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Continuous Re Processing of Thumbnails

I have a new project (2103 images) comprised of multiple sets of albums. Each set of album is organized within a folder within the project.

Each time I open an album within the folder, Aperture begins Processing Thumbnails. The process continues until all thumbnails within the folder are processed. If I exit Aperture and come back to the folder the Thumbnails begin processing again from the beginning.

Needless to say, Aperture is running extremely slow because it is in a continuous state of thumbnail creation and then recreation.

Any ideas on why it continues to recreate the same thumbnails rather than a one time process for the project?

thanks in advance for any ideas. -- jay

MBP 17", Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on May 30, 2007 9:07 PM

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Posted on May 31, 2007 4:20 AM

No idea why it's recreating them if they were successfully generated and the index updated. Are you sure it's the same ones and not different ones?

You could try a rebuild: I don't think it regenerates actual thumbnails but it should relink any to the index correctly.

Alternatively, BACKUP the library or project, then open the library and the project using Finder "Show package contents" Then trash the thumbnail file and rebuild the Aperture library.

Be prepared to RESTORE your backed up Library/Project if this fails.

G.
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May 31, 2007 4:20 AM in response to jayelevy

No idea why it's recreating them if they were successfully generated and the index updated. Are you sure it's the same ones and not different ones?

You could try a rebuild: I don't think it regenerates actual thumbnails but it should relink any to the index correctly.

Alternatively, BACKUP the library or project, then open the library and the project using Finder "Show package contents" Then trash the thumbnail file and rebuild the Aperture library.

Be prepared to RESTORE your backed up Library/Project if this fails.

G.

May 31, 2007 8:24 PM in response to Philip Hodey

Which thumbnail files should I be checking?

Last night I let the thumbnails rebuild (again). This evening I was working on the project with no problems (nothing running in the task list for about two hours), then out of the blue the 'processing thumbnails' started AGAIN. aaarrrggghhh!!!

Interestingly to the newbie here, if I open the package contents for the project in question then open one of the .apimportgroup folders then open one of the image folders and then open the Thumbnails folder it is empty. Even after the 'processing thumbnails' process is complete. These folders in my other projects (projects that don't spontaneously begin rebuilding) contain a single image representing the thumbnail. Why would this be happening?

Which file(s) should I be checking for permissions?

Why are the Thumbnail folders within this project empty?

Jun 2, 2007 12:13 PM in response to jayelevy

Sounds like Aperture is attempting to build the thumbnails but, for whatever reason, fails to write them to the folder.

For a rebuild ....

Quit Aperture.

Hold down <Option> and <Apple> keys and launch Aperture.

Keep holding the keys down until you get the splash screen: this will say "Rebuid now" or "Rebuild Later." Choose "Rebuild Now"

Aperture will now rebuild all the index files.

My hesitancy is this. I always believed Thumbnails were built on import, so I'm not sure if Rebuild will fix the issue. However it might fix an indexing problem that then allows the processing engine to write the thumbs away correctly. Worth a try.

Jun 3, 2007 1:08 AM in response to jayelevy

I have been experiencing the same pain with around 20,000 images. It has been grinding my new MacBook Pro to a slug pace.

I suspect you moved your aperture file to /Users/Shared or something like that. Even if you did not, it may be the same problem (as previously mentioned in this thread). You may not have enough security rights (permissions) to save the thumbnails. The following commands should do the trick, just change "myusernameA" and "myusernameB" to users on your own Mac.

sudo fsaclctl -p / -e

sudo chmod -R +a "myusernameA allow delete,chown,list,search,add file,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" /Users/Shared/"

sudo chmod -R +a "myusernameB allow delete,chown,list,search,add file,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" /Users/Shared/"


So far this has stopped the constaint thumbnail rebuilding for me.

Jun 4, 2007 7:36 PM in response to Darren 2007

Well, so far I've done the following:
- exported the suspect project and reimported to a new project
- rebuilt the database
- run the database compactor utility

all to no avail

Tonight (as it rebuilds thumbnails once again!!!!) I've split the project in question into a few smaller sub-projects. We'll see what happens now.

Note that this is the only project, of many that I have, that exhibits this strange behavior. I don't think it is a general permissions problem.

Jun 10, 2007 6:04 AM in response to David G Chapman

I helped Jay with this problem and was able to narrow things down a litte. I'm pretty sure it is a permissions problem. The user/group names were not what I would expect, and the file permissions were inconsistent (but not unusably incorrect). However when I attemped to to correct the permissions with chmod -R 755, this failed because Jay did not have appropriate permissions. I didn't get as far as looking at the ACL, but that would have been the next step.

Jun 10, 2007 7:11 PM in response to David G Chapman

I am setup as administrator (that much I know!) I'm unix ignorant thus by troubleshooting skills are very limited.

I appreciate the offers of assistance and yes, on multiple occasions recently I've considered a blunt object as my resolution of choice!!!

I have completed (finally) the editing of the suspect project so I'm going to move on and hope that I don't encounter this nasty one again. I did end up spending many many hours more than I should have due to the extreme slow system performance as thumbnails were processed and reprocessed ad nauseum.

Continuous Re Processing of Thumbnails

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