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seigell
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 51
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 Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 8:38 pm Post subject: Temporary File Locations configuration - SmartBlend and PTA |
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I've lately been eyeballing the smaller capacity Solid State Drives (not USB thumbdrives but SATA based HDD replacements) as a way to further improve Pano generation times. The moderate performance 32GB units have recently broken $100 at several reputable online sources. While 32GB isn't much in a world of 500GB-1.5TB HDDs, it would seem to be enough to support any PTA session unless the target is a GigiaPixel image. And the Read and Write Throughput is now 1.5-4x that of the most expensive WD Raptor HDD.
But, before putting out this $$$, I've been doing some "research" into the drive usage patterns during a PTA session - where is the drive activity and could it be properly constrained to the SSD ??
My current setup is a decently endowed Quad-Core Q6600 desktop with 2.5GB RAM and "endless" disk space across 3 discrete SATA HDDs - keeping the "PTA Temp directory" on a different drive than the source images or the Vista swapfile. PTA does appear to constrain itself to the Source/Destination and PTA Temp locations - and memory usage is quite reasonable so as to stay out of the swapfile. Enblend and SmartBlend seem to be different stories, though. With moderately large PTA projects, both seem to cause some swapfile activity even though I restrict Emblend with "-m" to 1.5GB (well under my 2.5GB RAM). Perhaps it's not swapfile but rather use of the global "TEMP" or "TMP" environment variables.
I've reviewed their websites, but find no hint of other configuration options.
Thoughts ??
It really goes to show that while I was happy with my lowly 256MB P3 and Win98 when I first discovered PTA 3.2, expectations have blossomed (as well as project complexities). |
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maxlyons
Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Posts: 3347
Location: USA
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| Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 8:55 am Post subject: Re: Temporary File Locations configuration - SmartBlend and |
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| seigell wrote: |
| PTA does appear to constrain itself to the Source/Destination and PTA Temp locations - and memory usage is quite reasonable so as to stay out of the swapfile. |
PTAssembler and PTAStitcher should both be fairly memory friendly. I tried quite hard when creating PTAStitcher to make it use as little memory as (I thought was) reasonably possible. The large majority of its memory use comes from loading input images into memory. It loads as many images as you have processor cores. So, in general, on most typical modern machines (with multiple GB of memory) and most typical modern image sizes (8-25 megapixels), then PTAStitcher should always have enough memory. I don't think the same is true for Smartblend and Enblend, which seems to require quite a lot more memory. It seems reasonable that if you can direct their file activity onto a fast hard-drive then you should see speed improvements, but I haven't tested this.
For what it is worth, PTAStitcher uses the Windows GetTempPath Function to decide where to write any temporary files. Perhaps Enblend and Smartblend do the same? The Microsoft documentation for this function (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364992(VS.85).aspx) says the following:
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The GetTempPath function checks for the existence of environment variables in the following order and uses the first path found:
1. The path specified by the TMP environment variable.
2. The path specified by the TEMP environment variable.
3. The path specified by the USERPROFILE environment variable.
4. The Windows directory.
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Max |
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seigell
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:08 pm Post subject: Re: Temporary File Locations configuration - SmartBlend and |
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| maxlyons wrote: |
For what it is worth, PTAStitcher uses the Windows GetTempPath Function to decide where to write any temporary files. Perhaps Enblend and Smartblend do the same? The Microsoft documentation for this function (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364992(VS.85).aspx) says the following:
| Quote: |
The GetTempPath function checks for the existence of environment variables in the following order and uses the first path found:
1. The path specified by the TMP environment variable.
2. The path specified by the TEMP environment variable.
3. The path specified by the USERPROFILE environment variable.
4. The Windows directory.
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Max
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Does this mean that PTASTITCHER does not reference / honor the Preferences/Files/Temp File Directory setting ?? Which portions of PTAssembler still honor this PTA Configuration setting ?? |
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maxlyons
Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Posts: 3347
Location: USA
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| Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:31 pm Post subject: Re: Temporary File Locations configuration - SmartBlend and |
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| seigell wrote: |
| Does this mean that PTASTITCHER does not reference / honor the Preferences/Files/Temp File Directory setting ?? |
Correct. PTAStitcher uses the windows specified temporary directory.
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| Which portions of PTAssembler still honor this PTA Configuration setting ?? |
PTAssembler's Graphical User Interface honors this setting. In general this location is used by PTAssembler to write script files for the various programs it inokes, to store the output files from programs it invokes (e.g. all of the control point picker programs, the optimizer programs, the pre-processing programs, etc.) and for any temporary images PTAssembler needs to create (i.e. temporary 8 bit versions of 16 bit images to be fed to the programs that can't handle 16 bit images).
In general, PTAssembler either can not or does not try to influence where the programs that it invokes store their temporary files. For example, while PTAssembler can tell Smartblend where to store its output files, it can't tell it where to store any temporary files that it might create.
Max |
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