Just wanted to mention that I have this exact problem - a long 3-4 second delay in going to the next file in view mode. This is with files that are ~4400x2900 (from Canon 5D).
I am also running Windows 7 64bit and I also have a GeForce 8800GTS!
I'd love to solve this problem as it makes XNView (which is an awesome freeware program BTW) almost unusable for me.
tellure wrote:Just wanted to mention that I have this exact problem - a long 3-4 second delay in going to the next file in view mode. This is with files that are ~4400x2900 (from Canon 5D).
Ok so I did some more testing on this and isolated the source of the problem. Sorry I didn't do this earlier - should really try and debug more on my own.
I noticed the problem didn't seem to be in all my photo directories - sometimes I have fast (~1 second) updates when going to the next file on large 12-megapixel images. After some testing I discovered that the problem only exists when I have a .CR2 (Canon RAW) file located next to the JPEG's I am switching between.
So the directory looks like this:
1st file: RAW .CR2
2nd file: JPEG1
3rd file: JPEG2
Steps to reproduce:
1) Go into view mode on JPEG1
2) Press PageDown to go to JPEG2 (loads in ~1 second)
3) Press PageUp to go back to JPEG1 (loads in ~1 second)
4) Press PageDown to go to JPEG2 again - now it takes 5+ seconds to load JPEG2 (up to 8 seconds for me sometimes)
I believe this is because it is reading the RAW file as the next file in the sequence. Indeed, when I turn off "Read one image ahead" then the slowdown disappears and I can cycle between JPEG1 and JPEG2 very quickly (~1 second).
I should note that this may very likely a different problem than the original poster was mentioning.
Ohya, to answer your question: browser performance is perfect when switching between images (via mouse-click or arrow keys), even when the .CR2 file is in the directory. This problem only seems to exist when in Viewer mode.
In terms of the solution, I'll just turn off "Read one image ahead" and live with the slight loss in performance.
However there may be other people that encounter this problem but won't figure out what's causing it because it's a bit counter-intuitive (why would it be slow to load a JPEG? I'm not even viewing the RAW file!). Perhaps some better feedback from XnView as to what it's doing would help? For example, in the status bar at the bottom it could say "Loading <filename>" to give you feedback on what file it's loading (perhaps even a progress bar down in the status bar). That way for files that are slow to load, the user would know what file is actually taking so long, even in situations like this when that file is not the one they are switching to.
Anyhow, problem solved. Thanks again for a great freeware program!
Read one image ahead == TRUE
Keep current image in cache == TRUE
Camera RAW == Embedded Thumbnail
Now I can toggle back and forth between the JPEGs at normal speed (<1 second) when the .CR2 RAW file is in the directory. Awesome!
By the way, I was suggesting a progress bar for better user feedback, but I noticed that there actually is a progress bar in the bottom right hand corner - the only weird thing is that it never shows up during the load of a RAW file for me. If I have Camera RAW set to full size, it can take ~8 seconds to load a 12-megapixel .CR2 image, but there is no progress bar displayed (although once I saw it displayed in the last 2 seconds of the load).
Anyhow, I'd be curious how to make this solution more apparent to the user. It seems like the main issue is that the user needs to know why a load is taking a long time (RAW file is being loaded at full size). If they knew that they might be able to find the setting in the menus to speed this up