Aperture 3.3 Upgrade, still not actually managed to use Aperture for anything!

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Level 1

17 points

Aperture 3.3 Upgrade, still not actually managed to use Aperture for anything!

I eagerly downloaded 3.3 as soon as it was available - the idea of a shared library/format between iPhoto and Aperture is great - sharing Faces/Places etc.

But I haven't been able to do anything with it yet! After the initial library conversion, once I'd gone into Aperture it started generating previews for my entire collection - about 50,000 images - not sure why this was necessary - since the previews were there before the upgrade.

I've had the activity window more or less permanently open since I did the upgrade last week, and there are still over 8,000 previews to go - hopefully by the weekend it will have finished and I'll actually be able to try out some of the new features.

While doing this preview generation, Aperture hangs periodically (and never seems to recover requiring a force quit and restart) when it tries simultaenously to sync the Facebook albums.

I mention all this because unlike with the previous version, when if there was some activity to carry out, if you started to use Aperture, the activities would pause - this doesn't seem to happen now - or at least the application is so busy with the background activity, that it doesn't seem possible to kick off an action that might make it suspend background activity.

Doesn't look like a stable release to me so far - although maybe after this questionable preview re-generation I'll find a different story - has anyone else encountered this behaviour?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Aperture 3.3

Posted on Jun 18, 2012 12:27 PM

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Answer 1

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 22, 2012 12:00 AM in response to hedgert

Left if for a few days - it got stcuk again with the Facebook error - it clearly hangs the whole application when this happens - force quit and start again and mysteriously it had 2,000 more previews to create than when I left it a couple of days ago.

Going nowhere fast here - coming up for two weeks since the upgrade and still haven't been able to use it because it's still busy!

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Answer 2

Jun 22, 2012 4:08 AM in response to hedgert

Force Quit and run "Repair Library". This, too, will take some time, but may stop Aperture from attempting to re-create all your Previews.

I am going throuogh the same thing with one of my Libraries. Will post more when I know more. It _definitely_ should not be working this way.

(Sent from my magic glass.)

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Answer 3

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 22, 2012 4:21 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Repair led to rebuild - and now having got back in I'm up to 11000 previews - 1k more than before! But let's see if they get processed any more quickly than before.

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Answer 4

Jun 22, 2012 4:33 PM in response to hedgert

Same here. I was able to open the Activity window and pause the generation of Previews. I did this in order to access some of the Images in the Library. I don't advise doing any work with it, though, until it is completely stable. On restart, it will again commence generating Previews (and in my case, thumbnails).

I don't know what the problem is, or why it happened, or whether once it finishes generating Previews it will be stable.

Extrapolating, it seems it will take about four days of solid processing to generate all the Previews. Ouch.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

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Answer 5

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 23, 2012 1:03 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

I've now deleted the Facebook credentials from Aperture since that bug keeps hanging Aperture - to see if having a clear run at preview generation will let it finally get them all done. It had gone down to about 8000 to go, but when I force quit and started again after the Facebook update hang, it's now back up to 10,800 - deep joy!

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Answer 6

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 23, 2012 10:37 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

Kirby - do you have any video files in your Aperture library?

I do - and this preview regeneration seems to be struggling to digest them - having removed the Facebook credentials, Aperture does seem to be ploughing through the previews without hanging, but it has been working on a preview for one particular video file now for over 2 hours.

Have you seen anything like this?

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

194,773 points

Jun 23, 2012 10:42 AM in response to hedgert

Is it a referenced or a managed video?

Here is a list of video formats that are supposed to be compatible with Aperture 3:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4025

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Answer 8

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 23, 2012 10:52 AM in response to léonie

It was from my Canon 7D - which is on that list of supported formats - and obviously Aperture 3.2 didn't lock up opening the library with it in it.

However, I located it in the file system in the library, and Quicktime couldn't open it - so it's obviously got corrupted somehow.

I've deleted it from the library, force quited and started Aperture again - although alas the count of images to create preview for has gone right back up to over 11,000 despite it having reported through the Activity view that it had got to about 9300 when it hit the problem movie file.

I am getting the feeling that it could be weeks before I can use Aperture again!

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Answer 9

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 25, 2012 6:30 PM in response to hedgert

Preview generation finally completed - nearly 3 weeks after the upgrade. Aperture then started detecting faces (6000) of them, which made me groan, but fortunately that completed in only 2 hours - and then Aperture finally showed no activity on the activity window and I can try out 3.3!

Still no idea why it needed to do much preview generation after the library upgrade - but hopefully that's history.

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Answer 10

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 25, 2012 6:59 PM in response to hedgert

I spoke too soon - after Aperture finished re-generating and detecting, I shut down Aperture - whereupon it spend time saving information for sharing previews before actually closing - but after I restarted Aperture it went back to regenerating previews - only about 1000 this time - but still it is somehow redoing what it had already finished.

Something is not right with 3.3

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Answer 11

Jun 25, 2012 7:06 PM in response to hedgert

I had no trouble with 5 of 6 Libraries, but continue to have trouble with my largest Library. Still at the Preview-generating stage. This is going to take about 110 hours of processor time. I don't expect it to be done for at least a week (I don't have a spare computer to run it on).

Sorry to hear that you are still working through the upgrade. Wish I had more to offer you. 😐 .

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Answer 12

hedgert Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 27, 2012 8:06 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

Interestingly - although it is now manageable - every time I stop and start Aperture again, it does some regeneration - it does it very fast - over in a minute or so despite talking about regenerating 1000+ previews and thumbnails - but it is doing something. I use FolderSync to maintain a full file system level copy of my Aperture library on another drive and when I've twice today waited for no activity, then closed Aperture, then opened it again - after the regeneration is reported for about a minute, FolderSync reports copying about 1.2GB of files to the backup drive.

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