topic Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives in Camera Software

Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

BlueNose — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:11:49 GMT

Quad-Core i7 3.4 GHZ CPU and 16 GB Ram

windows 10 x64 Pro

Program works well and I rely on it to help process a large number of photos from 5 cameras.

However it is loading very slowly and Freezing or slowing down when using it. This behaviour has become a very serious problem in trying to use it.

I ran procmon.exe (microsoft sysinternals) to see what is was doing when the program froze for minutes at a time.

Procmon.exe reported that dpp4main.exe is scanning and opening files on both my C: drive and 😧 drive and each time it DPP locked up completely it was when it tried to open a 100+ GB zip file. The slowdown occurred when it went out and searched my gaming directories on another drive, another freeze occurred when it was opening multi GB .pst files.
Support told me i just needed to set the default directory - but that didn't work.

Is there anyway to to stop DPP 4.5.10 or DPP 4.5.20 from scanning my directories and files ????

I'm assuming at the moment that it is trying to find and index photos but it's crazy to do this on multi terrabyte drives filled with a huge number of files. Worse it seems to kick off to scan the files while i'm working on photos - freezing the program for long periods.

[Removed to protect your privacy]

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

Tim — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 20:20:13 GMT

Hello BlueNose,

It seems that a lot of the issues that you are experiencing are the same as in another forum post that has been gone over by several esteemed contributors on this forum. At this time I am not aware of a method to have DPP not scan the files and drives. Unfortunately that is part of the operation of the program at a fairly base level.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

BlueNose — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 04:18:23 GMT

I found the source of the worst of the problem. Every time i run the program and delete files, when I exit the program starts or leaves another process of the same name still running invisibly and holding onto 80 to 120 MB of memory. When I start the program again that is when the problem becomes much worse and each time I do this it adds another instance to this back ground process. When I've had the worst experience there have been as many as 4 or these background processes running.

I've terminated the background version after I close the program manually using the task manager to kill it. This significantly improves the performance but it still seems to freeze the program when I delete files or sometimes when i move from picture to picture. In every case I see file activity where the program is going into directories that are not photo related.

Also when I've been running procmon.exe I've noticed that it goes into a loop and keeps opening and closing the registry and files. I really like DPP but the constant freezes are so annoying i may have to roll back to 4.3 just so i can process pictures in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

sensia25 — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 12:00:53 GMT

I am in the same boat and likewise found out dpp4main is scanning needless directories some of which are in my network locations. This is slowing down things terribly. I am hoping Canon will step to fix their problem.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

RobertTheFat — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 21:56:34 GMT

@sensia25 wrote:
I am in the same boat and likewise found out dpp4main is scanning needless directories some of which are in my network locations. This is slowing down things terribly. I am hoping Canon will step to fix their problem.

As are we all. I just hope that they even can. I keep having this nightmare that they contracted the design and implementation of this turkey out to some schlock software house and now don't even have the source code - or at least don't have the necessary manpower to understand it and fix the contractor's design errors. I sure hope that isn't the case, but that hope wanes as time keeps passing with no discernible improvement. I guess if I were Adobe, I'd be having a good laugh.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

Waddizzle — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 22:22:04 GMT

@sensia25 wrote:
I am in the same boat and likewise found out dpp4main is scanning needless directories some of which are in my network locations. This is slowing down things terribly. I am hoping Canon will step to fix their problem.

I am running Windows 10, and I don't have that problem. Check your Windows File Exlorer and Media Player settings. I have mine disabled, so that Windows doesn't automatically search memory sticks for media files. Windows Media Player itself can perform automatic searches, too, looking for files to add to its' library.

Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. I haven't observed any of this searching, on any of my machines.

[EDIT]. If it makes any difference, I'm running Windows 10 Professional, not the Home version.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

BlueNose — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 22:46:12 GMT

I've finally resolved the situation. Slowdowns are gone. I've been able to move back to the current version.

Main source of problem is that DPP does not display error messages when problems occur especiially with memory.

1) I had a virtual ethernet connection for my virtual machines on my computer. This may have been part of the reason why it kept searching for files. disabling the virtual ethernet connection reduced the issue with searching files. But the slowdown and outright freezing of the program coninued.

2) The rest of the problems went away when I increased my virtual memory paging file from the recommended of 3GB to 16GB (amount of memory on the workstation). Using a fixed size paging file improves performance in windows. Unfortunately DPP's demand for memory seems to have been hitting the 3GB marker and I should have gotten some form of memory error message. But no message.

Increasing it to 16GB is probably overkill but the fixed size paging file at 16GB on an SSD eliminated almost 99% of the delays and stopped the freezing of the program. Still get a slow down when I hit delete rejected photos when I'm doing this for a large number of photos i.e. 50 to 300 but that is a slowdown that is manageable if I delete files in groups of 1- 30 photos.

Also I no longer see dormant multiple DPP processes being left behind when i close DPP after a editing session.

So all my problems are basically solved. Thank you all for your help.

Note: to those having slow downs - try setting your paging file to fixed size and make it as large as your total RAM installed.

Or make it at least 6GB in size. This will also help reduce delays when running other programs.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

Waddizzle — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 23:32:08 GMT

@BlueNose wrote:
I've finally resolved the situation. Slowdowns are gone. I've been able to move back to the current version.
Main source of problem is that DPP does not display error messages when problems occur especiially with memory.
1) I had a virtual ethernet connection for my virtual machines on my computer. This may have been part of the reason why it kept searching for files. disabling the virtual ethernet connection reduced the issue with searching files. But the slowdown and outright freezing of the program coninued.

2) The rest of the problems went away when I increased my virtual memory paging file from the recommended of 3GB to 16GB (amount of memory on the workstation). Using a fixed size paging file improves performance in windows. Unfortunately DPP's demand for memory seems to have been hitting the 3GB marker and I should have gotten some form of memory error message. But no message.

Increasing it to 16GB is probably overkill but the fixed size paging file at 16GB on an SSD eliminated almost 99% of the delays and stopped the freezing of the program. Still get a slow down when I hit delete rejected photos when I'm doing this for a large number of photos i.e. 50 to 300 but that is a slowdown that is manageable if I delete files in groups of 1- 30 photos.
Also I no longer see dormant multiple DPP processes being left behind when i close DPP after a editing session.

So all my problems are basically solved. Thank you all for your help.

Note: to those having slow downs - try setting your paging file to fixed size and make it as large as your total RAM installed.
Or make it at least 6GB in size. This will also help reduce delays when running other programs.

That's good news, and even better detective work. It makes sense, though. DPP4 likes to have lots of memory space. i can''t say what the minimum amount you need to make the program run efficiently, but budget laptops don't seem to have enough. Having a separate graphics card seems to help, too.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

sensia25 — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 01:58:27 GMT

Thanks Bluenose; I will give it a shot but doubt that is a solution. DPP4 hardly ever eats more than 4GB of RAM. DPP4 does not haveto be the special snowflake as everything else runs smoothly on varible pagefile settin on Wndows10.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

isthar — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 15:21:05 GMT

I want to +1 something has to be done. The app appears to be file monitoring (probably for the filesystem tree) but it's ridiculous - I get a spinning cursor all the time, when I was just extracting a zip file from my drive to the network!

If they can't do anything other than think it is a good idea to listen and react to EVERY file system event somehow, please offer us a filter, a watch point (root folder to monitor from) OR limit it to bookmark locations or open/selected folders OR allow us to turn it off and just offer a goddam refresh button.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

sensia25 — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 16:49:13 GMT

I get it isthar. It's the worst piece of Canon software that I use till date.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

isthar — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 16:58:11 GMT

well here's the thing...

I loved lightroom but f*** adobe for going cloud pricing. just let me buy it once.

paintshoppro... well... just reeks of 1990s programming full of files and processes and intrusive drm services...

and to be honest I just used DPP with my new camera and I like it!

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

RobertTheFat — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:24:38 GMT

@isthar wrote:
well here's the thing...

I loved lightroom but f*** adobe for going cloud pricing. just let me buy it once.
paintshoppro... well... just reeks of 1990s programming full of files and processes and intrusive drm services...
and to be honest I just used DPP with my new camera and I like it!

I've never been a LR user so consider the source, but ...

Didn't Adobe effectively have cloud pricing long before they formally "went to" it? IOW, didn't they adamantly refuse to provide routine updates to LR, thereby forcing their users to buy a new version every time a new camera came out? That's certainly how it appeared to an outside observer.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

isthar — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:35:52 GMT

you have a point, however, there is to me a ... feeling thing. I despise the idea nowadays that you are lent things for an interminable fee. that is, let's push this a bit. i sign up. here adobe! $100 a year! ... and i forget about it. or i die. or i just swear of cameras.... well, what's the state of things if you do nothing? ten years later... $1000 dollars.

with owned software you are in control. it is your choice.

well, all this to say that I AM enjoying DPP ... and do wish the file scanning thing gets fixed!

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

RobertTheFat — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 23:11:30 GMT

@isthar wrote:
you have a point, however, there is to me a ... feeling thing. I despise the idea nowadays that you are lent things for an interminable fee. that is, let's push this a bit. i sign up. here adobe! $100 a year! ... and i forget about it. or i die. or i just swear of cameras.... well, what's the state of things if you do nothing? ten years later... $1000 dollars.

I'm not necessarily trying to defend the concept of rented software, but I don't think that's quite how it works. Usually there's an authorization code, and if it expires and you don't renew it, the software just stops working. You don't have to pay for time that passes after your lease runs out.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

Waddizzle — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:47:42 GMT

@isthar wrote:
you have a point, however, there is to me a ... feeling thing. I despise the idea nowadays that you are lent things for an interminable fee. that is, let's push this a bit. i sign up. here adobe! $100 a year! ... and i forget about it. or i die. or i just swear of cameras.... well, what's the state of things if you do nothing? ten years later... $1000 dollars.

with owned software you are in control. it is your choice.

well, all this to say that I AM enjoying DPP ... and do wish the file scanning thing gets fixed!

I don't have that problem. i changed my Windows 10 settings to not to automatically scan new thumb drives for media files. I made the same the change in Windows Media Player, too.

Re: Digital Photo Professional 4.5.x Slowdown and Freezing caused by program scanning drives

BlueNose — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 02:13:00 GMT

No response and 4.6.10 has the same problems. procmon.exe finds that DPP freezes on me when it finds a zip file anywhere on any harddrive. I've buried them on other harddrives deep in the directory system and it still continues to look and find these huge files and tries to open them causing the software to hang for minutes as it keeps failing because of the file sizes. I really need a way to stop DPP from trying to open huge files on my hardrives. I can't be the only person who has huge files on their drives. If this was anything but the canon software I would assume it was behaving like a trojan and searching for confidential files for identity theft or some other purpose.

Please Canon provide a switch to turn off this file searching behaviour (outside of the working directory).