Migrating from Windows+Picasa to OSX+iPhoto or Aperture

Hi there,

I seem to be digging myself a big hole trying to get settled into a new Mac and bringing my photos with me.

I'm hoping someone can tell me where I went wrong before I lose a lot of pictures and or videos...

Old system was an old single core Win7 machine with Picasa managing 200GB of media (~55k pics and a few videos). It did OK but video from a new D7000 put it over the edge. It just couldn't play the video at speed.

I copied the folder structure over to a new Mac Mini and tried an iPhoto import. Overnight it seemed to work so I imported 1300 pics and a few vids off the SD card from a recent holiday. Over the next few days the library corrupted itself a couple of times and I decided to try the Aperture Trial. All the .picasaoriginals events were an annoyance too.

Another overnight import (Import iPhoto Library) ended with a message saying most photos were OK but 800 didn't import. I didn't notice a way to figure out which files didn't work.

As I started looking around I realized there were only 8 videos where there should have been more. None of the recent D7000 vids were there.

I started iPhoto again to see if the videos were there and they were but they wouldn't play. Triangle warning sign.

I've still got the original files from the windows box so I could almost start over except for the one import - I could probably export that if the video problem wasn't contagious...

I'm suspicious that the iPhoto Library corruptions may have been related to using the Flickr sync features. I think it was trying to download thousands of pics from there. I've removed the Flickr account from iPhoto for now.

I checked for updates tonight and there was an Aperture upgrade to 3.2.2 which I installed. Still no videos in Aperture.

I should say that Aperture is still 'Processing' ~10k files in the Activity dialog when I click on the 'Processing...' text. Unclear what it's doing to them, but it's possible the videos are just at the end of the list it's working on.

Any recommendations on things I can do here?

1. Restart from the original folder structure and try a direct Aperture import along with an export/import of the recent pics/vids that are only fully in the iPhoto Library.

2. Redo the "Import from iPhoto Library" in Aperture into the current Aperture library, selecting Do Not Import Duplicates and crossing fingers that the videos will work this time.

3. Change some magic setting which will make the videos work in current libraries.

4. Give up on Apple photo products and try Picasa for Mac until next Christmas when it's time to make some calendars in iPhoto again.

5. Press a magic button to associate all those straggler .picasaoriginals folders and images with their corresponding Picasa-edited photos

6. Locate an Aperture log file that lists the 800 files not imported, and what was wrong with them. (I tried searching in Console with no joy.)

6. Call Janie Porche.

7. Other

Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for any hints or tips you can provide.

Cheers,

Andrew