Hi all,
I'm experiencing an annoying glitch with Smart Albums and I've exhausted all of my bright (and not so bright) ideas. I use a fair number of photos from my Aperture library via iMovie for HD video. I'll crop versions with an HD aspect ratio (16:9) and create a Smart Album like “Project X for video”, filtering on Aperture metadata with aspect ratio equal to “16:9”. Works wonderfully and saves me time finding photos when I'm in iMovie.
Recently, I introduced a MacBook Pro into my workflow. I'll export a project from my MacPro as a library, do my editing work on the MacBook Pro, then merge the library back to the MacPro. Part of the editing I'm doing on the MacBook Pro is HD cropping. Merges have been fine, all the metadata for the merged versions look fine including the aspect ratio.
Enter the glitch. Any version that I've cropped to 16:9 and merged in to my main library does not appear in my “Project X for video” Smart Album. I've tried recreating the Smart Album after the merge - no luck. Toggle the metadata filter off/on to “regenerate” the Smart Album - no luck.
The only workaround I have found to work is to change the crop on a version to something other than 16:9, then change it back to 16:9, toggle the Smart Album's metadata filter, and then I'll see the version in the album. Not palatable as it means touching every 16:9 version after a library merge.
Other ideas from anyone?
Scott,
I just tested and I can confirm seeing the same thing. It must be a bug; I’ll report it.
In the meantime, what does work, is filtering based on crop alone. I realize that’s not ideal, as you’ll see any cropped image, but hopefully that’s better than what you’re doing now.
Another option would be to find another way to tag the images as “iMovie ready”. Give them a unique keyword, or flag them, or a color label, really anything else that will work in the Smart Album. Again, an extra step you shouldn’t have to be doing, but a much better workaround than “touching” every image after import.
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks for confirming, Joseph. I didn’t consider the any cropped image filter, but as I almost always have some level of crop on a version, a keyword workaround will need to do for now.
Scott
http://scottdavenportphoto.com/