Thumbnails : slow slow slow

[prestonfaiks]

Has anyone tried the beta yet? The release notes say they have made things faster.
Scroll down to item 26 on this page:
http://www.synology.com/support/beta_dsm4.1.php?lang=us

The speedup is atrributed to a "new algorithm" which makes sense becuase slow hardware can't be the only reason its so slow.

I doubt its the actual "thumbnail" that is taking so much time, it's probably the larger resized version (in my case 800 pixels wide) that you get with a standard browser. This is why the resize quality is important. Even if you click "Full Size" (most people don't) you get the resize algorithm used by the browser which tends to be fast but of low quality. I have done side-by-side comparisons and the Synology resize is of better quality than my browser resizing the full-size image.

I have a DS 109 and it does about 1000 images per day at high quality which is a long time initially (my 30k pictures would take a full month) but it took me over a decade to produce that many photos, so relatively speaking its not bad. Anything new I post is normally done within a day. This is still a lot faster than other people who have posted in this thread, so I guess I've been lucky.

I have also noticed that new thubnails are generated even if only metadata has changed in the file. I did a lot of face tagging recently and now its taking a week to catch up.

[articulate]

Hi

first time poster so apologies if this is in the wrong place.

Set up my new DS 212+ (DSM4.0) over the weekend, fully aware that there were issues in the thumbnail generation for images after having read various reviews and forums. I've spent a fair bit of the weekend trying to get the various workarounds on this forum to work for generating the thumb nails. I'm no scripting expert and unfortunately I've now got into the situation where I can only seem to generate .fail files.

The @eaDir directories are being generated for all of my files but no images at all are being generated. I've no sought to go back just to using the factory default script but with no progress (still producing .fails).

Any help / pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Is this most likely to be an error in the perl script or in the thumb.conf files?

[prestonfaiks]

I tried the 4.1 beta and I can't say that I notice it running signifigantly faster. It uses ImageMagick 6.7.6-7 2012-07-06 with the -thumbnail setting to resize. High vs Normal quality turns unsharp on/off.

One thing that it does, that I'm not sure previous versions did is use the _XL image to create the smaller versions instead of using the source image to create all the different sizes. Only the _XL thumbnail takes a long time, the others generate pretty quickly.

However the beta seems to have a bug that it creates all the _XL images first and it appears to get stuck if you are looking at the progess. Once they all get created the progress goes really fast.

I also noticed that the _XL (aka 1200 width) is used in slideshow (I had seen a post somewhere saying that it was only for ipads).

I had always stayed away from using synology assistant because of the file date issue, not realizing that they fixed it a while back. That is definitly the way to go in terms of speed, but doesn't help if you edit a file in-place (even metadata only) which ends up re-thumbnailing the image.

[phatassedj]

First I am still pretty new at these nifty devices.

Second... Please keep in mind that this issue is basically a one time set up thing.

Third... I am sure there is a good reason they did what they did and the way they did it ...but my take on Synology is that they basically run busybox and do what I have been doing to my own equipment for years... except they support it. That is awessome.

I agree that perhaps they should slap a warning that this crap is slow so that peoples expectations are correct...but really ... there is a workarround.

I implmented the instructions here: http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=52060

I am sure this has been shared in this thread. This works. It went from taking a super long time...... to evenutally completing... to getting a smart drive failure and needing to rebuild to implementing this fix to having the thumbnails generated in hours rather than weeks.

The tasks may seem a little daunting... but the poster really provided a cookbook in that post to follow. Follow it... backup any files you change ... and you should not have any problems and will be pleased with the results.


Surely it is less daunting then listening to people vent in a very very long posting.


I read some people saying that they should not have to learn linux to use this... and you don't. But you do now own a *nix box and learning a very little will make your life easier. Luckily nice people like that poster make it so all you have to learn to do is search and read.... give it a try and quit being so pissed. It will really make you enjoy your Synology so much more.

good luck.

J

[pas100]

I have 16,000 photos and since enabling Photo Station the DS212J has spent 10 hours at 100% CPU usage 'converting' just over 1000 of them so this will take over a week!!!!!!!!!

I have read the forumn about the 'fix / patch' but this is a little out of my depth and I would rather use something created by Synology

Will version DSM 4.1 (Beta) fix this issue if I update to it??

Also am I missing something here - if a forumn user has created such a great workaround I don;t understand why Synology haven't already issued an official fix along the same lines?

[JeroenVanOmme]

Use the DS assistant to upload photos, it will to the conversion on your pc instead of the (less powerful) DS.

[pas100]

The Photos are already on the DS212J so I assume it is too late to use this??

[JeroenVanOmme]

The Photos are already on the DS212J so I assume it is too late to use this??

Correct

[phillips321]

use my script here and mount the folders over NFS
[url]http://www.phillips321.co.uk/2012/04/08/creating-thumbnails-for-the-synology-diskstation-photostation/
[/url]
Good luck

[JeroenVanOmme]

use my script here and mount the folders over NFS
http://www.phillips321.co.uk/2012/04/08/creating-thumbnails-for-the-synology-diskstation-photostation/

Good luck

Nice, didn´t know this. Thanks for sharing!

[billyboyblue]

Literally a probable deal breaker for me. I was seconds away from ordering off Amazon then read this distrubing thread and was SHOCKED and I don't shock easy!

My situtation: I have over 180,000 photos of all formats, sizes plus thousands of videos, in excess of 2.5 TB worth. I had thought (sic) that any of the Synology products with the endless glowing reviews from everyone would be a perfect solution... guess not, UNLESS I'm reading something wrong. (hope so) I can't believe what I'm reading in this thread, months, even years to just do thumbnail creation if you have zillion of files like I do? What the #($(%#(!

Why? What's the hang-up? Heck, I've been a critic of Microsoft for being slow to generate thumbnails in Windows Explorer and relatively speaking that bow wow software riddled with endless bugs is blistering fast (does about 20 thumbnails a second) on a Quad core 1.8GHZ non over clocked PC, which still takes some time, BUT we're talking minutes, maybe hours, depending which and how many files. I DON'T GET IT! I feel a panic attack coming on!

Just to compare, right now I hooked up a USB 1.0 (yeah that old a clunker)external drive to my Neatgear Router and using WiFi and several different FREE Android applications was able to "see" thumbnails from my external drive being generated at about 5 a second and they all show fine on my Asus Transformer TF700 tablet. Steaming said MPEG-2 format vids or TIFF or JPEG images worked fine, was fast, without a hitch as EXPECTED. Duh!

Obviously, my intention in getting a Synology product was to move content from all my external drives (lost count how many I have) and several PC's to one central storage area and do what I just described above.

Are you saying I can't because it first would take forever to general thumbnails, or is that only if I use Synology software?

Help... I'm about what to jump out the window, and I'm 10 floors up...thankfully, the window is stuck shut.

[pas100]

This just had to be said!

I am really pleased with my DS212J and teh responses I have received from this forumn have been first class

However I had uploaded 15,000 photos to the DS before loading Photo Station and at current rates it will take 12 days!!! to complete the conversion process - I just cannot comprehend how rubbish this is!

I have seen posts re 'scripts' created by forumn users but unfortunately this is beyond by level of IT expertise and especially given they come with ‘no warranty’ I can afford to lose or corrupt my DS212J as it has import work documents on there

Why oh Why haven’t Synology themselves fixed this issue? Or supply a ‘fool proof guide for dummies’ to address this issue

Given how good the product is and the forums I find it hard to believe Synology have not addressed this issue. I am also concerned that my DS212J running at 100% CPU capacity for 12 days not stop can’t be healthy either!

Very very disappointing

[pas100]

Just had my post removed becuase I dare to say this was Garbage with no response to my question posed juts a forum to trawl through with hundreds of replies that don't answer the question I raised

VERY poor response from synology indeed

[pas100]

The first line of this fix reads:

open an administration console (i.e. using Putty, note the user name is "root" and not "admin". The password is the same one).

Lost at the very first hurdle and I am an experienced Windows User

This one item with a total lack of meaningfull response from Synology has tainted my whole view of them

Won't be buying Synology again and will give appropriate feedback on my purchase - what a shame!

[Chilly]

Upgraded my DS-212j 2 days ago. I have 12 GB of photos stored on the NAS that is configured as SHR. According to the systemlog, my NAS works fine.

After the upgrade I got the message that a converting process of my photos is taking place and the leds are continuous flikering, indicating that the drives are active. The number of photos that need to be converted however, are increasing during the conversion process instead of decreasing, according to the system message.

After 2 days of converting (the system indicates: 25000 photos need to be coverted), I shut down the NAS because I was afraid that the NAS will broke down.

Anyone experience this ?