Batch jobs just hang if you use parallel processing

[Paule96]

If I try to use batch job since Affinity Photo 1.x up to 2.x batch jobs never completes if I use parallel processing. Like you see in the following picture I have 15 pictures that I want to convert from `.afphoto` to `.jpeg` files. But it never finishes. Affinity Photo stays just in this state forever. (longest test 15h)

 

Because I saw always here in the forum some issues with parallel processing I was hoping it would get fixed over time. But I have had this issue now so long that I hope someone can take a look. In special because my system has with it's 64 Cores (AMD Threadripper 3970X) enough power to handle 15 parallel tasks.

Here some maybe important side notes:

- while Affinity Photo is in this state the system idles
- while Affinity Photo is in this states the menubar and settings windows work and are accessible
- if you try to load another picture into Affinity Photo it show in the upper right corner that the document is loading but also nothing is happening

 

 

For me, it just sounds like a deadlock in Affinity itself.

 

If needed I can provide the `.afphoto` files. But they are just RAW files from Canon, with slightly editing. (contrast, whitebalance, saturation, maybe size adjustments)

[Paule96]

I so far also did a memory dump from the running affinity photo instance that is stuck. (can't upload here, it's bigger then 2 gigabites.)

 

But so far what I can see is that it makes around 30 calls to `ntdll!NtWaitForSingleObject+0x14`, but so far windbg doesn't see any obvious locks. But so many simultaneously WaitForSingleObject calls lock a bit suspicious to me.

 

Also what I can see from the output of `!locks -v` is that some `contention` numbers are really high. (over 9) So basically that says many threads are waiting for another thread to finish it's open 'thing' so they can use it too.

In this case 93 Threads. (at 15 pictures)

So it looks at least weird. But what I find more weird is that this is something from GDI32. So normally something that should draw a window or so. I mean it can be used for image manipulation but as far as I understand Affinity Photo uses its own library for that.

So maybe this information helps the development team in any way.

[carl123]

Try...

Go to Edit > Settings > Performance and switch of Hardware Acceleration (if enabled)

I think I saw that interfere with Parallel processing for someone in the past

[Paule96]

Thank you for the tip. It worked. But still, I guess it should be fixed with hardware acceleration enabled. I mean does it mean that I need to switch always this setting for other work that I do, that really has the benefit of hardware acceleration?

[carl123]

9 hours ago, Paule96 said:

I mean does it mean that I need to switch always this setting for other work that I do, that really has the benefit of hardware acceleration?

In an ideal world hardware acceleration should be switched on but there are numerous reports of it giving problems due to the many different hardware configurations out there so a lot of people run with it switched off (including me)

Even with it switched on you may not notice any performance enhancements if your computer if already fast enough for the sort of work you do.

For my work the Affinity apps are fast enough without it enabled so I keep it off rather than endure the very random crash I would get with it switched on

 

[Dumpfbacke]

Parallel processing for batches is buggy since forever. Just gave it another try after updating to 2.5, still hangs. Looking at memory usage in task manager reveals that Affinitys' RAM management is broken. RAM utilization shoots up immediately and takes up all of the available space (I have 32GB) and then processing isn't effective anymore, I guess. If you let it run long enough it actually does finish the job but this takes multiple times longer compared to turning parallel processing off.

I wanted to try turning hardware acceleration off like suggested but I don't have this as single option in my settings, this is how it looks:

I tried maxing the RAM usage slider, turned off the rendering with the RTX3080 and unchecked OpenCL acceleration. None of that worked, parallel batch processing is still broken. What do I have to do to get it working?

This situation is extremely annoying. I have hundrets of raw photos that I need to develop and run macros on. My CPU is a 5950X which would be great for parallel processing but I have to go through this batch by using just one core.

Btw, the fact that just one person before me had complained about this here, is an indicator that almost no one is actually using this software in a production environment. Sure Affinity is incredibly cheap compared to Photoshop but what is it good for if important features like this don't work?

[Dumpfbacke]

@carl123 is there any way I can work around this bug and get parallel processing working on my sytem? As I explained, I don't seem to have the option "Hardware Acceleration" in the settings.

[carl123]

33 minutes ago, Dumpfbacke said:

I don't seem to have the option "Hardware Acceleration" in the settings.

In your screenshot it's the last item that is ticked

Try unticking it