I sometimes get a Preview Time-Out error in the GMIC plugin in GIMP when changing settings in some filters.
One way for me to avoid the Time-Out error is to make the preview window smaller in the plugin, but that doesn’t always work. For instance, in GMIC’s ‘Sharp abstract’ filter, setting smaller values for either the ‘Spatial’ or ‘Value’ scales returns a ‘Preview-Timeout’ no matter how small I shrink the preview window.
Is it somehow possible for the user to configure the GMIC plugin to disable the ‘Preview-Timeout’ function, or to at least to set a larger time/memory limit for it?
There is an environnement variable $GMIC_GUI_TIMEOUT that is used to set the number of seconds authorized before a preview timeout.
Just assign this variable to something bigger (60, for a minute, maybe). Default is 16 seconds.
Greetings Claes! Sorry for the delay in answering your questions.
The GMIC plugin version is GMIC-Qt 2.1.6_pre#171122, but I have encountered the same timeout error with a few filters in previous stable versions of the plugin as well.
The GMIC timeout errors occur with both GIMP versions 2.8.22 and 2.9.6.
My operating system is Windows 7 64-bit.
Below, David has responded with what appears to be the solution that I’ve been looking for. I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks, David. Unfortunately, I’m not computer-knowledgeable enough to know how to find that particular environmental variable. (It looks like it might be part of the plugin’s code, which might be accessible to those who are familiar with compiling, which leaves me out). If the $GMIC_GUI_TIMEOUT variable is something that can be accessed through a normal Windows Command Line - or if it’s located in the Windows Registry - then there might be some hope for me to be able to change its value.
Can the ‘TIMEOUT’ variable somehow be accessed and changed through the plugin itself?
I’m not a Windows expert, and this is a system-related task, so I won’t be of much help here, but setting an environment variable should be doable, following some online tutorials (this one maybe).
This is actually not possible to set the preview timeout directly in the plug-in, but I will ask the developer of the plug-in interface if the can add an option in the ‘Preferences’ dialog the plug-in.
That info is appreciated, David. The fact that it is a system-related task indeed makes it sound doable. I’m somewhat familiar with the Windows ‘System’ and ‘User’ Environmental Variables GUI where they can be added and edited. Thanks for pointing me in that direction! I’ll look into it more.
Oddly, I’ve noticed that there are some GMIC filters which run for long periods without timing out the preview. This initially led me to think that the preview timeout lengths were programmed into - or omitted from - each filter separately by the filter’s author. But David’s explanation indicates that is not the case.
But I definitely like David’s idea of putting a timeout ‘override’ option into GMIC’s Preferences.
Even though it’s true that the GMIC plugin will not always render its results exactly the way the preview shows them, it is nonetheless extremely useful and informative for the preview to, at least, give an idea of ‘what to expect’ when a parameter is changed. There have been many times when my ‘experimenting’ with a variety of settings has been frustrated by consecutive preview timeouts. In times like those, I give credit to those experienced users who give the common-sense advice to simply apply the plugin to the image to see the end result.