Aperture doesn't display some managed masters

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Aperture doesn't display some managed masters

My Aperture 3.5.1 library has 11,000 referenced masters plus 1000 managed masters (mostly images saved from shared photo streams). Recently, Aperture has started listing some of the managed masters as missing. I replace them from backups but then other managed masters go missing (usually just after I import some new managed images). Referenced masters never go missing. I have tried all three library repair options including rebuilding the database, but the problem keeps recurring. I've checked the drive with Disk Utility and found no problems.

Today, I tried using "Relocate Masters" to move all 1000 managed masters to a folder on the same drive and then discovered that the Masters folder in the library package still contained over 3000 photos that had not been moved and are not displayed by Aperture when I search for managed masters. Presumably, these are the files that went missing. Rebuilding the library located 16,0000 versons in the progress bar but the final rebuilt library displays only 12,000 versions even with all stacks open and "Showing All".

I'm tempted to manually drag the 3000 "forgotton" masters from the Masters folder using the Finder and then try a rebuild. Everything else is working and I have Time Machine and other backups available in case this causes major problems. Alternatively, I could just leave the 1.6 GB of orphaned files alone and stop using managed masters entirely.

Any ideas on why these managed files are not recognized by Aperture?

Macbook Pro 15 inch, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Apr 13, 2014 1:09 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

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Apr 13, 2014 1:25 PM in response to dickweis

I've checked the drive with Disk Utility and found no problems.

Is the drive formatted correctly to be used with Aperture? The format shouldd be MacOS Extended (Journaled). Otherwise you may have problems with incorrect filenames and broken links.

To prevent permission errors, enable the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag from the "File > Get Info" panel for the drive.

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Answer 2

dickweis Author

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Apr 13, 2014 1:40 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the suggestions. The volume is already formattted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). There is no "Ignore Permissions" checkbox because it is the startup disk.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,773 points

Apr 13, 2014 2:06 PM in response to dickweis

There is no "Ignore Permissions" checkbox because it is the startup disk.

O.k., your description sounded to me like the drive were an external drive, sorry.

Unfortunately, Aperture has no tools at all to reconnect missing managed original files, because that is simply not supposed to happen.

I have only seen this problem in rare cases, when the external editor wrote files to the library with "Save as" instead of "save", or when photos have been passed to external editors by dragging from the browser. Also, when the filenames of the original image fileswere too complicated and contained unprintable characters. As long as this is not resolved, I recommend to keep more than one backup of the library.

Have you checked the originals, that you have found as orphans in the library, if there is something unusual about them? Permissions, file type, filenames, dates?

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Answer 4

dickweis Author

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Apr 13, 2014 6:00 PM in response to léonie

The orphans appear to be ordinary files with no special characters, permissions or file type. So I duplicated my library, took a deep breath, opened the package by control-clicking on the copy, opened the Masters folder and emptied it by dragging the contents to an empty folder on my desktop, then rebuilt the library. Aperture still says there are 16,000 versions during the rebuild process, but only shows 12,000 in the rebuilt file and the number of missing masters reported is no different than before. Everything looks normal when I open the library, but the fact that it still thinks there are more versions than it displays is worrisome.

My Masters folder is now empty except for a single photo I took with my iPhone earlier today. I plan to re-import the missing photos I removed from the Masters folder and see if this has fixed the problem. I'll revisit this thread after I have had a few days to evaluate things. Thanks for your help, Léonie.

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Answer 5

dickweis Author

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Apr 14, 2014 12:59 PM in response to dickweis

I think I have figured out where the “orphaned" photos in the managed masters folder came from.

To recapitulate: I emptied the Masters folder inside the library package by using finder to drag all images to the system trash and then emptied the trash.

I then rebuilt the Aperture library. When I turned on iCloud in Aperture preferences it spent 30 minutes downloading the shared photo streams from my children.

Each photo stream was copied to the Aperture Masters folder in its own folder. Example:

Only the single image in the top folder (which corresponds to “My Photo Stream”) shows up when I search for managed masters in Aperture. The others are hidden from the user. Thus, the images from the shared photo streams ARE NOT MANAGED FILES despite being in the Masters folder. This appears to be by design.

When I unsubscribe from a shared photo stream, the corresponding folder is deleted from the managed masters folder. Thus, Aperture in OS X appears to use the managed-masters folder for temporary storage of shared streams. I suspect that the database that keeps track of these files may have become corrupted in my library. We’ll see if deleting these files and rebuilding the library fixes the problem.

These same photo stream images were also downloaded to the user Library at ~/Users/dickweis/Library/Application\ Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub/. However, there are many older images in this location that have not been modified in years and were not deleted when I deleted the contents of my photo stream and turned off iCloud sharing in Aperture.

Léonie, you previously advised using Aperture to delete these files (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4238464?answerId=19375439022#19375439022). However, most of these files are no longer accessible to Aperture or iPhoto and appear to be orphans. If I continue to have problems, I will be tempted to drag these to the system trash to see if it helps (I have saved the images I want to keep). Any advice here would be welcome.

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