Calibre very slow on a Windows7?

[TenaciousBadger]

i'm running XP, and have recently defragged my c drive and i'm not seeing any improvement in the speed with which calibre opens. takes close to 20 secs, with less than 10 books in the library.
not too bothered since i mainly use it as a conversion tool but there was a time in the beginning when it was flash gordon

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by TenaciousBadger

i'm running XP, and have recently defragged my c drive and i'm not seeing any improvement in the speed with which calibre opens. takes close to 20 secs, with less than 10 books in the library.

This statement is a tad odd, the original poster had severe lag, you on the other hand have a normal start-up time. Just for the record I use Windows XP too, have over 3000 books and my start-up time is about the same as yours.

[TenaciousBadger]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

This statement is a tad odd, the original poster had severe lag, you on the other hand have a normal start-up time. Just for the record I use Windows XP too, have over 3000 books and my start-up time is about the same as yours.

yes, but i have 10 books in the library. i'm not sure if a start lag for 10 books should the the same as one for 3000 books. i wonder what the lag would be if i had 3000...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by TenaciousBadger

i wonder what the lag would be if i had 3000...

Probably about the same.

Calibre has two start-up phases. The first is simply starting calibre, and consists of the time between when you say 'go' and when the splash icon appears. The second is opening the DB, and consists of the time between displaying the splash icon and the books.

The first phase takes time because calibre consists of around 1,000 separate small program files, plus some larger ones. Calibre must open many (if not most) of these before it can say "hello". If you start calibre, wait, quit, and then immediately start again, the first phase should be faster, because most of the files it needs will already be in memory.

The second phase time depends on the number of books. You shouldn't see anything significant (more than 1 or 2 seconds) until you reach thousands of books. For example, on my machine with 1000 books in my library, this phase takes around 2 seconds.

You can easily see the separation between the times by running calibre in debug mode. It prints a message when it starts, and then prints the amount of time it took to open the library. To run calibre in debug mode, open a command box (or terminal), then type "calibre-debug -g" (without the quotes). The time until "starting up..." is phase 1. Phase two time is displayed next.

[johnwayneb]

I also am frustrated by the extreme slowness of Calibre because I like the tool for what it is. The main issue for me is that the UI very unresponsive and the tool in general is rather unstable.

For example, simply bringing up the Preferences dialog box takes way longer than it should. Navigating the Preferences dialog is also slow.

I have tried running it on both a Windows 7 machine (8x cores, dual raid, 8 gig ram) and a super cheap Ubuntu laptop. The specs of the machine are irrelevant and performance is poor on both.

Also, do not tell me to disable my virus checker. That's insulting.

Don’t even ask me to describe the performance of ebook-viewer. Its appalling. I would rather have it launch an external program that is half decent at displaying ebooks (ie: fbreader or anything else).

I did some testing and renamed the images folder in my resources folder and the app ran MUCH faster. Who uses svg files for toolbar icons? That's crazy!

I suspect the tool needs to undergo a serious optimization pass as up until now its performance has been rather unacceptable.

[Adoby]

For reference:

I run Calibre on 64 bit Ubuntu 10.4 with Compiz activated. I have /tmp on a ramdisk, /home (with the calibre library) on a sata disk, and everything else on a fast ssd-disk. 3 years old 64 bit AMD processor with 2 cores. 4 GB RAM.

I use no antivirus software.

It takes 2-4 seconds to start calibre. I have 2k book titles.

Without exhaustive testing I believe calibre is the program that takes the longest to start on my computer. Most programs start without any noticable delay at all.

Calibre runs rock steady and the GUI and the viewer are both very responsive. Unless jobs are running.

I suspect that the ssd-disk and /tmp on ramdisk pays off.

Edit started in debug mode: Started up in 3.8286151886

[gtriever]

Win7 Pro 64-bit here; I also had very slow start-up times until version 0.7.17 was released yesterday. Now it's only 4 seconds to splash screen and 6 seconds total to main screen...

[DoctorOhh]

To start with I am running a Dell Optiplex 745, Windows XP, Core 2 Duo with 3.5 gigs of ram. I am using Symantec Endpoint Version 11.0.2010.25 in the default configuration handling my antivirus, antispam, proactive threat protection and firewall. Calibre takes 3 seconds to the splash screen and another 16 seconds to load 4000+ books.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

The main issue for me is that the UI very unresponsive and the tool in general is rather unstable.

That's very interesting all I've seen in the last year is improvement in speed and a relatively stable platform.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

For example, simply bringing up the Preferences dialog box takes way longer than it should. Navigating the Preferences dialog is also slow.

Bringing up the preferences for me takes about a second and navigating through it is virtually instantaneous.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

I have tried running it on both a Windows 7 machine (8x cores, dual raid, 8 gig ram) and a super cheap Ubuntu laptop. The specs of the machine are irrelevant and performance is poor on both.

Seems odd that either platform would be slow.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

Also, do not tell me to disable my virus checker. That's insulting.

No one has told anyone to disable their antivirus, they have indicated the possibility of exempting the main library from the scan. This is needed with some AV programs on certain platforms.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

Don’t even ask me to describe the performance of ebook-viewer. Its appalling.

I guess I'm lucky, I only use epubs in my library and it takes about 3 seconds to open any epub and 5-6 seconds to open any lit file.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

I would rather have it launch an external program that is half decent at displaying ebooks (ie: fbreader or anything else).

Choose whatever viewer you want to open files, calibre does restrict you to its viewer. If you don't want the calibre viewer to open a format change the preferences.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

I did some testing and renamed the images folder in my resources folder and the app ran MUCH faster. Who uses svg files for toolbar icons? That's crazy!

I don't fully understand what you did, but if it helped you that's great! It may also be a clue to what, on your system, is causing these abnormal delays.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

I suspect the tool needs to undergo a serious optimization pass as up until now its performance has been rather unacceptable.

Calibre, as with all programs, can always use some tweaking. Recently there have been massive improvements in the speed between the GUI and the database.

What you're experiencing though is highly abnormal and since you are most likely still in the minority with so many cpu cores there is the possibility that something in the underlying code reacts bad with so many cores. You might want to go to Preferences - Advance and adjust / throttle back the settings at the top (see attached).

Also the original poster of this thread solved his problem by defragging his drive. I've seen backups where I work go from 4-5 hours to 2 hours after a defrag.

I hope the trouble you're having can be resolved, because some day I'll want a more powerful machine too.

[jotekman]

Win 7 x64 Ultimate here. I have updated for over a year and a half now each version of Calibre on the same hardware (although i have reinstalled the OS multiple times, maybe 6 or 7). NTFS and I defrag consistantly. This particular build of Calibre starts faster than any version I have had installed till now. I even get about 2 seconds to splash and 3-4 more till full window, which is amazing compared to some previous builds. Bravo!

[johnwayneb]

Defraging the disk will have no impact, and regardless should not be a solution to poor application performance.

I tested this on both a fresh install with 0 books and one with only a dozen or so. Same results. I am not alone in reporting this issue, so maybe you should realize that its a problem and stop trying to solve/diagnose peoples hardware issues as it is clearly a software one.

The main issue with UI unresponsiveness is clearly with rendering of the svg files. For those who fail to understand, what I did was remove the resources/images folder that contains all the toolbar icons, etc.. used by the app. The app started without any visible icons, and ran MUCH faster.

Why this is fast for you i do not know, maybe you have a better video card? I dont really care. The bottom line is why would one choose to use CPU intensive vector graphics for the rendering of any application icons? Its makes no sense.

When attempting to load the "Toolbars/Context Menus" tab under "Preferences/Interface" the CPU usage of callibre.exe jumps to 95+% and the app stalls. Running the same test without the resources/images folder calibre.exe works at 3%. I ran the same test on Ubuntu with the same results.

The boot up time of the app is also signifigantly, ~1sec, faster with icons disabled.

I've tested it also an a Windows 7 machine with only a single CPU and the performane issues remain identical.

It is unclear to me what benefits I recieve from having an app launch (at minimum) 3 processes on a single core cpu. I'm all for multi-threading, but this technique to me seems like overkill.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

Defraging the disk will have no impact, and regardless should not be a solution to poor application performance.

As you seem to care about this, perhaps you should fix it.

I am not being sarcastic. Things get done when motivated people take on the problem. The issues you are talking about don't appear on my radar, so I don't fall into the that category. Perhaps you do...

[kovidgoyal]

Sigh. Vector icons are used so that they are resolution independent. If rendering the icons on your system is taking so long, then there is something on your system that is causing that slowness. Lots of people have posted telling you that rendering icons doesn't take that long on their system. If you want to ignore them, that is your perogative.

And if you want to claim that SVG icons are what is causing the slowness, then your test is nowhere near sufficient. What you would have to do is replace the svg icons with raster versions.

[Dave Berk]

My problem was solved ages ago. But allow me to joins all the others in saying that the latest version is even noticeably faster. Thanks Kovid and group.

[kovidgoyal]

I just performed the proper experiment, replacing the svg icons with png versions and the calibre startup time was reduced by half a second on my system. from 1.7 to 1.2 seconds

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

Defraging the disk will have no impact, and regardless should not be a solution to poor application performance.

On the original poster's machine (running Win7 and NTFS drives) defragging the machine had a giant impact and proved that it wasn't an application issue at all.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

I tested this on both a fresh install with 0 books and one with only a dozen or so. Same results. I am not alone in reporting this issue, so maybe you should realize that its a problem and stop trying to solve/diagnose peoples hardware issues as it is clearly a software one.

I conceded it might be a software issue. I even suggested it might be one that trips over itself the more processors you have.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

The main issue with UI unresponsiveness is clearly with rendering of the svg files. For those who fail to understand, what I did was remove the resources/images folder that contains all the toolbar icons, etc.. used by the app. The app started without any visible icons, and ran MUCH faster.

So doing this resolves the slowness issues, good to know.

Originally Posted by johnwayneb

Why this is fast for you i do not know, maybe you have a better video card? I dont really care. The bottom line is why would one choose to use CPU intensive vector graphics for the rendering of any application icons? Its makes no sense.

I have the generic video built into the Optiplex 745 which is a glorified business machine. I also run it fine on my older Optiplex SX280, which strains under flash ads on web sites and those flash games on facebook like farmtown or frontierville.

It is time for you to identify and correct the display/video setting on your machine that is causing this bottleneck. Or continue running without icons.