Thumbnails : slow slow slow

[Pedda]

+1 Same here,

after i had uploaded all my 28.000 pictures via smb i noticed cpu load was almost constant 100% on my new ds212+. After 24h (what a short time) I decided to give up, looked in this forum and found the suggestion with the Synology Assisant. So I deleted all files from DS and started uploading via Synology Assistant. I should have read this thread before buying the device. You can be sure I wouldn't have bought it!

My Intel Core I7-2720QM @2.20GHz with 8GB Ram on 64Bit WIN7Pro with a ATI FirePro M8900 is now still busy converting/uploading now summing to a total time of at least 48 hours!!!! Just 28.132 Files in 353 Folders occupying 42,6GB. Out of the files most are JPG from 2 to 8 Mpixel cameras. 154 Files are AVI's the largest one being 199MB totaling to 3.4GB.

I can only think of one Sysnonym for the Synology Assistant = SLOW SLOW SLOW SLOW

I now have 26335 of 28240 done and i sure hope that i never need to reindex or thumbnail these again. What a pain!

This problem is an absolute NO GO SYNOLOGY! By now I am very reluctant to recommend any DS to anyone as a video or photo dlna server!

Don't get me wrong either. The device seems o.k., it's the handling of pictures and movies wich is may a solemnly say total crap!

When I get the time over x-mas I'll maybe somehow get a Twonky Server installed or i use the LogitechMediaServer 7.7.1 which I now got successfully installed with help out of this forum and just turn off the built in media server and photo station.

And please no comments like "your system is modded". Beacuase that has absolutely nothing to do with the absolute poor performance of the Synology Assisant on local PCs - yes I also tested with other PCs to be sure! Thumbnail creation was slow "out of the box" on my initial install of the DS212+ without any mods to firmware!

[metalgear]

It is very bad advertised, but the easiest way to get your photos uploaded with thumbnails is to use the Synology Assistant.

Typically, the option is hidden, download and run Synology Assistant and click the preferences and tick the photo uploader option, a new tab will appear!

You can now drag and drop your photograph collection into the window and clikc upload. Its a hell of a lot quicker than expecting the NAS's cpu to cope, also quicker than performing the telnet requests to remove the internal sharpen command line.

another thing, why on earth do Synology advertise using the java/web based photo station 5 to mange your pic upload and thumbnail creation when this is so much better?

Try it out peeps, its the best answer!

[metalgear]

Further to my last post, I can confirm that I get 13 pictures uploaded and processed with thumbnails every minute. It equated to 17hours overall, which is fast compared to the Nas doing itself, which by reckoning would have taken it a month as long as it was not asked to do anything else!

My test with photo station web based app, looked like about 3 pics a minute, so the Assistant software wins hands down.

[RPMcCormick]

Recently purchased a DS212j and outfitted it with a pair of 2TB drives (mirrored).

In the process of cleaning up my photo archive and moving it to the NAS. Have read the documentation and many posts on here and it seems the recommended way to get a large number of photos efficiently onto the NAS (so they can be used with the photo station) is to upload them with the Synology Assistant.

I'm currently using Assistant v3.2-1920 on a multi-core multi-CPU Windows 7 based system with 15k RPM drives. The transfer rate for JPG images between 5MB and 7MB averages about 5 per minute which is dismal slow.

I tried running multiple instances of the Synology Assistant on the system but it appears that's not supported.

There's no problems with efficient transfer of files via SMB to the DS212j ... albeit if its to the built-in photo share you have the issue of 100% CPU utilisation on the DS212j whilst it attempts to generate the thumbnails.

With the photos on the DS212j I would like to access them:
- with DirecTV boxes
- with web based access to DS212j photo station
- with Android tablet DS Photo + application

Any suggestions for improving the upload performance?

[surge919]

I have a DS411 and it is also painfully slow.
What is it actually doing?

[drtoneill]

I have the same problem. Thanks to the Photo Uploader tip. But that is doing only about 3 a minute. And with 13,000 to do that's still going to be 72 hours! It is of course making thumbnails for the initial 20,000 I simply uploaded using File Browser as they recommend ... hmmm.

Needless to say I'm stuck letting it churn for 3+ days now ...

[bobdaniel]

I wanted to do the thumbnailing on various PCs I have - "parallel processing - yeah". I gave up using DA and will not live long enough for my DS111 to do the job.

I used an ancient 2GHz portable. Can't remember the processor.
With 800Mb (200 .jpg files) I ran
"C:\Program Files\Synology\Assistant\ImageMagick\convert" -flatten -thumbnail 640x640 -quality 80 -auto-orient -colorspace RGB %1 x_%1.jpg
It took just under 220 seconds, so roughly 1 file per second. 10.5Mb of thumbs were produced.

Now, I don't know which thumbnails Photo Station requires. 4 or 5 get produced for each original picture. So perhaps 6 seconds per file, at worst.

It would be easy to move the produced jpgs to the DS in the right directories and rename them. But then would one have to index them? It's unclear to me what process Synology's makethumbnails goes through. And then there are the @eaDir ! Does anyone know?

[metalgear]

I have the same problem. Thanks to the Photo Uploader tip. But that is doing only about 3 a minute. And with 13,000 to do that's still going to be 72 hours! It is of course making thumbnails for the initial 20,000 I simply uploaded using File Browser as they recommend ... hmmm.

Needless to say I'm stuck letting it churn for 3+ days now ...

Ah, yes, I should point out my results are based on my PC which is a half decent spec of i7 920 @ 3.8ghz, makes a difference for this type of processing!

[surge919]

This is ridiculous.
On January 10, it had 23610 to go.
A week a later it has 23748 to go.

During this time, I've added probably about 100 pictures so that would account for a slight delay in processing all the pictures, but seriously.. it has barely moved.

I used a ReadyNAS before and the forums were great... the developers actually read and replied.. I haven't seen any response from Synology on this subject.

[stevech]

I like others knew no better and began importing pix collection of folders of pix using PhotoStation.

Using a DS212.

PhotoStation for importing - should be removed from the product. It is not viable, to be kind. Stated abruptly, it is so bad that Syno product management should have never let it get into the release.

But.. Reading the forum, I came across users saying uploading photos using Synology Assistant - the PC program - and clicking around to enable the PHOTO UPLOADER - the thumbnail generation is acceptable - about 3 seconds per typical jpeg from a point and shoot camera. It does a tree of folders - whereas snails-pace PhotoStation does only files.

The photo station itself is fair - but the UI controls are not obvious - they're hidden.
I can live with it. Need to figure out how to put a cover on each album.

Would much prefer that I type in a brief album title and have that show, not art. Words like "Julie's Birthday 2011"

[surge919]

A few days after my last post, I rolled the dice and upgraded to the 4.0 beta.
This morning, it finished the last thumbnail.
The first day after the update, it was already generating thumbnails faster than 3.2 did.

Either something was tweaked or it was a coincidence, but either way I'm happier now not having my diskstation at 100% CPU 24/7.

[sheik]

No argument from me about the thumbnailing services, it is frankly shocking that such an unpopular implementation can't be adjusted in a user-friendly manner. It's surely plainly obvious that a significant number of users would love to be able to just have basic, small, unsharpened thumbnails.

However, just in case any users on here aren't aware, unless you need Photostation then you don't need to run the thumbnailing service at all.

Personally, I watched my CPU hit 100% for a few hours, checked these forums and took the instant decision that I could live without Photostation. I stopped the thumb service, changed the permissions in Linux to make it non-executable and it's been disabled ever since* (just need to remember to do the same when I upgrade DSM).

Note I can still view photos remotely via my phone or iPad, as the DSFile app allows you to view pics. The latest update also has handy "back" and "next" arrows, so you can browse by folder name and step through your pics.

I realise this isn't close to the featureset of Photostation, but thought I'd post anyway as some people might think they are stuck with the perpetual thumbnailing on their device.


[* - lots of tutorials on how to do this on Google, eg: http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/ ... wnloading/]

[checkeys]

The same problem here on a DS212J with DSM4.0 beta. (Photostation 5)
It needs to thumbnail more then 20.000 photo's and at the current speed this will take weeks, probably a month.

The photos are directly copied from my previous NAS to the photo folder. Using synology assistant would not be a real solution, because i don't have all my photos stored locally.

Is there a user-friendly way to use the telnet solution by changing the script?

Update:
I'm now trying this solution:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=43284&p=167812&hilit=thumbnailing#p167812

I removed all the unsharp lines (using VI X) and commenting the 1280px lines (using #).

Lets see if this speeds up the process.

[peebee]

• Ditto everybody else's experience - thumbnail generation is so slow that the device is unusable.
• Mine is a DS212j
• Latest DSM 3.2-1955
• I have about 50GB of photos to upload.

Having initially uploaded all my photos via rsync, then hit the performance issues with thumbnail generation, I started reading the threads here.

I have a couple of questions to clear up before I return the device as "unfit for purpose".

I'm hoping I've missed something. I don't really want to send it back but I can't keep it as it is.

Here goes...

1) I've tried uploading from Synology Assistant->Photo Uploader.
Is this supposed to generate the thumbnail on my PC, then upload the original and thumbnail togther?
That seems a reasonable approach but doesn't achieve any performance gain.
The synology assistant on my PC is using less than 1% CPU so not doing much of the grunt work.
I'm still only getting approx 1 thumbnail per minute.

2) Is there any change in the thumbnail generation in DSM 4.0?
I can't see anything mentioned on the Beta notes.
But surely this hasn't been ignored?

3) I just logged a support call re. the above.
The email response said "this will be looked at in 3 - 5 days".
Is that usual?

4) Why are so many people defending these devices with their woeful performance?
OK, so if you don't have to use them as media servers then they may be OK as a simple fileserver. But Synology have built and sold it as a media server. So it needs to provide that function to a reasonable standard. I don't consider the performance I am seeing as anywhere near reasonable.

5) Where are the Synology tech guys on this forum???? On most other companies' forums you get a techie chipping in with tips now and then. I've not seen that. And I can't believe they're not looking at this.

As I said, I hope I've missed something and there's a quick fix.
Many thanks for your help.

[larsbengtsson25]

im using win 7 and i have about 100 gb of photos.
is there a way to close down photostation, because diskstation started a few days ago with 20000+ photos an d now its down to 19823