?

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samfeinsilver
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Cache maintenance?

Post by samfeinsilver »

Recently. I peeled back the covers and discovered my Xnview cache folder consumed 2.8GB of space. I use Xnview mostly as a viewer and for slide shows. My thumbnails are set to large 640 x 480. JPG performance has been fine and NEF (RAW) a little slow, but I'm patient. After backing up and without really knowing what I was doing I deleted all but the most recent of cache files and it didn't seem to make any difference in performance when viewing thumbnails of my folders. I then turned off the cache and deleted everything in it and it still didn't seem to make any difference.

Can anyone give a short tutorial on cache, where it helps and what kind of user maintainence is required? Some of the files were a few years old none were terribly large, but all total, they added up to an unreasonable amount of disk space.
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Olivier_G
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Post by Olivier_G »

Some hints:
- XnView modified its cache system in a recent version (can't remember which one) and old cache was not updated -> it was worth deleting whole cache after that upgrade.
- Set Options>Browser>Cache>Compression to Lossy JPEG (High/Low quality depending on your needs. I use High quality).
- Use Cache>Optimize every now and then...

This being said, it seems you use Thumbnails as some kind of preview at 640x480. I have rather large thumbnails too, but they are 271x271 only (check here) which is enough for me to identify photos quickly and get an idea of the picture. I just switch to Fullscreen when I want more.

If you still want to keep very large thumbnails, it may be better to not use cache at all and directly use embedded images of your JPEG/NEF: it will be quite fast and will require no disk space (and this may be what you are already doing: check Options>Browser>Thumbnail>Use embedded thumbnail).
Olivier
samfeinsilver
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cache

Post by samfeinsilver »

I guess what I'm curious about is how the cache functions and if the older files are of any use. For what I'm doing it doesn't appear that the cache is of any benefit. Performance seems the same whether I have it turned on or off.

Is there a downside to not using it? Will I run into problems later? Should I be using it, but cleaning it up more often? Does "Optimize" delete old files?

I'm on 1.82.4

Thanks for your comments. I followed your link and saw your thumbnails. The pictures are very beautiful. I love the sky and the time of day. For myself I use bigger thumbnails (huge). They're really not thumbnails anymore. My eyes get weaker every year and the size is helpful while pouring through folders.
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Olivier_G
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Re: cache

Post by Olivier_G »

samfeinsilver wrote:Is there a downside to not using it? Will I run into problems later? I'm on 1.82.4
XnView uses Cache only to speed up Thumbnails display -> there is no downside to not using it if you are satisfied with speed.
I believe Options>Browser>Thumbnail>Use embedded thumbnail is checked... Is that right? (XnView then uses small embedded thumbnails already created by the camera => it's quite fast).
samfeinsilver wrote:I followed your link and saw your thumbnails. The pictures are very beautiful. I love the sky and the time of day.
Thank you very much for your kind comment... :P
Olivier
Guest

Post by Guest »

Is there actually a way to pre-cache whole directories with sub-directories, etc.? That's possible with the Adobe Bridge and it makes pre-caching much, much easier. In XnView, I constantly have to click all the folders for XnView to create the cache file - And I can only add one folder at a time (without sub-folders) in the cache settings.
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Olivier_G
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Post by Olivier_G »

Anonymous wrote:Is there actually a way to pre-cache whole directories with sub-directories, etc.?
No... not yet.
Olivier
saint_wolf

Image Cacheing

Post by saint_wolf »

Good day,

I'm a 1 year user of Xnview. So far, it has been more than great for me. I have almost 2 terabytes of date in my hdd, all media files as I am an advertising consultant.

Also, I am using Xnview version 1.94.2 Standard. I'm using a NEO laptop with core 2 duo - 2gig processor, 1 gb video card, and 2 gb memory. my problem is, through all the Xnview versions that I've used, I haven't had a successful Thumbnail Cache Optimization. My Xnview always freezes after 2 hours of optimizing, and I have to manually restart my laptop everytime. Am I doing something wrong? Also, I have been reading some of your very helpful forums and saw something about "removing" cached folders? Is this process ok, I mean, will it still keep my thumbnail cached after i do this?Can you help me with this? I'm really quite lost.

And lastly, i also have a problem with fullscreen view. My windows taskbar is always seen "on top" even when I'm in fullscreen view. This did'nt happen before I upgraded to version 1.94.2 Standard. And when in fullscreen, There is a "hole/space" in the right side of my monitor which I can see a portion my desktop. I don't know if this is a bug or something, but I haven't been able to find answers in your forum about this. If this will help, my laptop monitor is a 16:1 WXGA wide screen.

Any help would do. And more power to you! You've been a great help to many xnview enthusiasts out there. Hope you can helo me with my issues. Thanks in advance

All the best,

Tony
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Re: Image Cacheing

Post by xnview »

saint_wolf wrote:I haven't had a successful Thumbnail Cache Optimization. My Xnview always freezes after 2 hours of optimizing, and I have to manually restart my laptop everytime. Am I doing something wrong? Also, I have been reading some of your very helpful forums and saw something about "removing" cached folders? Is this process ok, I mean, will it still keep my thumbnail cached after i do this?Can you help me with this? I'm really quite lost.
No if you remove .db, you lost cached thumbnails.
But it's strange, your .db is big?
And lastly, i also have a problem with fullscreen view. My windows taskbar is always seen "on top" even when I'm in fullscreen view. This did'nt happen before I upgraded to version 1.94.2 Standard. And when in fullscreen, There is a "hole/space" in the right side of my monitor which I can see a portion my desktop. I don't know if this is a bug or something, but I haven't been able to find answers in your forum about this. If this will help, my laptop monitor is a 16:1 WXGA wide screen.
Some users have this problem but i can't reproduce it
Pierre.
saintwolf

Cache

Post by saintwolf »

Goo day Pierre,

Many thanks for the reply.

Yes, I believe my DB has gotten quite big already. last time I checked, it was already 4.66 GB. and I'm only (estimate) cacheing about 11% of my media files. 1.75 TB of media files are really troublesome. (I started cacheing about a week ago when I bought my laptop).

My Thumbnail Settings are set in default (ie. JPEG quality, DB folder location, etc.). The only thing I changed was the thumbnail size--i think its in 180x180.

I've tried ACDSee 9 Pro before, and the Thumbnail Optimization took quite long, but it was successful. But nonetheless, i'll keep on using XnView as it doesn't eat-up much system resources compared to ACDSee. This is very important for me.

But, could you advise what I should do with the optimization in XnView? I mean, I'm planning not to optimize --- ever. If I do this, will it cause any problem/s in the future?

Thanks anyway for the info on the fullscreen view, I'm just glad to know that there's nothing wrong with my laptop :D . Maybe I'll try to do some tweaking to see what's wrong with the fullscreen view. 8) .

Many thanks again & more power!


All the best,

Tony
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Olivier_G
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Re: Cache

Post by Olivier_G »

saintwolf wrote:But, could you advise what I should do with the optimization in XnView? I mean, I'm planning not to optimize --- ever. If I do this, will it cause any problem/s in the future?
Optimize is mainly to remove orphan thumbnails (ex: files deleted, moved, renamed, etc...) and reclaim space for those afterwards.
You don't need to do it if the DB size doesn't bother you. And it will work fine without optimizing it.

This being said, I still think there is an issue in the cache maintenance, although there doesn't seem to be a solution... :?
Olivier
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