Compressing the database

Deleting a movie does not shrink the file — the space it used stays inside as a hole. Compressing rebuilds the database, drops the holes and, as a side effect, repairs most of the damage a crash or a lost network connection can leave behind.

Running it

Database › Compress, or the compress button on the toolbar. The collection closes, is rebuilt and reopens; a progress panel is shown while it works. Large collections with images stored inside take a while — let it finish.

Compress database on exit on the General tab of Preferences does the same thing every time you close the program. Convenient for a collection you edit a lot; skip it if closing the program needs to be instant.

When to do it

• After deleting a lot of movies, or after removing screenshots and covers.
• After a power cut, a crash, or a network share disappearing mid-write.
• Whenever the program reports a damaged or full database and offers to repair or compress it — say yes. That offer exists because compressing is what usually fixes it, and a copy of the file as it was is kept next to it. If the repaired file would come out with movies missing, the program does not replace the database at all and tells you so.
• If sorting or filtering starts behaving oddly. Shift+Ctrl+F8 rebuilds the indexes, which is the lighter version of the same medicine.

If compressing does not help

When a repair fails, the program offers to restore the database from its latest automatic backup copy and names the date of that copy; the damaged file is kept next to it with a .damaged extension. Changes made after that date are not in the copy.

Without an automatic copy, open the most recent backup of your own and compare. If the database will not open at all, do not delete or compress the damaged file again — write to us: movies can often be recovered from it.