videos are completely loaded into memory on import

[iGadget]

These days, more and more digicams ship with video capabilities. These videos can become huge, multiple gigabytes for one video is not an exception.
However, Shotwell seems to be loading the *entire* video into memory before writing it to disk, which completely 'freezes' the import process (there's no indication of the fact that a video is being copied and nothing appears to be happening), slows down the computer since most of the internal memory is being consumed and it potentially crashes machines which are low on memory.

What should happen is that:
a) the user gets informed by Shotwell that a video is being imported (text feedback with i.e. file name/size + ETA, progress bar, thumbnail of the video)
b) instead of loading the entire file into memory, Shotwell should load 'reasonable' chunks at a time and write those to disk sequentially.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: shotwell 0.11.6-0ubuntu0.1 [modified: usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-generic 3.0.9
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Jan 2 21:42:16 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
SourcePackage: shotwell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Laura Khalil (loura)]

Thank you for reporting this.

A progress bar would be helpful when importing a large file. I have reported this issue upstream at http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4571

Please follow the issue on Redmine to be updated on its progress.

[Daniel Gnoutcheff (gnoutchd)]

It seems that (a) and (b) are separate bugs as far as shotwell's dev team is concerned. The upstream report for the "inadequate progress feedback" part now lives at:
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732663
and I've just filed a separate bug for the memory usage part:
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732663

[Daniel Gnoutcheff (gnoutchd)]

Same link for different bugs? Apparently I'm more sleepy than I realized. :P
Lemme try again. The upstream bugs are:

"Include progress bar when importing a large video":
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718494

"excessive memory usage when importing large videos":
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732663