File indexing: display progress % complete and estimate of remaining time

Rationale: File indexing can last for several hours, with no estimate for % complete and time left.

It took about 24 hours to index my 250K images.

Wow!!! Digital has so changed photography. In the days of film, that would have been over 4,100 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film, or 25,000 rolls of 120 film for a 6x7 camera. How long do you think it would have taken to develop, print and catalogue that lot? :crazy_face:

and how much would you have paid for that?

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Hi there ! Could you vote for the % completed suggestion ?

I think I might have found a problem with indexing on a Mac. I gave up indexing around 10k photos after waiting more than 48 hours. However, I’ve indexed these same photos before, but recently moved them on to a new, faster external drive, although this time is taking way longer.
The new drive is fast, but extremely noisy when accessing the disk, so I notice when something is happening. I use multiple desktops on my Mac, and my habit is to set the indexing running and move to another desktop. Eventually I realised the drive was only operating at speed when I was on the active window of PL4 on the desktop it resides. Consequently, I think background processing is not happening.
Any other experience on this?
Either way, I support the need for information on the indexing.

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Could you click on the vote button ?

My CLIENTS used to pay for that.

Gary,

Yes same here. I have asked a question in this post Indexing multiple folders - is it broken?

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I’ve deleted the database(s) a few times and re-indexed my photo structure containing a total of about 25’000 image files. Different versions of DPL take different amounts of time.

  • DPL v2: 25-30 minutes (measured over several runs)
  • DPL v3: 25-30 minutes (measured over several runs)
  • DPL v4: Several hours (measured once, never bothered to repeat)

In order to get a fresh database in DPL4, I go through the following steps

  1. Delete DPL v4 database files
  2. Backup DPL v3 database, wait until DPL launches again, quit DPL v3
  3. Delete DPL v3 database
  4. Launch DPL v3 and let it index the photo structure from its root folder (<30 minutes)
  5. Copy the DPL v3 database file over to where the DPL v4 usually resides
  6. Rename the DPL v3 database so that it looks like a DPL v4 database
  7. Launch DPL v4

When DPL v4 is launched, it reconfigures the database within 2 minutes.
When I then search in DPL v4, I find all files (of the photo structure) with DPL v4 search.

I cannot be sure if the “migration” works losslessly, but I’m not ready to wait until DPL v4 has indexed the structure. If there is a difference, it has not been significant yet.

Note that DPL is not my prod system. I use LrC to manage my photos.