Q: Where does Aperture slow down?

I recommend against NAS in favor of fast direct-connect setups. Thunderbolt RAID, eSATA, etc. Even simple FW800 to large externally powered hard drives. If you need a network that is a different can of worms that introduces its own serious issues.

We will need lots of hardware and workflow info to evaluate where the bottlenecks may be on your current setup.

HTH

-Allen

I would like to have a network set up. Also with remote capability. Any suggestions?

Sorry, not from me. I recommend against network setups for single-user images apps like Aperture and Photoshop.

-Allen

Peter Womack wrote:

 

I'm sure everyone knows that aperture can be slow and painful sometimes.

Not for me it isn't, not ever. Aperture 3.1.3, OS 10.6.8 rocks. Early-2011 17" MBP with SSD and directly connected FW800 drives, 8 GB RAM. Library on the SSD, Masters referenced on external drives after editing is complete.

-Allen

You say you want performance and to be able to use networked drives. Those two requirements are in direct opposition with each other.

As Allen stated if you want performance forget about networked drives and go with TB RAID or eSATA. Using networked drives will bottleneck Aperture for data.

Allan

Why do you want Network access?

Aperture is not designed as a multi-user parallel access database. On no account put your Aperture library on a network volume or a non MacOS Extended Volume, Apple advises against it:

Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3252

You may get away with putting your referenced masters on a Network volume, but that will not give you parallel access to your library and only slow things down.

Regards

Léonie

Aperture isn't slow for me either, I use a Mac Pro with my library on its own internal disk. I have no problems at all.

Allan

You stated; "I just need to be able to reach the files with two different users."

You are aware that Aperture is not designed as a multi-user application?

So you are opening yourself up to a huge amount of problems by attempting to use it that way. For starter the masters will have no adjjustment beyond those that each users does. Neither user will be able to see the other adjustment by sharing masters.

My suggestion is to rethink your plan.

Allan

So your question is how to make a single-user app into multi-user. That is a very different question without any bombproof solutions. There are workarounds (all of which add risk) that have been discussed here in the past (searching on "synch" may produce some good discussions).

After you read past discussions if you start a new carefully-titled thread with exactly what you intend to accomplish some folks may have suggestions.

Note single-user images apps are hugely different from multi-user apps. Extensis portfolio, for instance is ~$100 for single user but ~$2000 for small-workgroup, and even higher for large workgroups. Competent multi-user requires appropriate underpinnings, and kludging a single-user app into multi-user will introduce instabilities.

-Allen

Allan said it all. No two Aperture libraries on two different computers should reference the same set of master image files - you only need to be careless and and use  "write to master" option in one of the libraries and the other library will lose the connection to the master image. You will be repairing broken links to master files all the time. Or worse, you accidentally import your master image from the Finder into an image browser and "save" after browsing. Again you will be in trouble.  I'd love to have network based Aperture Library, and to have access to it from all my macs, but I really do not want to loose my precious images.

All this can be avoided by simply plugging your external drive into the the mac you are currently working with - no need to synchronize any Aperture Libraries.