Digital Art Zone

It seems that since I’ve updated to 4.5 (both versions…114 and 137), it takes forever to get Studio open.  it is measured in minutes…it varies, but is most often around 2.  There is also a fair amount of drive activity at the same time.  It’s as if CMS is doing a complete scan every time I start. 

If this is the case, is there a way to tame CMS.

I run in Linux, under WINE…

Also, CMS starts and stops when I open Studio.

Hi…

I noticed that my 4.5 (either .114 or .137) takes longer to start if I left any of my Content Libraries open in a Poser Formats directory when I closed DS.

If they are all on DAZ Studio Formats, then it opens fairly quick. But then when I first switch to a Poser Format directory it takes forever for those folders to open the first time.

I can only believe that DS is performing some sort of ‘categorization’ of the Poser folders that it doesn’t have to do for the DS folders when you first start DS or when you first open a Poser directory.

Anyway, that’s just what I have noticed. I could just be imagining it all or be way off…

nicci…

This was same for me when I started to use it. But now, after about 2 weeks it is fast now.

I just timed thi.

My version of DS 4.5.0.137 takes about 15 seconds to complete loading, that includes the base genesis figure finished loading in the viewport as well, and it is the first time today since booting that I have loaded it.  Later on, it will load slightly faster than that because of caching (I assume).

I am using the 64 bit version, i7 Intel chip, 16 GB RAM, Win 7 Home Prem.  All of the version 4 DS versions have been much faster to load for me, but 4.5 is the fastest yet.

I noticed the slow down in start up speed as well. I stopped genesis opening at start up which increased the speed somewhat but is still noticably slower than DS4 for me.

As a test, I stopped CMS…it opened a little faster and switching between DS format and Poser content folders became a lot faster…but the decrease in start up time wasn’t anything near enough to what 4.0 opened in…or 3, for that matter.

DS4 starts slower than DS3 for me, but I haven’t noticed a difference between 4 and 4.5.  I use Categories, however, so my Content Library is almost always opened there rather than the DS or Poser formats sections.

I have pinned down my slow starts to QtGui4.dll taking forever to initialize.

Looking over the Qt dev forums, it seems that there was a similar issue, on some systems a few versions back.  There didn’t seem to be a ‘fix’ for it, as it ‘went away’ in later versions or it could be ‘solved’ by rolling back to the previous version.  It could also be eliminated by rebuilding the Qt libraries (compiling from source) on the affected systems

So, basically, it boils down to something about the specific build of Qt in 4.5 not being happy with my system…not enough to crash, in fact it is very stable…I’ve only had 3 crashes and 2 of those were the results of ‘torture testing’ and the third as an out of memory crash (Note to self: don’t turn off the limits on subdivision and then try to subdivide a simple cube 16 times…it WILL eat ALL of your RAM and then crash).

So, I’m doing a little playing/investigating…

If anyone knows, it would help.

Are there any ‘special’/custom settings/options or is the Qt in DS a ‘plain vanilla’ build?

What is the exact version of Qt in 4.5.1.6? (I’m thinking it’s 4.8.1..)

(Yes, I’m thinking of compiling my own Qt libs from source to see if I can pin it down any further than I have.)

Also, from trollling around the Valintina Db documentation, I came across a possible solution for the slow switches and what not with the various content ‘options’.  A simple change to the CMS’s ini file pretty much solved the problem for me.  All that needs to be changed is is the value for CacheSize (under Vkernel), by default it is 10 MB.  It can go as high as half your system RAM but the Valintina folks don’t recommend going THAT high.  32, 64 or 128 would be good values…with 64 probably being more than enough for most people.  32 wiuld probably work for most.

What this does is move the cache to RAM, which is much faster than swapping to disk…which a 10MB, even though my content database isn’t THAT big, was happening a bit when switching.

Loading time will vary. I tried this, dropped all added Content (ds3) folders and Runtimes (free items for me just in a Poser runtime format) and only had the Standard My Library mapped. Booted in 18 or so seconds, Added the DS3 folder jumped to 35 seconds, added both my Free Runtimes right back to 52 seconds. I believe Runtimes add read time and the order of them might have a bit to do with it as well. I only have the Four content folders so I can not test this further.

EDIT: The previous post explains a lot. Sorry.

I’m talking 5 to 7 minute load times for the initial startup. 

With upping the cache size, switching between DS content is now nearly instantaneous while going to Poser is maybe 30 seconds, but for start up it doesn’t matter where I leave it ( DS or Poser), it takes the same.

Meduim sized content library spread over a dozen or so folders, 32 bit Vista Dual core, 3.25 GB Ram DS4.5.1.6, CMS working, first start of the day, 21 seconds to start and load a blank scene.

mjc1016 - 16 October 2012 05:56 PM

I’m talking 5 to 7 minute load times for the initial startup. 

With upping the cache size, switching between DS content is now nearly instantaneous while going to Poser is maybe 30 seconds, but for start up it doesn’t matter where I leave it ( DS or Poser), it takes the same.

When DS4.5 starts up it scans the folder that is open in the content library tab.  If this is a heavily populated folder, then it can take some time to start.  The problem is not near as severe with 4.5.1.6.

Kendall

The first line of the log file reports QT 4.8.1

prixat - 17 October 2012 08:42 AM

The first line of the log file reports QT 4.8.1

Found that…

Unfortunately, other than DS3, which doesn’t use the same Qt version and starts quickly, I don’t have any other Qt Windows apps on here…or at least any that use a very recent build…a couple of Qt3 ones…

For some reason, I ended up checking my partitions, last night and much to my shock, the partition everything is on…program, content and so on, was formatted in FAT32, not NTFS, like I thought it was. 

I moved everything to a NTFS partition and DS starts much faster…no longer taking 5 minutes.  Now to run some more tests.

mjc1016 - 21 November 2012 08:56 AM

For some reason, I ended up checking my partitions, last night and much to my shock, the partition everything is on…program, content and so on, was formatted in FAT32, not NTFS, like I thought it was. 

I moved everything to a NTFS partition and DS starts much faster…no longer taking 5 minutes.  Now to run some more tests.

Use ext4 and it’ll get even faster.

Kendall