Screen frozen during export of php files

MartinS · 2014-11-30 20:57:07

I haven't come across a similar problem although another Martin (.martin) had posted a different sort of rendering delay issue.

My problem is that every time I export a gallery, Lightroom appears to freeze up. The LR window turns largely white, except for a small progress bar top left. This screen remains frozen, and the computer virtually unusable, even including for all practical purposes the task bar, until LR has finished generating the php files and switches to purely rendering the jpgs, which proceeds quite normally and acceptably, at a rate of a couple of seconds per image. Generating each php file takes longer than the rendering of a jpg, so this hanging around is using up an hour for a gallery of a few hundred images while the pc is unusable. The export process demands the pc's entire assets, it would appear.

No doubt this is a pc-related issue. It certainly has nothing to do with recent updates (for which I am grateful, Matt) and presumably must be related to video memory or suchlike. When I can get task manager to work while LR is exporting, I can see that roughly 4GB of my total 8GB on-board RAM is in use. Since I am anything but knowledgeable on memory matters, I wondered if any forum members could point me in the right direction.

This only happens with LR TTG export and not with any other software. It also did not happen with CE2 or CE3 but I appreciate that CE4 makes a lot of demands on a pc's processors.

For what it is worth my system information is:
Windows7 home premium
SP1 build 7601
x64-based pc
Intel core i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz, 2934 Mhz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
Installed physical memory (RAM) 8.00GB
Total physical memory 7.96GB
Available physical memory 3.80GB (this was while LR was running)
Total virtual memory 15.9GB
Available virtual memory 10.6GB
Page file space 7.96GB

Just to reiterate, there is only a hang-up while the gallery php files are being generated, not with any other process. If anyone has an idea, I should be most grateful.

rod barbee · 2014-12-01 00:07:53

wow. That's a lot of ram for LR to be taking up. On my system it seems to be a ram hog at times. I end up quitting LR and restarting. That seems to speed things up. for awhile.
What version of LR are you running?

For what it's worth, if you switch to Publisher you won't have to put up with exporting galleries anymore.

MartinS · 2014-12-01 00:43:23

Yes, I tend to restart LR quite frequently to clear its system out someway or another. That helps for a while, but the more images one works on, the higher the memory use goes. I always update LR as soon as an update becomes available and am now running 5.7. And Matt's updates of a couple of days ago. And Windows every month...

I have tried turning off McAfee's virusscan but that made no difference as far as I could see.

I have Publisher and am looking forward to trying that in due course. Not having to export galleries any more sounds attractive. I have been introducing CE4 gradually until I was confident I knew enough about it and had a working website, which stage I feel I have reached. So maybe I will take the plunge with Publisher before long. That said, LR's memory use bothers me. It shouldn't drain the pc's resources as it does.

Matthew · 2014-12-01 11:03:19

It's unusual that Lightroom should behave so, but this does indeed sound like a good case for using Publisher.

Some additional steps you might take to:

1. Lightroom > Preferences
File Handling > Camera Raw Cache Settings : increase size of the cache; purge existing cache.

2. Lightroom > Catalog Settings
File Handling > Standard Preview Size : ensure size is larger than your image export settings for Web galleries.

3. File > Optimize Catalog

Hopefully these steps will help to improve Lightroom's behavior somewhat, though I doubt you'll find them to be silver bullets for the problem. =/

MartinS · 2014-12-01 15:50:04

1. Cache: I purge the cache regularly and often ensure that 1:1 previews have been made for all the images in the gallery I am working on, before I tweak them and then export. I have the cache set to max 1GB, having had it higher in the past, but someone (on some Adobe forum, I think) had recommended not setting it too high, for better performance. I will however experiment with increasing it again. My LR video cache is set to max. 1GB too and perhaps it will be worth trying increasing this. If it helps, I will post my findings. I have no idea what is customary.

2. Catalog settings: I always start with the standard settings (in my case set to 2048px) and then, as mentioned, increase to 1:1 which shortens the time needed to load each image from the filmstrip before working on it. The images exported by TTG are the standard 1024px.

3. Optimize: this takes place daily as part of LR's automatic optimize and backup on shut-down.

We shall see.... in the meanwhile I shall try to find someone to look at my pc's memory settings; perhaps something is wrong there.

Last edited by MartinS (2014-12-01 15:54:16)

MartinS · 2014-12-01 19:54:14

An update to my post a couple of hours ago: Unchecking the LR "limit video cache" box, which had been set to 1GB, and raising the LR (general) cache to 5GB, and restarting everything, has made no difference to the white screen effect during php file generation. Once again, the screen is freed up and fully usable once that process has completed and there is only jpg rendering taking place. I have noticed a drop in memory use by Lightroom (down to just above 2GB) as shown in Task Manager but this would appear to have no practical positive effect. I export to external USB 3.0 drives but, just to be sure, tried exporting to an internal hard disk, again to no effect.

To be continued...

MartinS · 2014-12-04 16:51:49

To illustrate the LR screen problem I resized the LR window before exporting a gallery so that the rest of the desktop and Task Manager would be visible. The "2 operations in progress" are, in this case, the rendering of about 300 jpgs in the gallery at 2756 x 1837 px and the export of the same images as a gallery to a USB 3.0 drive. Without the jpg rendering the screen would be the same apart from "2" operations; that has no effect on the export or rendering speed, which is as normal. I can open Photoshop normally, make screendumps, and close it, with no problem. Just the LR window behaves strangely.

Since my last post I have checked all hardware, windows memory diagnostics, video card driver, defrag, etc and there are no other problems anywhere. I am inclined to think this must be a LR thing, although I am hesitant to mention the matter on a LR forum as I fear they will immediately blame TTG as probable cause.

If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I should be very pleased.

rod barbee · 2014-12-05 01:06:34

Does this happen no matter how many images you're exporting?

I just tried exporting a large gallery. It takes a lot of time, but I'm not getting a white screen. Lightroom is unresponsive during this though; I can't do anything else with it during the export. But it is processing about 300 images and creating pages for each.
Could be your video card is causing the white Lightroom window? Have you tried updating video drivers?

you could try Victoria Bampton's forum. Those folks are very knowledgeable, helpful, and nice. Victoria's familiar with TTG too.

MartinS · 2014-12-05 05:17:03

Almost all my galleries are 200 images upwards. I will try one of 50 or less to give you a definite answer on this.

I updated my video card driver earlier this week and I have noticed no difference one way or the other. Fortunately! I had no complaints about colour or other things so I was rather relieved when it finished updating and nothing was altered for me as end user.

I still have CE3 installed for a particular client and its galleries export trouble-free as always. In fact, I quite often used to export 3 or more large CE3 galleries simultaneously.

I will indeed try Victoria Bampton's forum; that's a good idea.

Interesting to read that your LR is unresponsive too. Did you notice that with CE3? I could just carry on in CE3 setting up tasks, cropping, developing, exporting, rendering etc etc all at the same time with only the very slightest delay whilst the pc was thinking or digesting data but otherwise very well-behaved and predictable.

At the time of writing I am exporting a gallery of 800 images (large, even for me) on a LR window reduced as far as LR will allow to about a quarter om my desktop and, just to try, I deselected the filmstrip images before pressing "Export" and instead changed the button "Use: selected images" into "Use: All filmstrip photos". For the first time, the white screen has not appeared and the mouse will allow a click every 20 seconds or so to click on a collection, for instance. I have no idea why this thumbnail selection should have any effect, but clearly it does. LR remains unusable, however, with one mouse click per 20 seconds!

It would appear to me, having used CE4 for a few weeks now and CE3 and CE2 for years, a critical shortcoming (please forgive this from an otherwise dedicated TTG-enthousiast) that CE3 exports did not give me this major problem and CE4 does. Do other users, I wonder, suffer an unresponsive LR during gallery exports?

rod barbee · 2014-12-05 06:38:08

if all your galleries are that big, Publisher will make your life much easier.

I rarely export galleries any more other than small ones for testing purposes or empty ones that server as Publisher templates. Even so, if I had that many images for a gallery I think I'd break it up into separate galleries.

Interesting to read that your LR is unresponsive too. Did you notice that with CE3?

Hadn't really thought of it as it's not really been an issue (not exporting large galleries, after all), but I just tried exporting a CE3 Gallery of 330 images and once it started processing, I could jump around in Lightroom and do other things. LR does run slower, as you've observed, but at least it does stuff.

Keep in mind that CE4 Gallery is now also exporting filename-single.html pages for each image. This is going to add a lot of time to any Gallery exports you do (and makes Publisher that much more attractive)

If I'm exporting CE4 Pages or Theme for WordPress, things I'm doing a lot of these days while working on redesigns, LR starts responding a short time after it starts processing the export. But those exports aren't image heavy.

Matthew · 2014-12-05 13:44:35

The creation of -single.html pages does add a lot of time to exports, and that would be the key difference in performance when comparing CE4 to early versions. In every other way, CE4 is actually better performing.

But what you're experiencing isn't a problem with the plugin, but a problem with Lightroom's management of system resources. We could work around the issue by simply eliminating the -single.html pages from exports, but that would only be circumventing the larger issue of Lightroom's poor resource management.

MartinS · 2014-12-09 17:03:09

Thanks Matt and Rod for your time, conclusions, and advice on this technical matter unrelated to TTG but to LR which is not very good with managing video memory, at least in my computer. As advised, I am now learning to use Publisher. My dilemma has been: Publisher sounds as if it could be interesting or useful to me but what can it do for me that my existing modules do not deliver? I think I may not be the only user who asks himself that question. Once one gets into the software things start to become clear, and those more familiar with (for instance) Publisher might consider just a little more explanation in the initial documentation to new (potential) users as to what this module actually can do and could mean for him/her, how it could save time and what it might be better than other modules at doing. This probably sounds obvious, but I believe it would be of assistance to many.

rod barbee · 2014-12-09 21:37:50

The big time saver with publisher is that you no longer need to export from Lightroom. A Publisher Album is really just a Collection of images. Once you gather them you just click the Publish button and Lightroom processes and uploads the images.
Adding and removing images is easy too.
And if you ever need to make design changes, you just need to change the Gallery used as a template and upload that to the /ttg-be/templates/gallery/ folder. Instantly, all the albums using that template are changed to your new design.
Using Publisher you can also include standard text in any or all of your Albums.

Here's a video Matt made for CE3 Publisher: http://theturninggate.net/2013/03/effic … publisher/
The concepts are all the same for CE4

Ben · 2014-12-10 17:22:15

Terry White has also made a video walkthrough of Publisher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hftq4KJRzXg

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2014-11-30 20:57:07

Screen frozen during export of php files

#2 2014-12-01 00:07:53

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#3 2014-12-01 00:43:23

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#4 2014-12-01 11:03:19

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#5 2014-12-01 15:50:04

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#6 2014-12-01 19:54:14

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#7 2014-12-04 16:51:49

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#8 2014-12-05 01:06:34

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#9 2014-12-05 05:17:03

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#10 2014-12-05 06:38:08

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#11 2014-12-05 13:44:35

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#12 2014-12-09 17:03:09

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#13 2014-12-09 21:37:50

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

#14 2014-12-10 17:22:15

Re: Screen frozen during export of php files

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