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klawusel Author

Level 1

0 points

aperture thumbnail generation forever

Hello

I like to have all my pictures in one place to share them with apple tv, so I decided to give aperture a try.

I imported all images (about 36000 from 12 years) into one aperture library.

Before importing I switched off face detection and preview generation.

After finishing I had a 236 GB library, but aperture starts to generate some thumbnails.

Problem is, it freezes on generating them.

I used the activity window to hunt down what is happeing and found out that it stops when it comes to a specific picture.

So I managed to

1) start aperture

2) open activity window

3) stop the thumbnail generation when it starts

4) delete the picture where the aperture have problems

This way I managed to get from about 5700 thumbanisl to do to a number of 3500 thumbnails to do, but aperture keeps freezing at a single pic (the bad one)

But now, aperture starts thumbnail generation so quickly that I cannot open activity window and stop the progress before it reaches the bad one.

@Apple: could we have an option like "safe start" that won't schedule any processes for thumbnails before the user wants it?

So, any ideas out there? I tried everything I found like repairing, rebuilding, no help.

Is there any kind of log to look into? I am a newbie in mac os and aperture.

Regards

Klaus

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jun 6, 2013 1:05 PM

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Posted on Jun 6, 2013 1:47 PM

Have you tried to launch Aperture with the shift-key held down? That will defer the generation of previews and hopefully let you browse the library, before it will freeze again.

Do you know, which image the "bad" one is? Delete it from the library, if you get a chance.

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léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jun 7, 2013 12:47 PM in response to klawusel

As soon as I select all videos from the smart album, the ball of death appears

Too bad.

Try the following, Klaus: (you do have abackup of the Aperture library, don't you 😝)

To remove the videos using the Finder:

Quit Aperture.
Select the Aperture library in the Finder and control-click it, then select "Show Package contents" from the pop-up menu.
Go to the Finder window that opens and press ⌘F.

Add a rule "Kind is Movie"

This will show all movies in the Aperture library. Remove them.

klawusel Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 7, 2013 2:30 PM in response to léonie

Leonie

I removed all videos from the library and just started aperture again which is now geenrating 30000 thumbs

Compared to all prior tries this looks better so lets cross fingers.

Thanks for the help, I really learned some things today (finder is your friend, and looking for videos is much easier than it is in windows)

BW: is there a way to define what counts as a video (maybe a list of extensions)?

Regards

Klaus

P.S: I come back to you after aperture is done / or stuck ;-)

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jun 7, 2013 2:48 PM in response to klawusel

That sounds promising, Klaus. Good.

BW: is there a way to define what counts as a video (maybe a list of extensions)?

If you only want to find AVI files, for example, you can also search by filename extension:

klawusel Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 8, 2013 3:15 AM in response to léonie

after finding some avi files that I could relocate but that still kill my machine I restarted aperture again and right now I am at 15000 from 30000 thumbs, still processing, so this seems working...

I isolated all my video files to a separate folder and tried to look into them

Most of them work fine, but I have some avi files that can be watched usig VLC, but when I try to start the in finder, my machine goes bananas (>130 % cpu)

Is there a way to check which files are ok without having to check each one manually?

And when the play in finder, willl they play when I import them, back to aperture?

Regards

Klaus

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jun 8, 2013 4:19 AM in response to klawusel

I cannot be sure, Klaus.

Apple did not publish a full list of compatible Video formats. This list is not exhaustive:

Aperture 3: About Video and Audio formats in Aperture

It does not support all QuickTime suoorted formats, so previewing in the Finder is not a safe test.

I'd create a new Aperture library and import your videos in small batches into this library (as referenced, so you can easily delete them), and add only those, that will not make Aperture hang to your current library.

aperture thumbnail generation forever