No sleep / standby during export

dunno whether this is a bug report or a feature request:

Photolab should keep the PC from going to standby / sleep while exporting images.

What do other users think?

Oliver

I agree it should

Many programs besides PhotoLab don’t offer the option of preventing the computer from sleeping/hibernating. But there are “wrappers” and standalone programs one can use to suppress power-saving while PhotoLab runs. Examples include Insomnia, Caffeine, and instructions you can find here:

https://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/185644-how-do-i-prevent-going-sleep-processes-active.html

Greg, are you against my feature request or do you support it?

Please name a few of these “many programs” you mention. List only those that also perform lengthy calculations like Photolab’s “export”.

I don’t care about my word processor or mail client if I’m away from keyboard but I want my Photolab export to be finished when I’m back.

Both Insomnia and Caffeine don’t seem to be able to detect when Photolab has finished the export to allow standby then. I’m always using DontSleep, current versions are able to monitor CPU utilization.

But this workaround shouldn’t bee needed - Photolab should prevent sleep itself.

As far as I see, it’s just about calling SetThreadExecutionState(ES_SYSTEM_REQUIRED) and adding a checkbox in the export dialog or the Photolab preferences whether Photolab should do so at all.

Implementing my request will not keep the Photolab developers from doing important work.

Oliver

I’m completely indifferent to your feature request, actually - neither for nor against. I just thought that some supplemental info with possible alternative/temporary solutions would be helpful to you or to others. For anything else, you can wait for others to chime in or research the topic a bit more. Best wishes.

I just set DxO Photolab to export a number of files that I knew would take around ten minutes to export, deliberately put the screen to sleep, and when I came back after ten minutes, all the files were exported.

This is on a Mac

Please implement this. Sometimes I export over 100 images and it’s really aggravating to keep waking my PC up. It should just happen automatically whenever an export is running.

  • I support the feature request*

As an experienced programmer for Windows, I have to say that Microsoft’s programming guidelines do not recommend preventing sleep mode.

It is usually an Admin privilege operation that overrides the users settings. If something else within the app code were to throw an exception, it could mean the computer is not returned to allowing sleep and the user returning to a laptop with a totally flat battery and a corrupted file system due to an unexpected shutdown; especially in the middle of writing a file.

Why not just go into the Control Panel and turn off auto-sleep yourself?

Could it be you confuse something? I don’t want Photolab to change the power settings.

“DontSleep” doesn’t require admin privileges.

this has already been written: The computer shall go to sleep if the export is finished.

Your suggestion would cause the battery to drain. My suggestion allows the PC to sleep.

And if someone does an export while on battery, he simply should not check the option to keep the PC awake if he is not sure whether the remaining charge is sufficient.

See what I wrote above: I suggest a checkbox in the export dialog where so the user can decide whether to keep the PC from sleep - just during the export, not longer.

Oliver

Hi,

I support “a checkbox in the export dialog where the user can decide whether to keep the PC from sleep - just during the export, not longer.”

That lets desktop users employ this feature all the time, and laptop users can enable it or not depending on their battery situation. No one is forced to tolerate a change they don’t like, and those of us who are aggravated by the current design have an easy fix.

Mike

Yes, this would be a very useful feature, especially for larger batches.
I think @MikeA01730 idea for an implementation is super.

Greetings Uwe