High-Speed Thumbnails vs. Fast Thumbnails

[GerryB]

I've been running a test of the thumbnail modes in XYplorerFree version 16.10.0200 with thumbnail caching disabled (by personal preference). I always restart XY before switching between the modes, so as to clear the thumbnail data from the memory. I'm finding that the new High-Speed thumbnail mode is actually considerably slower than Fast. Has anyone else has noticed this?

[Megalith]

Wow, I never tried "Fast" until now because "High-Speed" was available---it generates a folder with thousands of images in mere seconds, while "High-Speed" takes a lot longer. The thumbnail quality is better than "High-Speed" as well.

[GerryB]

Wow, I never tried "Fast" until now because "High-Speed" was available---it generates a folder with thousands of images in mere seconds, while "High-Speed" takes a lot longer. The thumbnail quality is better than "High-Speed" as well.

Yes, in each of my photo folders I find that "Fast" will often display the first 3 rows of thumbnails instantly, even though caching is disabled. Each row contains 5 thumbnails 180x105 in size, based on 10-megapixel JPEGs. If I use "High Speed", the thumbnails are built one by one in a rather slow left-to-right sequence, instead of in an entire row at a time, the way "Fast" does it.

As for the thumbnail quality, I'm not able to see the differences, even in the "Smooth" mode, but that may have something to do with my netbook's hardware, not to mention my poor vision.

[ksarnelli]

Don - can you explain exactly what each quality setting does? The help documentation is too vague. I've wondered a lot about this and I'm sure other users do as well.

For example, I believe 'Fast' uses embedded thumbnails, if available, whereas crisp and smooth don't. ...and what about High Speed?

Also, when actually creating new thumbnails do all of the different qualities use the same process for generating thumbnails but just use a different quality factor? If so, what are the actual quality factor values?

Lastly, does the quality setting have any effect when "Show thumbnails for non-images" is selected or does that setting also cause thumbnails for image types to be rendered via the shell?

[admin]

"High Speed" uses a newer shell interface (Vista and later) than "Fast". What those functions actually do remains the secret of MS.

I'm surprised that "Fast" can be faster than "High Speed" -- on my system "High Speed" is 5 times faster. Well, good that I kept "Fast" as an option...

[aurumdigitus]

This is a very illuminating thread! It never even occurred to me to try other speeds. But now having done so, Fast does indeed produce images with greater alacrity than High Speed.

Go figure ...

[GerryB]

"High Speed" uses a newer shell interface (Vista and later) than "Fast". What those functions actually do remains the secret of MS.

That would apply to my shell, since I'm using Windows 7, so perhaps I've discovered their secret ...
Deceleration.