Photos on Mac - recommended file types

Question

Photos on Mac - recommended file types

Photos is NOT performing well on my iMac 2017.

I have pictures and movies stored, going back over thirty years, and there are jpg, jpeg, png, heic, and tif files. I got rid of (converted) all the pict files. And there are movies files too - Avi, mpg, mp4, mov and m4v, as well as a couple of moving gif files (what are they?!!?!?).

Is my library too big? (I certainly hope not!!)

So my question is, as there are 40,000 images, and 1500 movie files, taking a total of 120Gb of space, should Photos really be so dog slow on my Mac, or is something there messing it up.. (like a particular file type perhaps)?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 3, 2020 10:31 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,585 points

Oct 3, 2020 11:12 AM in response to Paul Richards4

The AVI videos are probably incompatible. You may want to check each of your videos, if they are still playing correctly.

One way to check your videos for compatibility's to export the unmodified originals to a folder outside Photos (File Export > Export unmodified original) , then try to import them into another Photos Library. If the videos are incompatible, you should receive a warning, when trying to import them.

I am also using this list for iMovie to check for potentially problematic image and video formats:

About legacy media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Oct 3, 2020 12:14 PM in response to léonie

thanks for the quick reply. I'll convert my avi files (there are only about 50 of them).

the link for Catalina / Movies file types lists almost everything I have as being compatible. I suppose my next question is what's best? I have a 4k iMac, but none of the images or videos are to be used "professionally" so I'm just looking for the best still-image file type, that is not lossy, not overly large, and not likely to soon become redundant(!). I'm guessing its PNG..?

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Answer 3

Oct 3, 2020 1:35 PM in response to Old Toad

iMac 21.5" 2017, 2.3Ghz dual-core intel i5 with 8gb ram , i.e. straight out of the box spec. in January 2018.

HDD with 600 Gb free space(!)

Library is not on an external, it's located in the default location ~ / Pictures / Photos Library

cleaning - no, optimising - no, speed-up no

antivirus - yes, malware bytes. never anything else.

and I ran Repair photo library twice about a month ago, because it was so slow.

As an adjunct, its running a lot slower than it was on my previous iMac, which was six years old when I got this one, so that must have been about a 2010 model, and obviously a HDD too....

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Answer 4

Oct 3, 2020 1:50 PM in response to Old Toad

download an app, give it full disk access, tell it to generate a report of everything on my hard drive, and then post that report on the internet...

hmmm....

I kinda like Photos running slow.

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

215,544 points

Oct 3, 2020 1:20 PM in response to Paul Richards4

What model Mac do you have?

How much RAM?

What type of hard drive do you have? How much free space?

Where is the library located? If on an external HD how is that drive formatted and connected to your Mac?

Have you run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac?

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Answer 6

Old Toad

Level 10

215,544 points

Oct 3, 2020 1:44 PM in response to Paul Richards4

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck in the Etrecheck's Privacy preference pane so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

Also click and read the About info to further permit full disk access.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine what might be the problem.

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Answer 7

Old Toad

Level 10

215,544 points

Oct 3, 2020 1:54 PM in response to Paul Richards4

There is no personal information in the report. It even annominizes the names of the hard drives. "Macintosh HD" Becomes M**********D. With out the report it's very difficult to narrow down the possible causes of poor performances. It's you call, however.

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Photos on Mac - recommended file types

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