# Interesting Problem with LR4.1 RC2



## Jim Wilde (Apr 30, 2012)

For the last few days I've been messing about with an issue I first noticed on Friday (I upgraded to RC2 the day before as soon as it was released). The issue only occurred when in dual monitor mode, and then only in Develop, and further only on one of my catalogs (I have several mainly for Forum testing purposes).

The issue exhibited two characteristics:

1. Using Normal Loupe mode on Monitor two, making a selection in the Develop filmstrip on Monitor one would not always appear also on Monitor 2. I would get 'No Photo Selected' on #2, even though the Loupe View info for that image DID show on #2. However I could select another image and that would appear OK, and then go back to the first image and that would appear. Nothing overly problematic at this stage. However, I then found that any changes I made in Develop on #1 *did not update* to #2. Period. Just could not get the second monitor to reflect changes made on the first.

I wrestled with this for a while, and did things like export the catalog in total, and recreate the catalog by importing all images to a new clean catalog. Both the exported catalog and the newly created catalog did NOT exhibit the problem. Obviously I had optimised and integrity-checked the problem catalog, but no issues found.

2. So yesterday when I was doing some further checking, I inadvertently left Lightroom running on #1 (I had used both monitors, but I had reverted to just one) and I was using my web browser when I noticed it had got quite sluggish. So I called up Task Manager, and this is the display:




Wow, I thought....never seen RAM usage that high. You can see the effect when I shut down LR. Then restarted it, dual monitors, develop module, select an image, then do nothing but watch the RAM usage start to creep again. After 15-20 minutes of doing precisely nothing, this is the next Task Manager display:



Notice the CPU activity, with in theory nothing being done (browser shut down at this point). Note also that closing down the second window did *not *stop the RAM creep. Although I *could *stop both the RAM creep and the CPU activity simply by switching back into Library, this did not release the RAM until Lightroom was closed down.

Given the proximity of this problem first being noticed, and the RC2 upgrade, I went back and re-installed 4.0 and tested. No problem.
Then I upgraded to 4.1 RC1, and again no problem. My obvious conclusion at that point was that it's an obscure problem with dual window support in RC2 only.

Today I was going to write-up the problem, but decided to have one more go at nailing it a bit more. Given the fact that I now had 4 catalogs all at LR4 level, but only one exhibiting the symptoms, I looked more closely at the individual catalog settings. Interestingly, I found one obvious difference, and that was in the Standard Preview Size (File Handling tab of Catalog Settings). Normally, as both monitors run at 1920 resolution, I set the standard preview size to either 2048 or 1680....however the 'problem' catalog was set to 1024. 

Can't be that simple, I thought....but sure enough as soon as I changed the setting to 1440 or higher the problem immediately went away. If I had both monitors active, make an extreme exposure change and not reflected on the second screen, see the RAM usage start climbing, then change the preview size and instantly the image on the second monitor updates and the RAM reverts to normal levels.

Apologies for the lengthy ramble, but thought anyone using dual monitors might be interested. Obviously I have no idea if it's just the 1024 setting, or if that is somehow related also to your screen resolution (i.e. if both screen and preview size are both at 1024, will the problem occur?).

By the way, I can also recreate the same problem on my single monitor laptop by opening the secondary window then dragging it to a larger (than 1024) size....if the window stays small, the problem does not occur.

PS: If anyone can confirm this, I'll post it in the official bug-reporting site.


----------



## donoreo (Apr 30, 2012)

I cannot confirm it, it may not exist on a Mac.  It certainly sounds like a memory leak.


----------



## Brad Snyder (Apr 30, 2012)

Jim, I can confirm it exactly, i7-920, 6GB, W7 HPE x64


----------



## Realman10 (Apr 30, 2012)

Jim, I can confirm it too. 
W7 x64 8GB


----------



## Jim Wilde (Apr 30, 2012)

Thanks Brad.

May be a Windows only thing, though there's a Mac user at the U2U forum with a similar sounding issue. He's going to checkout the Standard Preview Size thing and let me know.


In the meantime I guess I need to post it at the bug-reporting site with a possible Windows-only caveat.


----------



## Jimmsp (Apr 30, 2012)

I'm using 1440, and no memory runaway - though it will generally grow to 2.5G usage on a large set of photos.
Win 7 Pro, i7, 8G ram


----------



## Jim Wilde (Apr 30, 2012)

Realman10 said:


> Jim, I can confirm it too.
> W7 x64 8GB



Hi Realman10, thanks for the confirmation....sorry I missed your post earlier.

Welcome to the forum, BTW.


----------



## TWE (May 3, 2012)

*1:1 reproduceable*

Thank you for posting this solution - it really helps!

After having serious performance problems with LR 4.0 (so slow, I was not able to keep up my workflow) I updated to LR 4.0 RC asap. That relieved it some, but still performance is much slower than on LR 3 (dual monitor).

I always had the preview size set to 1440 (1280 resolution on my monitor) until I experienced the 4.0 performance problem. I then read on the Adobe website(!!) that it would improve performance if previews were as small as possible. What a joke ...

Having had some relief from RC I updated to RC2 the day it came out. What a disaster! I had rather spend 300 $ on a working system than 149 $ on crap. I could have much easier earned the 150 $ I saved in a regular assignment than in spending hours and hours waiting for LR to accept adjustments ...

Please forward your findings to Adobe so that they can perhaps povide a working Lightroom someday ...


----------



## Brad Snyder (May 3, 2012)

TWE, welcome to the forums! What a delightful first post! We're looking forward to all of your helpful contributions.


----------



## Karayuschij (May 4, 2012)

donoreo said:


> I cannot confirm it, it may not exist on a Mac.  It certainly sounds like a memory leak.



I have not such a problem on (2) Mac(s) too (both running Lion 10.7.3).


----------



## Jim Wilde (May 4, 2012)

Thanks for testing....a Mac user over at the U2U forum *has* confirmed the problem, at least in part. The second monitor preview not updating does happen for him, though he doesn't know how to check to see if the memory leak also happens.

It seems like there's a relationship between the native monitor resolution and the Standard Preview size....on my 1920 resolution monitor I encounter the problem when my Standard Preview size is set to 1024. Changing the preview size to the next size up, 1440 (or higher), fixes the problem. On the users Mac, his monitor resolution is 2560 and he encountered the problem with his Standard Preview size at 1440. Increasing it fixed the problem.


----------



## clee01l (May 4, 2012)

I'm not certain that it is a memory leak in OSX.  I did see some odd behavior when I changed the size to 1024 and restarted LR in Develop. On my 4 core 16GB machine LR peaked while idling in Develop with both monitors dedicated to LR, Lightroom peaked and held steady at ~*300%* CPU,  Real memory peaked and held steady at 2.89GB. LR had about 30 threads opened. Returning to Library mode, CPU dropped to less than 1% and the Real Memory dropped to about 2.2GB (i.e. LR is not properly freeing up memory).  Repeating the entry into develop cause the Real Memory to climb this time to ~4.5GB before stabilizing.


----------



## Jim Wilde (May 4, 2012)

Thanks for testing, Cletus, though not too sure what to make of the issue on a Mac......but for sure there's an impressive leak on Windows.

I filed a bug report a few days ago with a link back to this thread, though as it hasn't been acknowledged by Adobe maybe I need to give it a bump.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (May 4, 2012)

Adobe have seen this thread Jim, thanks.  I flagged it up to Julie a couple of days ago.


----------



## Jim Wilde (May 4, 2012)

Ah, nice to have friends on the inside.  
Thanks!

 As it happens I tried to repost with a better description, but I must have messed up as the thread hasn't appeared.....gone to that great repository in the sky!!


----------



## Ed Okie (May 18, 2012)

I, too am using dual monitors, but generally only one when in LR (duals most useful in PhotoShop). LR4 RC2 is also driving me nuts.
LR4 continues to lag in performance on my otherwise relatively high-end workstation custom built by Puget Systems in Washington.
   Yes, I too, unknowingly became a Beta tester upon purchase of "LR final edition," updates now relabeled as "release candidates", LR4 RC2 the latest.
   Fast-screen updates of slider movement is the issue. Lags terribly, along with overall operational speed.
   Here's the dramatic discovery (accidentally) just made: On my 24" Eizo CG monitor running at its "native" 1920 x 1200.... if I reduce the overall size of LR, say to a half-screen display... slider-lag reduces appreciably, to only 1 second in whitebalance. Everything works faster, all sliders, or when moving from one image to the next.
   Has anyone else experienced this phenomena, the effect of a large screen display, while processing dozens of raw images, most pronounced in the WhiteBalance slider: up to a 2-second delay before changes are displayed.
   Video Card is Nvidia GeForce GTX 460, 1MB ram, not a "game-boy" card, but none too shabby.
   Questionable assumption: that the video card may be at fault. 
   A computer engineer suggested LR's software design may be faulty, that of single-threaded operation instead of using all four cores on my Intel i7 CPU
   Switched monitors to a 24" NEC also running 1920x1200... identical results.
   Lower the resolution to 1680 and slider-delays are cut in half. Is it a hardware or software issue?


----------



## Victoria Bampton (May 18, 2012)

Hi Ed, welcome to the forum!  Yes, the preview size is one of the primary suspects at the moment.  If you're watching Task Manager, you should see all of the cores are being hit when you move sliders in Develop, but there are some other issues involved.  Updating graphics card drivers is helping some people, but not everyone, so there are multiple issues going on here.  Adobe are still working hard to track them down, so hopefully the final 4.1 will be a good step up.


----------



## Ed Okie (May 19, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Ed, welcome to the forum!  Yes, the preview size is one of the primary suspects at the moment.  If you're watching Task Manager, you should see all of the cores are being hit when you move sliders in Develop, but there are some other issues involved.  Updating graphics card drivers is helping some people, but not everyone, so there are multiple issues going on here.  Adobe are still working hard to track them down, so hopefully the final 4.1 will be a good step up.



  What a - refreshing - website! Worthy, level-headed commentary and comments. Very unexpected. Not the usual collection of "game-boys" and "flame-boys" touting or bashing (people or product, LR in the case). Keep up the great work.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (May 20, 2012)

Thanks Ed - we do try to keep it that way!


----------



## fred_jb (May 22, 2012)

TNG said:


> PS: If anyone can confirm this, I'll post it in the official bug-reporting site.



I've been having pretty much the same problem, and finding your advice regarding preview sizes was invaluable and instantly cured the issue.  I was on the point of going back to LR 3.6 as I use the secondary display to get a better view of edits than the main window which is inevitably cluttered with menus.  The updating delay was making this unusable.

I use three monitors, and in case it is useful to anyone else have found a way to automatically move the secondary display between them.  The three monitors are identical, the left one in portrait orientation driven by a secondary graphics card and the other two landscape both off the main graphics card.  (Annoyingly, I found that I could only run three off the same card if they were in the same orientation).  I run the main window on the centre monitor and via some experimentation found that I could toggle the secondary display between the other two (portait and landscape) as follows:

I put the secondary window (set to not full screen) on right hand landscape monitor and sized it to almost full screen.  I then found that using Shift F11 to toggle to full screen actually had the fortuitous side-effect of moving the display to the left hand (portrait orientation) monitor at the same time as changing it to full screen.  A second Shift F11 would move it back to the original monitor in non full screen mode.  Note that this only seems to be totally reliable when the centre screen is also the main windows screen with taskbar, etc.

I now use this mechanism to instantly move between landscape and portrait secondary displays which is extremely useful.  However,  I suspect this is not an intended behaviour, so I hope fixing the LR4 secondary monitor bug does not remove this!  Perhaps it would be better to see a dedicated Hot Key for deliberately moving the secondary display between available monitors as this might mean it could be in proper full screen mode on both.

Fred


----------



## Jim Wilde (May 22, 2012)

Hi Fred, welcome to the forum.

Pleased that you found this workaround useful for you, and thanks very much for the tip about using 3 monitors. Having only just graduated to using 2, I think it'll be a real long time before I think of adding a third....but hopefully some of our 3-monitor users will find your tip helpful.


----------



## fred_jb (May 22, 2012)

TNG said:


> Hi Fred, welcome to the forum.
> 
> Pleased that you found this workaround useful for you, and thanks very much for the tip about using 3 monitors. Having only just graduated to using 2, I think it'll be a real long time before I think of adding a third....but hopefully some of our 3-monitor users will find your tip helpful.



Thank YOU for making LR 4 usable for me!  And searching for info on this bug has had the benefit of finding this forum which looks really useful.

I have to admit - I sometimes think the complications of using three monitors are not worth the benefits!  Maybe if I got a couple of 30 inchers ....


----------



## Ed Okie (May 23, 2012)

Fred-jb, your use of three monitors et al, and with LR no less, 4.1 software already a major headache...
   With tongue well planted in cheek:  I'm inclined to suggest that having three spouses would be far easier to deal with than having to manage three monitors! Plus landscape _and_ portrait? Wow!


----------



## clee01l (May 23, 2012)

Ed Okie said:


> Fred-jb, your use of three monitors et al, and with LR no less, 4.1 software already a major headache...
> With tongue well planted in cheek:  I'm inclined to suggest that having three spouses would be far easier to deal with than having to manage three monitors! Plus landscape _and_ portrait? Wow!


I'll take three monitors over three spouses any day!!


----------



## Ed Okie (May 25, 2012)

Ed Okie said:


> I, too am using dual monitors, but generally only one when in LR (duals most useful in PhotoShop). LR4 RC2 is also driving me nuts.
> LR4 continues to lag in performance on my otherwise relatively high-end workstation....
> 
> Latest (and last) effort to find a solution to LR4's slowness: opted to upgrade my video card to an even higher level of performance (Nvidia GTX GeForce 460 with 1GB ram.... to an AMD-chip based ATI Radeon 8750 HD with 2GB of video ram.
> ...


----------

