Aperture 3 hanging... and hanging... and chewing...

No effect whatsoever. At least, not for me.

loobola wrote:
One other thing I just check was I 'Verified' each disk in disk utility and all were fine apart from my original Operating HDD which came up with the following error report. Might not be related I don't know. Am working currently so will flip over operating systems and repair the disk a bit later (you can't repair the disk while using it as the operating HDD).

Verifying volume “Operating HDD”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Missing thread record (id = 40041455)
Incorrect number of thread records
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 189891 instead of 189892)
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Operating HDD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.

Ok, so after much testing it seems I have figure out one of MY main issues. See the above post. I started my Mac in another operating HDD and then repaired my main HDD that had the above errors on. This didn't take long, maybe 5 mins or so. Then rebooted back in to the original HDD and ran A3. Now it seems to run much better. At times it is still slow with some lag when using some brushes and the retouch tool but it now builds previews in 10 secs instead of the 5mins it was taking.

I also read someone else had found the above such errors on their HDD. Maybe people that have the issue of A3 taking ages and ages to generate thumbnails could go in to disk utility and check their operating HDD for errors and see if that is your issue also. It might be that A3 actually introduces this issues in some way and then it causes it to slow down.

And so now the 3 or 4 library that I had created and imported are now usable in terms of speed.

I have found though that since doing this and getting it running as i would like A3 has crashed a couple of times and my Mac has completely frozen twice - had to hold down the power button. So all is not perfect but I have at least address a major issue. I still have graphics card issues - I have the ATI Radeon 1600X card that doesn't seem to work with SL that well and I think has been talked about many timers on the relevant forums. I have not heard if Apple have acknowledged this or are addressing this display issues? I would but another Graphics card but as my Mac Pro is 4 years old there are no compatible alternative cards being made for my:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz

Of course if anyone knows of any please let me know. Or if Apple are working on this also let me know.

Oh And finally I have 2 SL's now installed on my Mac and whenever i restart my Mac it automatically boots in to the newest operating system. Does anyone know how i change the default operating system it starts in to automatically without holding down the ALT key? I want to keep the 2nd SL for further testing should I discover other major issues that I want to figure out by comparing my existing SL with the new install.

Regards

loobola wrote:
I would but another Graphics card but as my Mac Pro is 4 years old there are no compatible alternative cards being made for my:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1

Check on eBay. I'd recommend an ATI 3870 or an 8800GT.

loobola wrote:
Does anyone know how i change the default operating system it starts in to automatically without holding down the ALT key?

System Preferences>Startup Disk

Thanks to everyone on this support page, it really helps going through the pain together.
After 5 days of my aperture library updating, with Aperture ( in active monitor saying "not responding" ), as it updated my 1.9TB library, and other day while it fixed permissions. My aperture 3 is working. I had 5 jobs waiting to go out, and a bunch of stock images i need to get at, i had to use lightroom for one job, what i nightmare, so happy aperture was made!
ITs slow not as quick and aperture 2, but over all i am very happy. The speed issue might relate to the "drobo S" I just up grade from the " drobo" which is super slow.
thanks again, i am sure the speed issue will be fixed with the patch.

Just adding another voice to the chorus... I've spent all day today and much of yesterday trying various fixes with almost no success. I upgraded to A3 on a Mac Pro without problems. But when I updated my laptop (a MacBook Pro with fairly hefty specs), I've had nothing but problems.

It was a total mess after the library was updated and Aperture attempted to process updated previews on its own while it was processing Faces. It almost instantly froze everything up by sucking ever ounce of memory and more. I turned off the Faces functionality (for now) in the preferences which helped a little but not much. I then tried pretty much everything that has been suggested in this forum without success. I'm completely unable to interact with the library once Aperture starts up unless I hold down the Shift key to prevent it from working on previews.

The best approach for me has been deleting all of the previews manually through the finder and then starting up Aperture holding down the Shift key and then selecting all thumbnails for all my photos in Aperture and selecting Update Previews. The system remains normal, I can interact with other applications and Aperture processes fine until it gets to about 3,500 of about 10,500 images at which point it hangs and freezes up the entire computer again.

I have an important job coming up this week and NEED this to get fixed. But at this point I'm really just hoping for Apple to issue an update to fix this disaster.

Thanks to everybody sharing their feedback here. I was going through the same pain as most of the user here - the constant "processing" task which completely hangs the Aperture and the whole system...

After trying almost all of the solutions offered on this thread, I found that indeed the Aperture is always stopping at one and the same particular image; if this is the image which is about to be processed - and you start the Aperture normally - then it will simply go into endless processing mode.

Similar to Eric and Discoteca - for me the image(s) were such with multiple retouch strokes applied back in Aperture 2.1.x. Turning off the retouch adjustments helps Aperture to continue its processing.

If you are having such case, you might try to narrow down the images which are causing the Aperture to hang. What I did was the following:

1) Start Aperture with SHIFT key - so that it doesn't enter the "processing" mode

1.a) To be sure that you are not hitting another problem you might want to do the regular checks described in this thread - like repairing disk permission (with Disk Utility) and also using Aperture to check / repair the library (by starting the Aperture with OPTION+COMMAND keys pressed)

2) Open your first project, select a group of photos, right-click and choose "Update Previews"

3) Open the Activity window and watch the Aperture progress - as mentioned before (depending on your system specs) it will take 1-few seconds per photo/item to be processed.

4) If the Aperture hangs on a particular item (you can easily tell this - as the Aperture and the whole system will become not responsive) - then you should Restart (try by using regular Quit, rather than Force Quit) and narrow down the selection in order to find the "special" photo which is the cause for the trouble. In all cases for me these were photos with multiple retouch strokes (30 and above).

robogobo wrote:

loobola wrote:
I would but another Graphics card but as my Mac Pro is 4 years old there are no compatible alternative cards being made for my:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1

Check on eBay. I'd recommend an ATI 3870 or an 8800GT.

loobola wrote:
Does anyone know how i change the default operating system it starts in to automatically without holding down the ALT key?

System Preferences>Startup Disk

Slightly off topic but as it was mentioned in this thread I'll reply here.

I am looking to get one of these new graphics cards above but struggling to find one (in the UK). Can anyone help? I also note there are different makes of the cards Saphire, Asus etc. Are the cards the same but just made by different companies or do I need a specific brand? And do I need the Graphics card to specify it is Mac version? Some have the details such as 'ATI Radeon 3870' but don't specifically mention Mac compatible.

If I get my hands on one I'll report back here if it has resolved the display issues I have had with A3 and SL.

Thanks

drgeos, everything you write here rings true with my situation. I have been through a similar process of deduction. My problem is that almost all my images have >30 retouch strokes, because they are scanned in from film. So I think we really must expect Apple to come up with a fix, ASAP.

It's maddening that Apple don't post on significant threads like this one (29 pages already) to say, 'Hey guys we can see there's a problem, and we're working round the clock to fix it.' It comes across as an arrogant aloofness, and must cost them dearly in brand loyalty.

One thing I will say in Apple's favour, is that in Aperture 3 they seem to have fixed the loss of functionality in Aperture 2 since the Snow Leopard to work with B/W tiffs. So I can work with newly imported images, I just can't work with the hundreds that I have already painstakingly edited.

I would also add that when I tried Rebuild Preview with a suspect image, it took about an hour and the result looks like an LSD-induced dream in bright purple. So make a copy of your library before you try this. I did that by opening Aperture 3 with the shift key held down, exporting succesive fractions of the library to a new location, then working with each in turn. That's how I know that most of the images are causing the 'stuck' problem.

You are absolutely right. I have one large desktop MAC PRO with 14GB of RAM and Aperture 3 seems to run OK on it but when I loaded it on my MAcBook Pro with only 3GB of RAM it does the same as you described it just slows dow to a USLESS heap of junk.

I am amazed and disappointed how ANY company, leave alone Apple, could let a software package in this state out of the house. This is embarrassing. I was in the electronic business for years and we would have never ever dared sending any software package out of house that was tested so poorly. This is not some mundane, hard to find software bug on a seldom used feature. This software simply could not have been tested on a system with less then 3GB of memory. Their specs say it will run with 1GB of RAM and "suggest" 2GB.

Hope Apple sends out a new revised, and TESTED, software fix and one HUGE APOLOGY. Most importantly Apple better take a better look at their software TEST PRACTICES.

Guenther

Nor me.

Just a general question: I have the same problems as everyone else (hanging.... beachball of death, force quit) and have followed this thread assiduously. I have iStat running in the background to check memory usage, cpu usage etc etc as per suggestions here.

I then open Aperture in regular mode (I've disc utilitied the Aperture Library and found no problems, same goes for the my 160GB hard drive and found no problems) and the dreaded "processing" wheel starts up; I then double click "processing" to see how things are going: then after 5 or 25 (insert a random # here) it will for some reason freeze completely, swap memory blows out to like 10GB etc etc..

My question is this: how can I tell WHAT IMAGE its stuck on? I have 82GB worth of exposures spread across a few dozen projects, the bulk of which are shot in RAW. I have started to delete previews for a few of them but its more hit and miss at the moment.

btw: a few have mentioned they too cannot run AP3 in 32 mode. The box is missing? Anyone found a work around for this that doesn't rely on downloading AP trial mode? Quite frankly I'm gunshy of the entire software package at the moment and would rather hold off until Apple release a patch..

Thanks in advance,

I think (fingers crossed) that this solved my problem.

1) I deleted all previews through the finder by showing the package contents for the Aperture Library
2) I opened Aperture with the Shift key held down
3) I disabled Faces in the Preferences (just because that seemed to take a lot of processor bandwidth and I didn't want that going on at the same time as everything else
4) I then Updated Previews for each project individually
5) There was one image that I could remember which, among all in my library, I knew I had made a TON of adjustments on and I deleted that version before even trying to update its preview
6) I encountered no issues through the entire process of updating previews though it did take me a while
7) I quit Aperture, opened it again and checked the Enable Faces option and let that run. It is still running but is half way through processing those and no problems yet

Launch activity monitor before launching A3. Launch A3 W shift key down. Go back to activity monitor and select the A3 process and the open info on the process. View open files and ports. While leaving the open files window visible, go back to A3 and manually start processing. When it hangs, scroll through the open files window and look for a master image file that is open.

Once you find the file, write down the name and use the activity monitor to quit A3. Launch A3 again w shift held down. Find the master you wrote down and all versions of that master and disable the retouch brush on the master and all versions.

Repeat that process untill A3 completes processing.

Holy crap!!! I use the re-touch brush ALL THE TIME with photos.. does this mean I'm going to have to do this for hundreds of photos? yikes... that is going to take forever. I hope Apple is watching this board and looking for a better solution than deactivating the brush image by image... dang... I have a headache!

That said, thank you thank you thank you for everyone who works so hard through these discussion boards to find solutions that work, to help deal with bugs like this until Apple releases a patch!!

I was experiencing the same problems as pretty much everyone else on this topic - until the breakthrough made initially by Eric Robertson (I think) about heavily retouched photos causing the problems. I had a few projects of scanned photos that were indeed retouched quite heavily so having started Aperture with shift held down I exported these projects to a new library and then deleted the projects from the main library.

Works like a charm - the main library now works fine. The one with the scans still causes issues, but I'm not so worried about that for now - I assume a patch will be forthcoming at some point.

Many thanks to all for sharing their experiences here.

Simon