Saving Project Extremely Slow

[Olivier Beltrami]

Hello,

Version 8 of H&M is extremely slow saving my project.

Using H&M7 it used to take about 40 seconds, with the UI going pitch black for half that time.

But, under H&M8, I timed saving the same project just now, and it took 6 minutes and 45 seconds.
Good thing I have SSD drives, 12 cores and 64GB of RAM .

This seems to be a particularly noticeable effect in the last 2 releases (5448 and 5452).
Or, it could also coincide with me using image toggles, for the first time, this past week.

Very best regards,

Olivier

[Tim Green]

Hi Olivier,

We haven't noticed anything like this yet and a difference of that magnitude should normally be obvious in all projects. There is definitely something not right here. I've asked our developers to have a look at your posting and we will probably ask some more questions shortly.

[Tim Green]

Hi Olivier,

In addition to saving your project as uncompressed XML/HMXP, are you also saving on a local drive and not on a network drive? Are there any project components or assets that are not on fast local drives, for example image folders?

[Olivier Beltrami]

Hi Tim,

I ran some more tests:

• Saved my hmxz single file project as hmxp (25 seconds)

• Saved the hmxp project (2 seconds)

• Saved the hmxp single file project as hmxz (30 seconds)

• Made a simple change (added 2 spaces) and saved hmxz (25 seconds, UI goes totally black from 10 seconds onward)

• Closed H&M8. Re-opened it and the hmxz above, deleted the 2 extra spaces and saved (22 seconds, UI goes totally black from 10 seconds onward)

Seems that if the UI goes totally black, then we're good and save takes a reasonable mount of time (apx 20-25 seconds). But if the UI does not go black then the save lasts for over 6 minutes. This seems to happen when changing image % display values, but I am having problems reproducing it, with the hmxz file that was saved to hmxp and then back to hmxz.

I still have the original hmxz file, would you like me to send it to you ?

Very best regards,

Olivier

[Olivier Beltrami]

BTW: when you save to hmxp and try to close the project, you are asked if you want to save it. If you click CANCEL, then the dialog comes back up repeatedly (as if it was coming up for each of the 2000 topic files of the project).

[Tim Green]

Hi Olivier,

Thanks for the additional information but you left out the most important information: Where is your project stored, on a local drive or a network drive? This makes a huge difference.

Also: If you are doing any daily work you should always be using uncompressed HMXP, not single-file HMXZ. Uncompressed is faster and more secure for your data, since it is not possible for damage to a single file to trash your entire project. HMXZ is convenient for small projects and archiving, but for daily work you should really use HMXP.

[Tim Green]

Hi Olivier,

Another thought: Another cause could be if you are saving your project in a managed cloud folder like OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox etc. Those are fine for archiving but please don't ever try to edit Help+Manual projects that are stored there. That will cause all kinds of problems, including massive editing, loading and saving slowdowns, and in some situations they can make your project almost unusable: They have quite simple merging and diffing systems and you can end up with multiple "conflicted copies" of your topic files, each containing a different edit.

[Olivier Beltrami]

Everything is local on the main SSD disk.
Nothing on USB or network or Cloud.
I'll change to HMXP.

[Olivier Beltrami]

When I save to HMXP, there is a folder "Topics" with my 2356 topics, but also a "__history" folder with over 11000 files. Could this be the problem. Am I setup to keep multiple backup copies of each topic ?

[Darren Rose]

I must say I also have noticed H&M8 is a lot slower in saving my file, which is a compressed one, on a local SSD and only 15.2mb in size

H&M appears to freeze for a short while and has on occasion gone to not responding at which point I thought I was going to lose all my changes, but eventually it came back and saved okay, but every save is definitely slower comparing 8 to 7

[Olivier Beltrami]

My HMXZ file is 29MB.

[Darren Rose]

Video clip to show spinning cursor and not responding when trying to save project after literally changing three letters!

http://www.pcassistonline.co.uk/upload/ ... -00-21.mp4

[Tim Green]

Hi Olivier

The History folder shouldn't be a problem. It saves a backup of each version of your topic file each time you save the file. You can configure the number of backups that are kept, whether you want history for deleted files and turn the history off completely in Configuration > Common Properties > Miscellaneous.

[Tim Green]

Video clip to show spinning cursor and not responding when trying to save project after literally changing three letters!

If that's a HMXZ then the entire project has to be processed and packed to save, no matter what you change. With HMXP it only needs to save the topic file/s that were actually changed and also the main .hmxp file if there were any changes that affected that. That's just two compact, plain-text files compared to a large binary with a lot of processing overhead.

[Darren Rose]

Yes I get it is in a compressed format, BUT the point is it is much slower than v7 and I wouldn't expect to see a not responding message when saving...