Why is afphoto file so massive when saved?

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Oval said:

If the file size changed on average by a factor of 3 from one to the other version, then Serif could change it again and again.

Yes they could, but how would they maintain the performance advantages of serialization & such? 

[Oval]

12 hours ago, R C-R said:

but how would they maintain the performance advantages

That would mean that the performance before 1.7 was not good enough? btw: the next computer generation will be quicker

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, Oval said:

That would mean that the performance before 1.7 was not good enough?

Sorry, but I have no idea what you are referring to.

There are several interrelated features of the Affinity core code & native file format that make its current performance, optimized use of RAM, & a single 'universal' native format across all three apps & three operating systems possible. Several of them come at the expense of larger sized native format files.

So what I am wondering about is what could they change to make the files smaller that would not compromise any of that, particularly anything that would require rewriting & debugging a large part of the code, which in turn would mean fewer updates & longer intervals between their releases.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

[walt.farrell]

57 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So what I am wondering about is what could they change to make the files smaller that would not compromise any of that, particularly anything that would require rewriting & debugging a large part of the code, which in turn would mean fewer updates & longer intervals between their releases.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

One previous suggestion was a specific new native format for archival storage. It would not need to be as fast-loading as the current format.

That does not necessarily help with the question of working from files that are on networked or external drives, when they are in the standard native format, of course. Something is still needed to deal with the "lost connection" issues, of course.

[Oval]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

the "lost connection" issues

which is not the problem of Nilla's Photography, but the bigger files

[Cecil]

2 hours ago, Oval said:

which is not the problem of Nilla's Photography, but the bigger files

Her first post was her concern filling her 2 TB external drive, which may or may not be advisable using in Affinity, I clearly do not know the answer to this.  I would put my money on R C A post. Please refer to Affinity commitment to reduce their file size, I clearly missed that post.

[Oval]

10 hours ago, Cecil said:

Her first post was her concern filling her 2 TB external drive

which is the problem of the bigger files. She only had one file that lost the communication with a drive (could have been a cable) so this is not the problem.

[Nilla's Photography]

Hi @Oval,

Thanks for the feedback all.

Actually, whilst working in AF I had most of my files loose communication with the external drive whilst trying to save the file.

I haven't worked with AF for a while due to the large file sizes created, loss of communication and loss of edits, so have been working in LR instead. I don't have any of these issues in LR and still working with the same external drive and with the same cable.

[Oval]

1 hour ago, Nilla's Photography said:

most of my files loose communication with the external drive

Thanks or the update! Sorry for the questions: Can we get the specs of that drive/file system/interface, please? It is not the startup drive, is it? And you are saving the AF files (.afphoto) on that drive and the file size is the same, no matter how many times the same file is saved?

 

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Oval said:

Sorry for the questions: Can we get the specs of that drive/file system/interface, please?

Also, this may have been mentioned earlier but is this on a Mac or Windows system?

I ask because I have been doing some testing with a few .afdesign files that I copied to a partition on an external hard drive that is directly connected through a hub to my iMac via USB 3. I tried editing the files in AD & saving the changes back to that USB drive copies but I could not get a 'connection lost' message no matter what I did.

The closest thing to that was waiting long enough for the USB drive to spin down & then doing the save, but all that did was open a progress bar window in AD with a 'saving file' message, which promptly disappeared once the drive had spun up & the file was saved.

Not that I think it matters but the drive is an older Toshiba 500 GB model using the GUID Partition Map & the partition is a 200 GB one formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

[Oval]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

may have been mentioned earlier but is this on a Mac or Windows system

very early:

On 24. Juni 2018 at 3:56 PM, Nilla's Photography said:

(I'm on a MACBook Air with 2TB Seagate external drive)

-

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

could not get a 'connection lost' message

Perhaps something like a bad virus detection or disk encryption could cause a connection lost if the files are very big or the writing is slow.