Relocate Masters results in inconsistent filenames. Fix?

I greatly appreciate your pitching in to help with my Aperture file naming woes. However, unless Aperture put in carriage returns or line returns into the filenames they aren't there. I certainly did not.

I imported the files to Aperture directly from my Canon S95 SD card. I could reproduce the problem by copying the SD files to my hard drive and importing from there.

The files were imported using Aperture's Image Year, Image Month, Image Day, Custom Name (underscore character), Counter (5 digit). This results in yyyymmdd_00000. I could reproduce the problem by foregoing the Custom Name field, Image Year, Image Month, Image Day, Counter (5 digit) resulting in yyyymmdd00000.

Once imported I appended the name Aperture imported in the Version Name field resulting in yyyymmdd_00000appended text.

I then chose to Relocate Masters choosing Version Name for Name Format in the window that comes up when relocating masters.

Aperture did not include appended text for some files and did for others. To test I could reproduce the problem with the same files appending Photo1, Photo2, Photo3, etc. rather than using long descriptive names (yyyymmdd_00000Photo1).

I can also completely delete the name Aperture assigned to the the Version Name field and replace it with Photo1, Photo2, Photo3, etc. Aperture will use the original imported Version Name for the same files for which it ignores appended text.

I tried copying and pasting the Version Name field to name the files copied to the HD from the S95's SD card. I imported those files making no changes to the filenames and Relocated Masters using Version Name for Name Format. All files were named correctly (yyyymmdd_00000descriptive appended text).

The issue is not confined to specific files. If I choose to import the first two files Aperture will choose to ignore appended text in the Version Name field for the second file which was named correctly previously when Relocating Masters.

At this point it appears to me as though Aperture is ignoring appended or replaced text in the Version Name field randomly when Relocating Masters. I can't find any commonality.

The SD card is new. I formatted it in the Canon S95 before using it. I am reading the card from the SD reader in my Mac Mini (Mac Mini (mid 2011), 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256 MB, APPLE SSD TS256C 251 GB, Hitachi 750.16 GB).

Before reformatting the card I will try another new SD card I have to see if I get similar results. However, I'm not all that hopeful as ignoring appended text doesn't seem to be confined to particular files and other apps don't seem to have any problems with the files.

Please be warned that Terminal and I have never been on anything remotely approaching friendly terms. UNIX syntax totally escapes me. The command you gave me doesn't have anything to say about the Canon SD card. My Aperture Library is in my Pictures folder.

I have imported directly from the card into Aperture. I have also drug the files from the 103___01 folder to my hard drive and imported those into Aperture. Same results.

I copied the folder on my HD with the S95 files. Then I manually copied and pasted from Version Name in Aperture to name the files in the finder. Importing those files and Relocating Masters using Version Name properly named all the files.

Desk-Mac-mini:~ peggymain$ ls -lb

total 3488

drwx------ 4 peggymain admin 136 Dec 6 01:22 Applications

-rw-r--r--@ 1 peggymain staff 1781760 Dec 20 23:16 Cache.db

drwx------@ 12 peggymain staff 408 Jan 23 20:54 Desktop

-rw-r--r--@ 1 peggymain staff 0 Dec 7 20:12 Desktop alias

drwx------@ 299 peggymain staff 10166 Jan 23 21:27 Documents

drwx------+ 146 peggymain staff 4964 Jan 23 02:22 Downloads

drwx------@ 10 peggymain staff 340 Jan 21 20:56 Dropbox

drwx------@ 66 peggymain staff 2244 Jan 22 19:34 Library

drwx------@ 15 peggymain staff 510 Jan 16 02:09 Movies

drwx------@ 11 peggymain staff 374 Dec 23 19:10 Music

drwx------@ 113 peggymain staff 3842 Jan 21 04:05 Pictures

drwxr-xr-x@ 7 peggymain staff 238 Nov 26 22:59 Public

drwxr-xr-x@ 7 peggymain admin 238 Jan 10 2011 Sites

drwxr-xr-x 8 peggymain admin 272 Sep 16 2009 Styx

drwxr-xr-x@ 3 peggymain admin 102 Aug 13 12:17 check4change-logs

This is what diskutil list has to say about the SD card.

/dev/disk4

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *15.9 GB disk4

1: Windows_FAT_32 CANON_DC 15.9 GB disk4s1

Here are the ls results for the directories on CANON_DC

Desk-Mac-mini:~ peggymain$ ls /Volumes/CANON_DC

DCIM

Desk-Mac-mini:~ peggymain$ ls /Volumes/CANON_DC/DCIM

103___01 CANONMSC

Desk-Mac-mini:~ peggymain$ ls /Volumes/CANON_DC/DCIM/103___01

IMG_0378.JPG IMG_0381.JPG IMG_0386.CR2

IMG_0379.JPG IMG_0384.JPG IMG_0387.CR2

IMG_0380.JPG IMG_0385.CR2 IMG_0388.CR2

Desk-Mac-mini:~ peggymain$ ls /Volumes/CANON_DC/DCIM/CANONMSC

M0103.CTG

That pretty much covers my Terminal expertise and then some.

I ran Verify from Disk Utility

Verifying volume “CANON_DC”

Checking file system** /dev/disk4s1

** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT

** Phase 2 - Checking Directories

** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters

16 files, 15494720 KiB free (484210 clusters)

Thanks again for helping me out.

I have gotten similar results using another new SD card and reformatting it in my Canon S95 using the low level formatting option. I have also tried all three troubleshooting steps when using Command-Option to launch Aperture as well as reinstalling Lion. Nothing changed so I went ahead and filed a bug report.

As a workaround I purchased A Better Finder Rename 8 to rename my files after importing and then appending descriptive data in the finder. Then I import the files into Aperture and use Version Name to name the files when Relocating Masters. This correctly names all the relocated files. There's not much elegant about that method but it does work properly.

If I hear anything from Apple or figure out a solution on my own for getting correct appended Version Names when relocating masters I will post back.

I'm posting back to report that the Aperture 3.2.3 update resolved the problem I was having. I filed a bug report through Aperture Feedback so I would like to thank the Aperture team for providing the fix.

I would also like to to thank everyone who helped me with this issue. All the excellent suggestions and questions greatly aided my ability to write an actionable bug report.