[Xtraz]

Hi, I want to use the random photo screensaver to show random photos of my entire iPhoto library. I have a fairly large photo library (10k), and whenever I set the option to use a random mode (as opposed to sequencial) the harddrive thrashes a lot without doing anything when testing the screensaver.

Note: It works instantly in sequencial mode.

It seems to me its trying to search through all the photos or something? But it should be really efficient. Pick a random photo (random(10000)), display it, pick another random photo, etc.

Edit: This is using a dual G5 2Ghz with 1GB of RAM.

[tooki]

But that's not how randomization works, because you don't want any picture (or song, in a music player) to be repeated before all the others have been through once. So what happens is that all the images are randomized at once, creating a randomized playlist, basically.

tooki

[Xtraz]

Good point. But then wouldn't it simply be a hash (or array) of references to the files, and then randomizing the order of the content? Surely an algorithm of that sort does not cause any long delay or excessive hard drive usage. (I mean, the iPhoto database should have references to all the file names anyway)