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Processing Stuck - Broken file? #1
Jonathan Slack's picture
by Jonathan Slack
February 27, 2010 - 6:34pm

Hi There
3.01 has drastically improved things, and the RAW support is also a great bonus. I’m finding everything faster and basically GOOD… . however, if I chose the Aperture Activity Window, it says:
Updating Library
Processing Processing 29412 items 575 of 29,412

If you try and cancel the process, then it simply doesn”t - it says cancelling under status.
It’s stuck - presumably on a broken file, but how to find where it’s stuck.

Any ideas?
and I wonder how many others this is happening to who haven’t actually opened the Activity Window.

All the best
Jonathan Slack

All the best
Jonathan Slack (www.slack.co.uk)

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
April 1, 2010 - 11:54am

Chris,

Glad to hear things are working out!

Huge congratulations to you and your wife on the birth of your second daughter. Our first ApertureExpert baby! hehe

And thanks for the complements on the eBook. I’m so glad you found it so useful!

cheers
-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 8, 2010 - 5:32am

Hi all, Joseph here. Sorry I’ve been off the forums lately… been working on the eBook update (done, finally!!).

Sounds like some nasty problems here. For upgrade problems; for those that haven’t tried it yet, try importing your old Library (to a clean Aperture 3 library) instead of Upgrading it.

Make sure you’re on 3.0.1. I kicked off my 100k+ library in a plain-vanilla upgrade style in 3.0.1 and it worked perfectly. Blew me away… it worked as advertised and took a lot less time than 3.0.

For the stuck on import, turn off faces, places and preview generation. Strip importing down to the basics and test again. If it’s working, turn one piece at a time back on and see what happens. Also I’d trash prefs. Which is a good idea on ANY upgrade.

That’s a good point actually… note (take screenshots if you need) your existing preference settings then trash the prefs file in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Aperture.plist and see what that fixes. A pref’s trash can work wonders.

good luck
-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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Chris Dalton's picture
by Chris Dalton
March 12, 2010 - 1:21pm

Hi All
I am having the same problem.
Here is a list of what I have done so far.
I re-built my Aperture 2 Library, moved it to an external drive, then created a new Aperture 3 Library and imported via the import option.
I have applied all updates and have followed the step of opening in 32 bit mode. I have removed the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Aperture.plist file and have re-built the library.
I am still having the issue as listed above from Jonathan and am really starting to get frustrated.
I am not an expert in any way and really need some advice as to what I should do to try and fix it.
I have thought of un-installing Aperture 3 and re-installing it but not sure if that will help.

I tried to send my Aperture Database file to someone at Apple, when I went to load it to my public folder in iDisk and synchronise I was presented with an error in one of the folders, however I am not sure if I can simply delete it.
Also my creation of a Vault is also freezing, I suspect at the same bad file/s.
My other issue is I cannot see all images in iLife, however I suspect this may sort itself out once I sort out the library.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 12, 2010 - 6:02pm

Chris,

You’ve tried just about everything I’d normally recommend. So then… can you still open the Library in Aperture 2?

@PhotoJoseph
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Chris Dalton's picture
by Chris Dalton
March 12, 2010 - 6:51pm

Hi Joseph
Thank you for your reply.
Yes I can still open the Library in Aperture 2.
Do you recommend I delete the Aperture 3 Library, create a new one and try it again?
Just wish it did not take days to see if it would work.
My wife and I are going to be going to hospital in the next day or two to have our second child, might be a good time to try it.

Chris

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 13, 2010 - 2:58am

Chris,

Why don’t you export a few Projects from your Aperture 2 library and import those into a clean Aperture 3 library. Sounds like you have a lot of projects so this isn’t idea, but it’s worth testing.

First delete your previews. That’ll make the export and import faster and save space. Of course Aperture 3 will have to regenerate the previews, but that’s fine (and if you update to the new rendering engine you’ll need to do that anyway).

Then just drag a few projects out of Aperture 2 and import those few into a new Aperture 3 Library, and see what happens.

@PhotoJoseph
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Pablo Yanez's picture
by Pablo Yanez
March 16, 2010 - 10:52am

Jonathan,

I feel your pain! I’m just starting, after many, many hours, to see the light at the end of the tunnel with Aperture 3. I think A3 offers some great options, and is a diamond in the rough – very, very rough, even in v3.0.1.

But I think I have some VERY USEFUL TIPS for you here (again this is after a lot of learning by pain… 4 different attempts to “upgrade” my A2.1.4 library (42K images about 200GB of images).

1st, and possibly most importantly the “SHIFT” key is your friend. You can use it when you restart A3 to stop the endless processing loop that A3 would fall into every time I upgraded or imported my library to A3 (or 3.01). All you need to do is hold down the “SHIFT” key while restarting A3, this should top all previously stuck processing as you upgrade your library. So use this tip after you first upgrade/import your library, if the processing bug hits. Then you have to be patient and go though your library and figure out where the problem files are (Apple has done a LOUSY job in not identifying what specific images A3 is processing in the “Activity Window” – Let Apple know if this really bugs you)

2nd, at this point you will need to systematically go through your library and figure out where the “problem” files are and “fix” them (in my case all of these worked just fine in 2.1.4 - go figure). I would start by generating thumbnails for all of the images in a project, one project at a time (I had 150 some in my library). When you get stuck in the “processing” loop again, you can restart A3 using the “SHIFT” trick, and maybe just try a chunk of images within that same project until you find where things fail again, and until you can get to the offending image (if it’s a problem you won’t be able to generate a thumbnail for the image – and A3 will go into endless “processing” mode)

3rd, this sound like a horribly tedious process and it is. But I can offer you some useful tips. In my case, and others as well apparently, a lot of the offending files are 16-bit PSD or TIFF images, especially if they had adjustments applied in A2.1.4. In my case I had fewer than 50 of these, so I exported an original and a jpg for each of these files. I re-imported the jpg and deleted the PSD/TIFF from A3 (I kept the exported original for future use). These files would then generate thumbs without endlessly processing. The other type of file that I ran into problems with were stitched panoramic images (often over 30MP) that I had applied adjustments to in A2.1.4. I simply removed the adjustments and the generated thumbs for them (worked like a charm).

4th, download some good podcast, music or audiobook… this will take a long time.

Cheers, and look me up in FaceBook I started a group called “Apple Please Fix Aperture”

Chris Dalton's picture
by Chris Dalton
March 19, 2010 - 1:43pm

Hi All
I have great news.
I deleted the original A3 Library, and am now in the process of watching A3 generate previews for all of my images.
I have taken Pablo’s advice as above and will at least be able to track if there are problem images this way.

This is also populating iWeb which was also another issue I had.
BTW also downloaded Joseph’s Getting Started Guide which I read over the last couple of days whilst in hospital with my wife. She gave birth to our 2nd daughter. ‘
This guide is worth avery cent I paid and a really great read, I recommend it to everyone.

Thank you
Chris

Trevor Ager's picture
by Trevor Ager
February 28, 2010 - 2:17am

Jonathan, I had some similar issues. Go into your utility folders and start Activity monitor. (it may be worth putting it on your Dock until you have completed your Aperture update.) This will show you what is using Real and Virtual memory. When Aperture gets stuck you often find that the virtual memory usage has gone high. You can try quiting Aperture process from here. If it does not respond then select Force Quit. Restart Aperure and it will hopefully continue. If it sticks again then repeat the process.

If it continues to be a problem then you can try starting Aperture in 32 Bit mode. When it has completed the update of your old Aperture library then you can switch Aperture 3 back to 64 Bit mode.

It will take several hours to process those 29k files.

Good luck.
Trevor.

Jonathan Slack's picture
by Jonathan Slack
February 28, 2010 - 8:55pm

HI Trevor
The activity monitor was fine (nothing untoward as it had been with 3.00) -

However, putting it into 32 bit mode, and it cleared the files in less than a second.

Back in 64 bit mode it started updating files again (29,000), and completed within less than 5 seconds.

So - the correct answer to this issue seems to be to go back to 32 bit mode and then back to 64 bit.

Thanks for the help - I should have thought of it myself I guess (I’d been using 32 bit some of the time with 3.0).

Sorted (for now!) … oops, realised images were offline. will report back after 20 hours

all the best
Jonathan

All the best
Jonathan Slack (www.slack.co.uk)

Jonathan Slack's picture
by Jonathan Slack
March 1, 2010 - 7:54am

No - unfortunately it’s still stuck - in 32 bit mode it sticks on 4567 in 64 bit mode it sticks on 557 (out of around 19,000 in each case). There are 50,000 images in the library. I’ve tried deleteing all previews, rebuilding the library etc, verifying the disk, repairing the permissions etc.
I suspect it’s one file stuck in the gate - if I could only find what image it was I could sort it!

all the best
Jonathan

All the best
Jonathan Slack (www.slack.co.uk)

Trevor Ager's picture
by Trevor Ager
March 1, 2010 - 8:52am

Because of the problems I had importing my Aperture library I thought I would break it up into smaller chunks. HOW?
My aperture 2 library was organized by year into seperate folders so…
Make a copy of your A2 library and rename it say A2 Master.aplibrary
Open you original A2 library with Aperture 2.
Delete all folders except 2009.
Exit A2.
Rename your new Aperture library to say A2_2009.aplibrary
Make a copy of A2 Master and then rename it Aperture Library.aplibrary.
Now delete all folders except 2008.
Exit A2.
Rename your new Aperture library to say A2_2008.aplibrary
Make a copy of A2 Master and then rename it Aperture Library.aplibrary.
And so on until you have covered all your folders..
Now you should not have a folder called Aperture Library.aplibrary.
Open Aperture 3. It will now create a new blank library.
Go to File > Import > Library/Project.
Select your A2_2009.aplibrary file and Import.
Allow Aperture 3 to import and update etc.
When it is complete then repeat with A2_2008 etc.etc until all have been imported.
If any get really stuck then at least you will be able to narrow down the troublesome file.
You may need to move your project folders around once you have them all imported but that is easy.
This is really time consuming and you will need some disk space but it worked for me.
You will need to adopt this method to your own file structure within your library.

Trevor.

Jacob Lucas's picture
by Jacob Lucas
March 1, 2010 - 4:56pm

http://www.jflphotography.com/images/processing.png

I’m seeing the same problems too. Switching in & out of 32-bit and several library rebuilds don’t help.

What’s worse is that this blocks exporting of images which is terrible!

Jonathan Slack's picture
by Jonathan Slack
March 1, 2010 - 7:18pm

HI Trevor
Well, I could (at a pinch) split my library into work and pleasure I guess, but splitting by year (although it would be very easy) would really cause me grief.
Added to which I’m not convinced it would help - I’d guess I have a number of ‘damaged’ files which are causing the blockage, and probably I’d have them in the smaller libraries as well.

What I AM considering, as there is no problem when images are ‘off line’ is to rename directories of masters one by one (so that they are ‘offline’) and that way I may be able to locate and deal with the ‘broken’ files.

I really don’t want to split the library though - it seems fast and good, and I don’t really think it would cure the issue anyway!

Added to which, everything else is working excellently well - after a clean uninstall and reinstall, the brushes etc. are quick and good - it’s lovely!

Jacob -
I think there is a way around this problem - Hold down the Shift key when you load Aperture, and it won’t run the background processes. This works fine for me, and i can export files without problem.

all the best
Jonathan

All the best
Jonathan Slack (www.slack.co.uk)

Jacob Lucas's picture
by Jacob Lucas
March 3, 2010 - 3:54am

This happens after every import now. Essentially I need to rebuild the library after each change it looks like - paaaiiiinnffullll!

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