Improving speed of VueScan

[normiebabe]

I've searched all over, and I can't find any answers to the following
question: How can you improve the speed of scanning with VueScan?

My system should be fast enough:
2x2GHz G5
4GB PC3200 RAM
2x250GB SATA drives (35GB free on startup drive)
4x120GB DMA133 drives (30GB free on VueScan-save drive)
Microtek 9800XL on FW400 bus (no other peripherals)
OS X.3.5

I had ScanWizard installed, but it doesn't run under 10.3 (or just
takes forever finding profiles). I just removed all the files because
I don't know if they were interfering with VueScan's performance.

I'm doing repetitive scans of magazines, approx. 14x10in. The Standard
Input settings are for
Media=Mag
Media Size=Auto
Bits Per Pixel=24
Preview rez=Auto
Scan rez=400dpi
(all else default)
Crop, Filter, and Color are default. The crop area stays the same
between scans, and I just swap out pages since VueScan saves
sequential copies. The Advanced Output settings are for
Printed size: Scan size
Output is TIFF with a reduction of 3, 24bit, Auto Compression
(all else default)
The Advanced Prefs use 131MB for Preview and 880MB for Scan mem (to
keep it around 1GB). The memory is also cleared before scanning, just
in case. Everything else is pretty much default.

So, speed. For the 1315x1845 133dpi 9.98x13.9 inch 5.46MB file, it
took
50s to scan
15s to buffer
1s to do color correction, and
2:10 to process the TIFF, for a total of 3:15

Am I being unreasonable? I notice that VueScan maxes out only one
processor, so I don't know if this is good coding or not (16b
arithmetic aside), but it's apparently not MP. No other apps are
running. I haven't seen any suggestions on speed improvement. The 9800
would SCREAM (read: scan fast) under OS 9 with SW7, but that's not an
option anymore. Besides, it's probably the processing...

-n-

 

[ThomasH]

I've searched all over, and I can't find any answers to the following
question: How can you improve the speed of scanning with VueScan?

My system should be fast enough:
2x2GHz G5
4GB PC3200 RAM
2x250GB SATA drives (35GB free on startup drive)
4x120GB DMA133 drives (30GB free on VueScan-save drive)
Microtek 9800XL on FW400 bus (no other peripherals)
OS X.3.5

I had ScanWizard installed, but it doesn't run under 10.3 (or just
takes forever finding profiles). I just removed all the files because
I don't know if they were interfering with VueScan's performance.

I'm doing repetitive scans of magazines, approx. 14x10in. The Standard
Input settings are for
Media=Mag
Media Size=Auto
Bits Per Pixel=24
Preview rez=Auto
Scan rez=400dpi
(all else default)
Crop, Filter, and Color are default. The crop area stays the same
between scans, and I just swap out pages since VueScan saves
sequential copies. The Advanced Output settings are for
Printed size: Scan size
Output is TIFF with a reduction of 3, 24bit, Auto Compression
(all else default)
The Advanced Prefs use 131MB for Preview and 880MB for Scan mem (to
keep it around 1GB). The memory is also cleared before scanning, just
in case. Everything else is pretty much default.

So, speed. For the 1315x1845 133dpi 9.98x13.9 inch 5.46MB file, it
took
50s to scan
15s to buffer
1s to do color correction, and
2:10 to process the TIFF, for a total of 3:15

Am I being unreasonable? I notice that VueScan maxes out only one

As I see, there is no takers here.

You are correct. Over the time, Vuescan has become an extreme
resource hungry and slow application. There are some issues
with complexity of the algorithms.

On my computer a scan with IR cleanup takes 13min per image(!!!),
my SA-30 ejects film before next frame. I use NikonScan to make
raw scans (48bit tiffs,) but with GEM/ICE applied: 2min30 per frame.
Than I can use Vuescan on these files. Time for scan than is approx.
35-45 sec. for an "screen size image" 1280 pixels width, ca. 3Mbyte
each.

Thomas

 

[Steve]

So, speed. For the 1315x1845 133dpi 9.98x13.9 inch 5.46MB file, it
took
50s to scan
15s to buffer
1s to do color correction, and
2:10 to process the TIFF, for a total of 3:15

It's the 2:10 for file processing that seems totally wrong, on my
system (an Athlon 2100+, 1Gbyte RAM - Nikon 4000ED scanner) the times
are something like:

50s from start of scan to image being displayed
50s to "save" files, and thats saving both tiff's and jpegs at the
same time.

These times are for a full 4000ppi scan - ~60Mbyte image size.

I've no idea why yours should be so much slower though

Steve.

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

(e-mail address removed) (normiebabe) wrote in message

It's the 2:10 for file processing that seems totally wrong, on my
system (an Athlon 2100+, 1Gbyte RAM - Nikon 4000ED scanner) the times
are something like:

50s from start of scan to image being displayed
50s to "save" files, and thats saving both tiff's and jpegs at the
same time.

These times are for a full 4000ppi scan - ~60Mbyte image size.

I've no idea why yours should be so much slower though

He possibly has time consuming operations like noise reduction
switched on, that relies heavily on processor speed.

Bart

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

He possibly has time consuming operations like noise reduction
switched on, that relies heavily on processor speed.

I just re-read the OP's parameter settings, he specified Input|Media
Magazine, which triggers descreening (typically scanning at a higher
resolution, blurring, and downsizing), another type of noise
reduction. When I select that, it results in an output size of
3945x5535pixels (21.8MB), which then gets TIFF size reduced by
averaging every 9 pixels by choosing Output|Tiff size reduction 3.
Also, his Input|Descreen dpi should match the image's quality.

The Descreening could very well be implemented by scanning a 87 or
197MB file to start with (depends on Descreen DPI and Scan
resolution), blurring and resizing of which will consume 'some'
processing time. So the OP is right, it is probably the processing of
all those bits, but I also assume the output quality is to his liking
(if only it were faster...).

Rotating an image is something not mentioned by the OP, but setting
that option to none can help.

Another suggestion may be to change the workflow by runnning multiple
instances of VueScan simultaneously. One scans Raw files (the OP may
want to experiment with a fixed resolution which will later be
postprocessed), and the other instance batch processes the Raws (noise
reduction and TIFF size reduction). Setting the "Input|Lock exposure"
option and clearing "Crop|Auto position", will speed up batch
processing, as described in the Advanced Workflow Help file page.

Bart

 

[normiebabe]

SNIP

I just re-read the OP's parameter settings, he specified Input|Media
Magazine, which triggers descreening (typically scanning at a higher
resolution, blurring, and downsizing), another type of noise
reduction. When I select that, it results in an output size of
3945x5535pixels (21.8MB), which then gets TIFF size reduced by
averaging every 9 pixels by choosing Output|Tiff size reduction 3.
Also, his Input|Descreen dpi should match the image's quality.

The Descreening could very well be implemented by scanning a 87 or
197MB file to start with (depends on Descreen DPI and Scan
resolution), blurring and resizing of which will consume 'some'
processing time. So the OP is right, it is probably the processing of
all those bits, but I also assume the output quality is to his liking
(if only it were faster...).

Rotating an image is something not mentioned by the OP, but setting
that option to none can help.

Another suggestion may be to change the workflow by runnning multiple
instances of VueScan simultaneously. One scans Raw files (the OP may
want to experiment with a fixed resolution which will later be
postprocessed), and the other instance batch processes the Raws (noise
reduction and TIFF size reduction). Setting the "Input|Lock exposure"
option and clearing "Crop|Auto position", will speed up batch
processing, as described in the Advanced Workflow Help file page.

Bart

Well, I appreciate the answers. It IS quite possible that there is no
way to speed up VueScan, but changing the workflow DOES seem to be a
possibility. If I can scan raw files (of any size since I have Gigs
available) and save them quickly, and then get VueScan to run batch on
them and do the de-screening and all the noise and color correction: I
can hang with that. It would be similar to using Compressor to encode
MPEG2 files overnight...

The output has no moire, and other than limited dynamic range, I am
satisfied with the scans. Using PhotoShop's auto dynamic range
adjustment provides me with a satisfactory conclusion, and
fortunately, I can do that along with resizing in a batch also.

Now, if you folks could suggest ALL the options that I need to turn
off (or to set to some value) to get the fastest raw output, that
would be helpful.

-norm-

 

[Klaas Visser]

SNIP

Now, if you folks could suggest ALL the options that I need to turn
off (or to set to some value) to get the fastest raw output, that
would be helpful.

-norm-

As I understand, it doesn't matter what the options are set to or not,
doing a raw scan simply ignores them all anyway, and just captures the
data. (It's been awhile since I've done raw scanning with VueScan.)

The only thing that would make a difference is the bit setting - 24, 48
or 64.

Klaas

 

[normiebabe]

As I understand, it doesn't matter what the options are set to or not,
doing a raw scan simply ignores them all anyway, and just captures the
data. (It's been awhile since I've done raw scanning with VueScan.)

The only thing that would make a difference is the bit setting - 24, 48
or 64.

Klaas

Well, I now have a satisfactory workflow, by doing as suggested. I do
have to set the scanning res to 400dpi to get what I want, because
auto sets it to 200 (which I feel is going to be too low for
descreening).

I don't have definitive proof yet, since I've only done it once, but
it seems like ALL of the options are not saved in the INI file, so I
have to go through and check them when I load settings. (I have two:
scan-raw-to-file and final-processing.) This is mostly in the Input
pane.

I can't wait until VueScan is multiprocessor, AltiVec, and 64-bit
aware! By-the-by, the check is in the mail...

-norm-