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Slowww! Try a clean catalog?

L

L Robbin

Active Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2019
Messages
199
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
5.x
Lightroom Version
12.4
Operating System
  1. macOS 13 Ventura
The quest to rid life of the BBBD goes on. I received this advice awhile back. Only now am I starting to apply the advice,
See below.

"Make copy of your Master catalog and Begin by creating a new empty catalog file and import a few images into it to see if the problems are related to the new catalog too.
If the problems turn out to be in the old master catalog, Importing the old Master catalog into the new catalog will copy the records from the database tables and leave behind any orphaned data and detritus ( You will not lose any good data)"

How do I make a copy of the master catalog? Do I go into finder? Which catalog files do I copy? Do I keep the copy of the Master catalog in Pictures? Or somewhere else?

I don't want to take any chances of ruining years of work by somehow and somewhere messing up the master catalog.
 

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That sounds like my advice to try to ID and correct the source of a corrupt catalog producing the Bouncing Beach Ball of Death (BBBD).

Your catalog file is the one named with the ".lrcat" extension. By default it is located in the Lightroom sub folder of Pictures. You make a copy of it like you would any other file using Finder. By making a copy, you make certain that your original master catalog file is backed up before you go forward trying to make changes. A copy of the master catalog is as good as the original and a fall back position if you some how screw up.
 
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I don't recall why your are getting the BBBD. At what point? After multiple edits or just a few? I suppose all the basics were covered. Do you shut down the app periodically and check the two boxes in the dialogue box, Test Integrity and Optimize? I follow this pretty closely.

There are some tips about the order to make adjustments. I'm using Mac as well and since Adobe fixed memory leaks and improved performance I have found the order of adjustments is not as critical.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
 
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clee01l said:
That sounds like my advice to try to ID and correct the source of a corrupt catalog producing the Bouncing Beach Ball of Death (BBBD).

Your catalog file is the one named with the ".lrcat" extension. By default it is located in the Lightroom sub folder of Pictures. You make a copy of it like you would any other file using Finder. By making a copy, you make certain that your original master catalog file is backed up before you go forward trying to make changes. A copy of the master catalog is as good as the original and a fall back position if you some how screw up.
Click to expand...
The new clean catalog works ok. I will see if it gets rid of the BBBD, But....
I don't see how to import from the old catalog. Is export from the old catalog the best way to go?
 
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L Robbin said:
The new clean catalog works ok. I will see if it gets rid of the BBBD, But....
I don't see how to import from the old catalog. Is export from the old catalog the best way to go?
Click to expand...

Lightroom Classic has a function called “Import from Another Catalog”. Open you new empty catalog and invoke this function from the menu to import the contents of the old catalog that is misbehaving.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
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Zenon said:
I don't recall why your are getting the BBBD. At what point? After multiple edits or just a few? I suppose all the basics were covered. Do you shut down the app periodically and check the two boxes in the dialogue box, Test Integrity and Optimize? I follow this pretty closely.

There are some tips about the order to make adjustments. I'm using Mac as well and since Adobe fixed memory leaks and improved performance I have found the order of adjustments is not as critical.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
Click to expand...
 
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clee01l said:
Lightroom Classic has a function called “Import from Another Catalog”. Open you new empty catalog and invoke this function from the menu to import the contents of the old catalog that is misbehaving.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Well, after I imported my catalog to another catalog, LR worked sparkingly well - moving along fine, no BBBD.
Now the BBBD has returned! As far doing anything I'm paralyzed.
Suggestions?
I have the latest versions of LR and Ventura................
 
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You may have checked all these...

but ....

From a distance... it looks to me that something is stressing your system .... My first point of call and easiest to fix is replace all cables to external drives , with branded cables which exceed the spec required.

Are external drives dependent on power from the computer....

This, combined with flakey connections through a powered hub are big offenders .... have seen major corruption and 100's of 1000's images lost ....

Disk drive in decline..... often characterised initially by slow performance and multiple i/o errors .... not always visible to the end user....

If peripherals not the issue... then faulty memory becomes the next target.

Check also if dust has clogged up everything and overheating might be an issue.... Does the room overheat... high / low humidity .... ie environmental factors...
 
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I will look into it.
No issues with PS
Only LR.
I also uninstalled LR and then re-installed it.
 
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L Robbin said:
Now the BBBD has returned! As far doing anything I'm paralyzed.
Click to expand...
Have you looked at what else is running when the BBBD comes up? Activity monitor may indicate something else is running? Where are you storing your catalog and photos; local disk, cloud?
 
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I make a point of excluding the Catalog (and its related folders and sub folders) and folders containing images from anti Virus scans.

This can be a double whammy.... loading lots of images onto disk, building previews, updating catalog database info and then trying to add virus scanning at the same time.

I also notice on Mac that I need to check all the external drives containing images are always excluded. Sometimes they sneak back onto the drives / folders to be scanned (prob due to history of plugging in and out external drives).
 
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Paul_DS256 said:
Have you looked at what else is running when the BBBD comes up? Activity monitor may indicate something else is running? Where are you storing your catalog and photos; local disk, cloud?
Click to expand...
All that is dominating in the activity monitor is Lightroom.
 
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Gnits said:
I make a point of excluding the Catalog (and its related folders and sub folders) and folders containing images from anti Virus scans.

This can be a double whammy.... loading lots of images onto disk, building previews, updating catalog database info and then trying to add virus scanning at the same time.

I also notice on Mac that I need to check all the external drives containing images are always excluded. Sometimes they sneak back onto the drives / folders to be scanned (prob due to history of plugging in and out external drives).
Click to expand...
Honestly I will hve to look into the above. I don't know what anti-virus program I have. Now I do have MacPaw that I run. It helps clear RAM. It helps maintain the drives.
So... you are saying stop scanning my external hard drives which only carry images? And exclude image files on my main hard drives and also exclude the Catalog? What anti virus program would you suggest? Are you familiar with with MacPaw?
 
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My main system is Win, so I am reluctant to give advice re Virus Protection on Mac.

On my Win system I have all my Lr images for last 18 months approx under a single folder on my internal Ssd and I have all my legacy Lr images under a single folder on a spinning disk. So it is real easy for me to exclude all my image files from my Virus Scanner (and include same folders for scheduled backups).

I know others who have lots of external drives and images spread across disk drives, so excluding these from a virus scanner can be hard wirk.
 
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Yeah, I have 2019 photos on the primary drive and other photos spread across several other drives.
Is there an anti virus program you can fine tune so it won't scan image files?
 
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Paul_DS256 said:
Have you looked at what else is running when the BBBD comes up? Activity monitor may indicate something else is running? Where are you storing your catalog and photos; local disk, cloud?
Click to expand...
Attached is my activity monitor,
Uf anyone can interpret for clues of what is going on.
 
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