Thank you Mike,

112: a cautious it's better. So far there's no messy screen updates.

However if I use the "high quality" display for page editing, normal sized images display properly but large images (250MB and greater) simply don't display. In the latter case the busy cursor will display and hard drive shows very busy, but in the end nothing is displayed and I have to resort to Ctl-Alt-Del and kill QImage.

If I use the low res page edit option ("Thumbs/Small Images") all images display quickly regardless of size.

When I printed an image using 112 the usual "Clear Queue" prompt didn't appear. Ultimately I found that it was "there" but didn't have top focus. Haven't experienced that before.

I have turned 3D Graphics on again.

Peter

Thanks Fred,

Yes, the hour glass stops ... and HD activity finally ceases. I'm using Windows 7 64 bit 2.5GB RAM (in a virtual machine on a Mac, not that that should have any significant effect). I wait as long as can be reasonably be expected and then some.

Actually, for most of my page edits the low resolution display of the images is fine and is fast.

Peter

Thanks again Fred.

I just checked the RAM allocation to my Win 7 and its actually 3GB (forgot that I increased it to accommodate large panorama stitching. Mac host has 8GB RAM).

There's still around 2GB free with a couple of large TIFFs loaded in QU.

The QU memory display is exactly as shown on your screen capture!

Peter
 

**See Stop Press at bottom **

For example a 500MB TIF 16bit 22548x3753, with no modifications etc, loaded on an A4 page:

1/ Page edit button clicked and displayed in seconds as set to the low res display.

2/ While in page edit screen changed to high res ("All Images") and the image redisplayed correctly in about 2-3 minutes.

3/ Left high res setting on and exited page edit.

4/ Immediately re-entered page edit again and the same image was eventually displayed in 8-10 minutes. During the process the free RAM dropped from about 2GB to just below 1.6GB. Once displayed, the free RAM went back up to just over 2GB.

5/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image displayed in about 45 seconds ! While loading, the page edit screen displayed a "partial refresh", showing remnants of the main screen.

6/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image displayed in between 10 to 13 minutes. The page edit screen remained clean throughout until image was displayed. Free RAM went down to 1.6 GB while processing and back up to 2GB when displayed. After exited page edit, ie back to main QU screen, free RAM increased to 2.3GB.

7/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image hadn't displayed in 13 mintues. This time while waiting, page edit screen showed remnants of main edit screen. CPU load was low and disk activity ended up negligible. At end I Alt-TABed to check free RAM which was 1.6GB. Alt-TABing back again was unresponsive. QU wouldn't display in any form.

8/ Aborted QU.

While processing, the QU RAM use went from about 265MB up to about 750MB.

And so on!

Thanks

Peter

STOP PRESS!

Not giving up, I decided to explore other options.

Thinking out of the square, I allocated only 1 CPU core to Win7 rather than 2 (of the 4).

High res ("All Images") Page Edit display of the same 500MB image as above repeatedly loaded in 10 to 14 seconds!!

Two image on page (total 750MB) loaded in 34 seconds!

The 2 core allocation works fine in other multi-threaded applications.

My question: Is QU multi-threading during "page edit" display and if so does it have an inefficiency/bug, particularly apparent with large images?    
  
Hoping all this helps, Mike.

Peter



  

Thanks Mike. Did you read my STOP PRESS (maybe I was writing it while you were replying)?

CPU i7 2.66GHz plenty of disk space.

Peter



 

Thanks very much for the responses Mike.

The 10-14 sec loading for a 500MB image are comparable with your times.

However:
The "normal" image loading times with only 1 CPU core didn't last! Have reverted to 2 as other W7 programmes run well. Tried fixing page file at 4.5GB (was 3GB auto) and tried turning off ZoneAlarm. No better. It's the inconsistency that is confusing.

Can work well a few times and then goes into snail mode.

The plot thickens. No big deal for me because "low res" page editing is often all I need.

Peter

Thanks for the comment Ray.

That's food for thought.

 I have tried setting the page file much larger but not smaller.

QU operates without ever getting near to using all the RAM. Whereas my panorama programme, which runs perfectly, consumes nearly all of the RAM and so more likely to need the page file.

That being said, I'll check out your suggestions.

Peter