When Timelapse loads your image and video files for the first time, it opens and analyzes each file in order to extract some data. While each file is processed quickly, hundreds of thousands to millions of images will take some time. You can speed things up by considering the points below.

Image/video file location and file size affects performance

When Timelapse opens a file, it must retrieve the file from wherever that file is stored. This means that performance is affected by the speed of storage medium, by transmission time, and by your file size. Your computer hardware also makes a difference, although most modern computers are fast enough.

If your images are stored on your local computer’s hard drive, performance will usually depend upon the speed of your storage medium. This is also true of drive attached to your computer, with the additional constraint of how that drive is connected (e.g., USB-1 is slow, USB-C is fast). If your images are stored on a network drive or cloud, the time it takes to upload each image will also be affected by the speed of your network and how fast the network can deliver each image.

The points below, from fastest to slowest, include some metrics from one test I ran using images ranging from 500-1200 KB in size and 2048×1536 – 2560×1920 in resolution. Times can differ considerably on your own setup.

1. Internal hard drives are generally fast, as is the transmission time.
   • SSD drives are very fast (e.g., 1.25 seconds / 1000 images)
   • Conventional hard drives are reasonably fast (9.15 seconds / 1000 images).
2. External and portable hard drives are slightly slower than an internal hard drive (11.6 seconds / 1000 images). Its USB type, such as old USB-1 drives, can also affect performance.
3. SSD camera cards are even slower, although it does depend hugely on the SSD card type (SDHC: 19 seconds / 1000 images).
4. Network hard drives times depend hugely on the transmission time, but are usually quite a bit slower than a local drive (20 seconds / 1000 images for a network hard drive directly connected to my computer via ethernet).
5. Dropbox, Google Drive and other cloud-based storage systems are likely the worse. Latency is unpredictable and connections may be dropped partly through. They are not recommended.

Maximizing performance

If things are going reasonably fast or if you don’t have massive numbers of images, then just keep going as you are. If you do need a performance boost, here are some options.

1. Run the first-time load of a large image set over-night. This is the simplest option. For example, start the operation at the end of your day. Subsequent loads of that image set will be much faster.
2. Move your files to a fast local storage device. Computers with SSD (solid state) drives are considerably faster than any other medium. If you are an employee, justify the cost of an SSD drive (1 – 2 TB disks are reasonably affordable) against how much you were paid while waiting for images to load. Having said that, your conventional hard drive or good quality portable USB-C drive are still reasonable options.
3. Run your own benchmarks on your own devices by seeing how long it takes to load (say) 15,000 images. This will give you an idea of where to best locate your images for processing and whether the gain by moving them around is worth it.
4. Consider copying the image set folder stored on a slow network to your local hard drive and then processing them there. You can always copy the .tdb and .ddb files back to the original disc when you are done.
5. Do your work on a better computer if your own computer is bottom-of-the-line or very old.
6. Alter your camera’s resolution setting if your camera allows it. Consider whether you really need a ridiculously high resolution (i.e., a very large image file) for what you are trying to do, or if a lesser resolution image will suffice.
7. Add your images incrementally. Timelapse is designed to allow you to add images over time. You don’t have to do it all at once. After loading your initial set of images, you can add subsequent folders as they become available using the File | Add images and videos to this image set… menu option.

Technical note

If you run your own tests, be aware that you can get substantial time differences from those reported above. It depends on your own computer, its cpu, available memory, the disc technology holding your files, your network performance, etc. Also, if you run the same test twice in a row on the same files (after deleting the .ddb file), you may see the performance times improve dramatically. This is a red herring: Windows caches files it has recently seen in memory, so the 2nd time you do the test it just gets them from memory rather than disc.