Aperture 3 - Scandalous release

It's the worst Apple upgrade I've ever had, Aperture 3 is now unusable to me.

Upgrading didn't work at all it just got stuck processing, so I tried a fresh Aperture 3 library and imported my Aperture 2 projects 1 by 1, this worked better but its now gone unusable again and stuck processing.

Leaving it for hours on end does nothing and it then makes the whole computer run slow so I have to force quit.

I only have a small library with about 1000 RAW 10MP photos so I wasn't expecting such problems 😟

I've now managed to create a new Aperture 3 library which I will use for new photos and hopefully Apple release a fix so I can use my other photos. :-/

I completely agree. It's a scandalous release. I wonder how it was possible that the Aperture team, has not found these problems during the software development or in the (private) beta testing program. These problems are so big and serious, that I can't believe they haven't detected before.

How many users they have used for the beta testing program? 2 or 3 maybe?

Will they ever tried to convert an AP2 library with more than five pictures?

There would be the reasons for requesting an immediate refund!

Ridicolous ...

I have to agree. Having tried and spent hours learning A2 to find its weaknesses are plenty over Lightroom I was impressed to read that A3 had gone 64bit and the library system had been simplified. HOWEVER the old issues with A2 remain - crashing, slow processing's and generally flaky. SUffice to say the I have imported 50,000 raw files as referenced images on a firewire 800 portable disk with the same library on the disk (something lightroom does in a blink). The import took 2 hours and the processing (of previews) would have been done by now 2 days later had the software not continually crashed! The book says leave it to get on with it over night - done that twice to find it has crashed so this is getting pretty pointless now and will be going back to lightroom until they get this fixed.

You might ask why I want to swap - I like design and simplicity, the adjustments are more subtle and the backup (vault system). But really cant waste any more valuable time on a software that just doesn't do what it says on the box.

Please APPLE sort this out now and release the update before I send it back to you!

I agree.

I am a big Apple fan. Loved Aperture 2. I am extremely disappointed in Aperture 3. If I cannot fix the problems by end of week, I am switching to LR. I can't run a business with this software and its glitches.

i believe this is a corrupt database issue rather than a problem with ap3..please see my reply in this thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2334119&tstart=0

although I do believe that apple should look at some of these old databases and release an update that takes care of problems with corrupt databases asap. I have another call scheduled with apple application support on monday, and I plan on sharing this script and it's author with them because they for more than 2 years have been unable to help me with my issues with AP 2 and now 3, and i had to find the answer on my own. It sounds as though the Aperture engineers are working in too controlled of an environment, and not taking into account problems users were having. (I for one submitted MORE THAN 50 feedback reports) when I was having issues in AP2, yet every time I called the support line I was treated as if I was a two headed human and no one had ever heard of any of the issues I was experiencing.

I've had nothing but good luck so far, so I suspect there's something else causing the issue.

It is possible there's an issue with the library; see the post above and perhaps use command-option when launching Aperture and telling it to repair and/or rebuild the library.

I just installed Aperture 3.0 and upgraded six libraries each with over 20K referenced images on a seperate HD. It went without a hitch, although admittedly, it takes a long time to process the images to work with all the features that are included with this update. I believe like some others on this forum that much of the trouble experienced by other users is because there was already undetected corruption in their Aperture 2 libraries. Usually these are large libraries and corruption can go unnoticed in parts that are not used regularly.

My experience has led me to be very careful to be sure I have a solid, clean, file before I ever update anything, be it a system upgrade, or a database upgrade. Trying to update a database (i.e. Aperture Library) that is already corrupted will only create more corruption. Therefore, before updating your libraries, delete all your previews, generate new thumbnails, do a consistency check, and rebuild your projects, especially if you have a lot of them or some do not seem to be showing up. Repairing permissions would not hurt anything either. (By the way, I have found on large libraries doing this on a regular basis seems to make my libraries work much better.) Then check your library to make sure it is doing everything it should be before you upgrade. Aperture 3 seems to be a very big upgrade and it has a lot to do to your Aperture 2 libraries before you can use them in Aperture 3. Make sure you start with solid clean libraries and then make sure Aperture 3 has enough time to upgrade them before you try to work with them.

I am very pleased with the performance of Aperture 3 and really appreciate the new features, which all seem to work very well, by the way.

I am no computer whiz.
"I am just a beggar who found bread and is telling others where they may find some also".

I must agree with James.
I also installed AP3 and imported 55GB of images from AP2 and 35GB from iPhoto without a glitch.
Since I've a full bootable copy of my internal HD (besides TM) in an external HD, I wasn't afraid of going the simple way.
I did a last minute update of my external backup HD (I use Super Duper which ALWAYS does a Repair Permissions on the internal HD BEFORE copying to the external HD) and then installed AP3.
It took some time, but much less than people are reporting (I left it running overnight and next morning everything was finished and running smoothly, so, I don't know exactly how many hours it took!!!).
I strongly believe that much of the problem some people are experiencing is because of other causes and not directly of AP3, such as corrupted files, unstable system due to third party apps, etc.
I'm surprised how much faster is AP3 than AP2.

I have to chime in here too. Although I had my problems with insufficient space errors.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2330189&tstart=0
Once I resolved it
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2331352&tstart=0
It was great

It took about 10 hours to import a 206GB A2 vault across FW800 drives then another 21 hours to process 56,000 images, but now it sings. I think that many of the people experiencing performance problems simply are not allowing sufficient time for Aperture to do its thing while others had underlying problems to begin with.

I made the mistake of trying to use it while it was processing too, but then I got disciplined and found other ways to occupy myself while it did its work. Now I'm happy: it ROCKS!

Note that I don't have the fastest machine on the planet.

DLS

PS: I'm not saying that the upgrade is squeaky clean, but I didn't expect it to be. No upgrade ever is!

The information at this link was helpful to me. Hope it helps you.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3945

Indeed, Apple could be more explicit about the care and feeding of large database files. Most of what I learned is from personal experience with Aperture 2 libraries becoming corrupt and figuring out ways to recover them. Many forget that Aperture is a powerful professional level application and requires more attention and commitment than something like iPhoto or other applications that don't have extensive databases. Perhaps Apple should take note of the difficulties some are having and be more informative.

Really? "Scandalous?" You guys are well advised to stay away from x.0 releases. Just take a few breaths, wait a few weeks and get x.01 after the bugs are worked out. Are you completely new to this computer stuff?

robogobo wrote:
Really? "Scandalous?" You guys are well advised to stay away from x.0 releases. Just take a few breaths, wait a few weeks and get x.01 after the bugs are worked out. Are you completely new to this computer stuff?

Very well put.

Professional user software is by definition a vertical market, it is not a word processor that everyone needs and anyone can use or test. The more complex the software the more possibilities for bugs, and more common large differences in workflow, computer understanding, database size and the like.

A x.0 release of pro software will absolutely have issues...that is a historical guarantee. This of us who have been here all along are willing to navigate these waters to gain the benefits at the other end. In a few months the issue will be mostly fixed, and greater understanding and workarounds developed.

We converted 6 workstations this weekend, specifically did not convert to the new imaging as that can be done in the future on an as-needed basis. Faces and places are disabled, as they mean little to our commercial work, and again can be added once we have stable operating libraries.

All of the libraries reside on disks that are no more than 40% full. For performance and reliability reasons, we never exceed 70% on a volume. Disks are so cheap compared to salaries and downtime it is a no brainer. Yet I am reading threads with guys complaining of conversion issues when they have 12% free space...sorry but that just about guarantees the problems.

The first library we converted was 500GB and at about 2.5 hours it froze at about 58%. I trashed the partial conversion and started over with a clean copy. This time, in Aperture 2 I did a Library rebuild before I converted. After this the conversion ran perfectly, in about 4 hours.

I ended up with a new file called Aperture Library, and another file called Aperture Library_Original. I found that this is the way the conversion is designed if you have the diskspace for 2 full Libraries. If you do not, it seems it will delete the original after the conversion.

At any rate before converting run a rebuild in Aperture 2, and then make a backup of that library. You will then have a very clean original should anything happen in the conversion.

I am happy to say we followed the rebuild and backup on the other 5 Libraries, ranging in size from 500GB to 1.2 TB, and all the other conversions went smoothly.

The key is have plenty of diskspace available, more than double the size of your library, and Aperture will leave an Aperture Library_Original which can still be opened in A2.

It's not the most stable release... but it is fun to use... I am not a pro and do not
need A3 to run perfectly currently... happy to send my feedback to Apple and input via
the forum until the bugs are ironed out...

It was never going to be plain sailing... which is why most pro's shy away from a new release for at least a couple of months...

Personally I am happy with A3 although it seemed to crash a lot until I disabled faces and stopped testing out all of my plugins in 64bit etc...

Please explain how to rebuild the library in A2?

Thanks,