Hi,
I'll try to do something about this, maybe some background loading to enhance the the experience.
If the image data will not be loaded then you will not be able to query on it (the query system is not db based (too slow for the tag queries)
How much time in average does it take for the 28400 images to load ?
Asaf.
50 - 100 DVD's sounds like a lot of images, I hope you backup the images on other media as well (burned discs are not that reliable) I had cases when I could not read some discs I burned a year earlier which were stored in good conditions.
I will try to think of something to increase the performance of this.