Hello Gunther

I am having a problem and I am not sure where to start to try to figure it out. I have been through the FAQs on the LRTimelapse forum. I have tried some things to see if it corrects my issues but I still seem to be seeing some things that I don’t understand, so I wonder if I could ask you for help?

My system is a Mac Pro (2019), Catalina 10.15.6, 3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W, 96 GB 2933 MHz DDR4, MD Radeon Pro W5700X 16 GB. LRTimelapse is 5.4 (build 618), Pro licence. Adobe DNG Converter is version 12.3.0.493 and Lightroom Classic is version 9.3.

When I set the number of threads for Visual Preview creation to the recommended 32, Adobe DNG Converter runs as expected for a little while but then seems to slow and when I look at Force Quit Applications, some instances seem to be working but many show that the instance is unresponsive. The visual preview process does not complete. I changed the number of threads to 20 and the visual preview completes but I am not sure that it is working correctly.

When the threads are set to 20, I still see the pointer change to the Apple rainbow (multi-coloured) spinning ball many times as the previews are created. I would have thought that there was enough processor speed and memory to prevent this. Additionally, once the preview process completes, the mouse pointer still flashes to indicate a process is still working or active, but this time it is the two-colour, dark/light, blue ball. It flashes five times, pauses, and flashes again for another five times and continues until I click on another part of the application. The flashing two colour, dark/light, blue ball continues to flash while I render a video and the progress bar moves along the bottom of the app interface. I tried to screen capture this behaviour but the Apple Screenshot would not record the pointer behaviour.

I didn’t notice this when I was processing JPEGs, but this started when I was processing Nikon NEF raw files. The files were shot with a D7100. The sequence has 658 images in the folder.

So following one suggestion in your FAQs, I right-clicked on the folder and chose “Clear all LRTimelapse editing…” and started the process fresh from the beginning. I reinitialized the data in LRT. The two colour, dark/light, blue ball stopped flashing on the pointer after the reinitialization. I set the keyframes and saved the xmp. Switching to LrC, I read metadata from files, made my adjustments, saved the metadata to files, and returned to LRT. I reloaded, clicked Auto Transition, clicked Visual Previews. The two colour, dark/light, blue ball pointer behaviour started again. This time there doesn't seem to be a discernible pattern to the flashing. The Adobe DNG Converter did not start and there were no bouncing icons in the dock. I clicked Visual Deflicker and again the Adobe DNG Converter did not start. The two colour, dark/light, blue ball pointer continues to flash as part of the pointer.

At this point, I am a little confused and it would seem that I have to quit my applications and restart my computer. I have done my best to detail all the steps I have taken to try to figure this out and I wonder if you can point me to a troubleshooting procedure so that I could solve this or provide you with more information on what is happening with my system.

Thank you very much.

Richard Adams

This post was last modified: 2020-07-29, 20:15 by Gunther.

If you work with so many parallel threads, you nieed to make sure that your drive will be able to deliver the images fast enough. Usually this will only be the case if you have the sequences on a fast internal SSD drive.
Also enable "full disk access" for LRTimelapse and Adobe DNG Converter to prevent any security related slow downs by Catalina: https://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-wil...-and-later
When creating the VPs, it's normal that the DNG Converter Icons bounce in the doc, but the colored bar below the VP should turn gradually green. If there are red dots, this means that the Converter instances fail.

If the problems persist, please send me the log file please after activating the Visual Previews and waiting a bit until you have red parts in the colored bar below the preview.

Thank you very much for your reply.

That makes sense to me so here is what I have done next.

LRTimelapse did and does have full disk access. Adobe DNG Converter does not appear in the Full Disk Access portion of the Security & Privacy settings. There are four items in that area that do not have full-disk access but the names are cryptic to me; VShieldScanner, VShieldTaskManager, GenUtility, and fmpd.

I moved the image folder from the Promise Pegasus R4i to my Accelsior 4M2 PCI SSD. I started from scratch and “Clear all LRTimelapse editing…”. What was interesting is that LRT popped up a warning that if I wanted to use these files, I needed to initialize the XMP again (I think that is what it said). I followed the process as described in your online videos.

I changed the threads back to the recommended 32 and the Visual Preview stage seemed to work as expected. When I pressed the Visual Deflicker, I changed the passes from two to three (the same as you did in your video).

The first pass seemed to work as expected, many bouncing Adobe DNG Converter icons bouncing in the dock. When it came to Refining Deflicker, LRT started to flash, the program bar was active and then not and then active again. I think what was happening was the application focus was switching back and forth between LRT and Adobe DNG Converter, one at a time. It took more than 55 minutes to complete three passes on 520 raw images.

So, I’m not sure what is happening. How can I find the log file for this process? I would love to send it to you so that you can see what might be going on.

Thank you for your help.

Rick

Still, from checking your logs it's a permission problem. LRT doesn't get access to your external drive. That's something you must allow in your OS.

Thank you very much.

As you can see from my detail, I really didn't want it to be something obvious that I should have done before I reached out to you. Thank you for looking at this for me. Please take the time you need or have me send anything else you need. I am in no rush, there are no immediate projects and you can take all the time you need to figure this out. Have a great day, Rick.

That's nothing where I can do anything. You need to enable LRTimelapse to read and write to the drives where you have your timelapse sequences located.
Its explained in the faq I've sent you.
You might also try to move the sequence to an internal drive and see, if that helps.

Sent mobile...