Folder Thumbs Slow... Not Cached?

[JohnFredC]

TC redisplays cached image thumbs relatively quickly (not what I'd call fast, exactly, but not too annoying).

However, TC appears to be recreating the folder thumbs every time I navigate to the parent folder. Since most of my images are quite large, this is taking seemingly forever in folders that have many subfolders. I am talking about entering a folder that has 50 sub-folders, each of which has several 20Mb pngs.

I depend on the folder thumbs to identify which folders to enter, so this behavior is seriously slowing me down.

Mr. Ghisler, please give us an option to cache the folder thumbs, too!!! Also options to always/never synchronize folder thumbs and to clear only the folder thumbs from the cache.

[icfu]

Edit:
Oops, read to quickly, sorry...

Icfu

[JohnFredC]

I just wanted to add that my thumbnail strategy has been to flat-view my image drives in thumbnail mode in advance (and yes, it does take a while), thinking that this would greatly speed subsequent navigation, since all of the thumbnails would have already been cached.

If folders were also thumbnailed (and cached, of course) during (or directly after) the flat-view image thumbnailing, then navigating through my image folders would be smooth and efficient from then on...

[ghisler(Author)]

Folder thumbs probably return the "do not cache" flag, so TC doesn't cache them...

[JohnFredC]

Folder thumbs probably return the "do not cache" flag, so TC doesn't cache them...

Hi Christian, could you elaborate on this response?

XP displays prepared folder thumbs as quickly as prepared image thumbs.

My attempt to circumvent the slowness by assigning the path to a persistent tab wasn't successful: TC rebuilds the folder thumbs every time focus shifts back to the folder, even if it is in a locked tab.

This is an important issue for me.

[ghisler(Author)]

The Windows Explorer OLE function to extract thumbnails returns a flag IEIFLAG_CACHE which tells the caller (Total Commander) whether it should cache the image or not. I guess that XP returns "do not cache", because it caches the 4 images by itself in thumbs.db, and also to re-create the images each time the folder is displayed.

[JohnFredC]

Hi Christian, thanks for responding!

I'm trying to understand your last post. Are you saying that XP is telling TC not to cache the folder thumbnails?

If so, please give us a toggle to "ignore" that message.

By way of example, Explorer displays the folder thumbs for the subfolders in my "Working" image folder in less than 5 seconds, whereas it takes TC over 3 minutes each time I enter that folder! Obviously the Explorer folder thumbs have already been cached, because there are 10GB of 60Mb images in those subfolders.

During the time TC is re-creating the folder thumbs, TC uses 10% of the CPU and 100% of the bandwidth to the drive that the subfolders are on (because access to that drive slows considerably).

This occurs each time I enter any folder with subfolders in thumbnail mode. Navigating to one of the subfolders, then back to the parent causes TC to start all over again with the folder thumbs. In case of that "Working" folder I mentioned, another 3 minutes passes before I can see the subfolder thumbs again.

Thumbs are not usable under these circumstances, so perhaps you'll appreciate my persistence with this thread.

As always, thanks for listening!

[ghisler(Author)]

Are you saying that XP is telling TC not to cache the folder thumbnails?

Yes, that's what I was saying - because XP itself caches them in thumbs.db!

By way of example, Explorer displays the folder thumbs for the subfolders in my "Working" image folder in less than 5 seconds, whereas it takes TC over 3 minutes each time I enter that folder!

That's far too long - they appear almost instantaneously here. But I don't have a folder with 10 GB of images here...

So I recommend that you add
*.
as the last excluded extension in Configuration - Thumbnails for the Explorer method, to turn off folder thumbnails (at least for folders without an extension).

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

Yes, that's what I was saying - because XP itself caches them in thumbs.db!

What happens if I have deactivated this option in Explorer? I want TC caching all thumbs.

[ghisler(Author)]

I don't know, maybe the user with the problem could try if it helps?

[JohnFredC]

The only option in Explorer that I know of disables caching of ALL thumbs, both image and folder (see Explorer->Tools->FolderOptions->View).

TCs performance with building the folder thumbs is completely understandable given the size of the pngs and jpgs in the subfolders. TC has to read and compact four 60Mb images in order to build one folder thumb. Multiply that by 30 or 40 subfolders in a folder and 3 minutes is inline with efficient hardware performance.

It's just that TC builds them over... and over... and over.

So I recommend that you add *. as the last excluded extension in Configuration - Thumbnails for the Explorer method, to turn off folder thumbnails (at least for folders without an extension).

I'll try this by way of experiment, but I need folder thumbs in both Explorer and TC and was so pleased to find that TC supported them.

Why can't TC just ignore the Explorer message and cache the thumbnails anyway? If that is not possible, then a particularly efficient approach to rebuilding the folder thumbs would be to use the already (if available) cached thumbnails of images in the subfolder for the folder thumbs.

[jesped]

I totally agree that TC should have a better support for folder thumbnails. What is the problem creating/reading the same thumbs.db created by explorer?

[JohnFredC]

I totally agree that TC should have a better support for folder thumbnails. What is the problem creating/reading the same thumbs.db created by explorer?

Apparently it is a Microsoft "secret"... that is, undocumented. It is possible to reverse engineer the thumbs.db file, but Microsoft might change it in the next version of Windows and also, reverse engineering is illegal in many countries.

[jesped]

Oh, man... this is the kind of thing that turns me on against all that micro$oft wincrap...

ACDsee does a very good job at thumbnail generation for folders, videos, etc. I know, I know... it is a monster app and the las good version was 2.4x. I'm just suggesting that something like that thumbs generator/manager will be great.

[chunwaihome]

I have rarely used the function of thumbnails cos it need to restart cache the pics everytime when you open the folders in the next time. Or the newer version should add the cache function by tc itself like acdsee.
see pic
Image: http://img159.exs.cx/img159/3629/Untitled1.jpg