Ever since I relocated masters to an external drive, it starts Processing as soon as I click on an any image. During this time it becomes completely unresponsive to any inputs at all, and sometimes has to be Force Quit in order to use the computer for anything else.
Earlier today I thought, “Okay just leave it until it has finished”, so I went away and did something else for a few hours. When I came back it Aperture was a joy to use, really fast and super responsive.
However, having just loaded it up again about 6 hours later, it's gone back to Processing and is totally unusable.
The question is, what and why is it processing? I have not added any new images to the library in over a month.
TBH I'm tearing my hair out with it. As you may recall I've been contemplating a move to Lightroom for various reasons but I really don't like the interface. Aperture is definitely my preference but is borderline unusable at the moment.
For the record, I have performed all of the usual OS X maintenance functions and optimisations that are normally recommended. I have also moved the masters to a fast Firewire drive but things aren't really improving.
Any thoughts gratefully received.
Okay so I had tried every maintenance tip I’ve ever come across but the problem never seemed to go away.
I decided to export my photos as new libraries, one year at a time, slowly recombining them. In the process of doing this I somehow happened upon a few AVI files where the file size was about 9Kb!?!?
I did a Spotlight search for AVIs in general and found quite a few like this. I trashed all of them and suddenly Aperture started working well again. I continued with the export/import mission just to be sure.
The upshot is that I now have a very nice and speedy library. So much so that I’m now reconsidering an imminent hardware upgrade.
Thanks to all for your input and suggestions. None of them cured the problem itself but they have almost certainly contributed to the speed I am now getting.
Gavin,
Super! You did say early on that the AVI files were causing a problem. So these tiny 9Kb files; I presume they failed to open if you tried to open them?
You said you search-and-destroyed in the Finder, but what about in Aperture? DId you locate the same files in Aperture?
I don’t know how many you have of course, but maybe search for ALL AVI files in Aperture and verify each one, or move them out of the Library entirely?
Anyway glad to hear all is well, that’s great news. Now I’m gonna scan my Aperture library for hyper-small AVI files :)
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Joe,
In order to determine file size easily I located the files using the Finder - I also used it to Trash them.
I then went back into Aperture, located the references to the offending files and deleted those too. Within Aperture the poster frames of the rogue files were normally black with scrambled colours all over them.
Something weird I also found is that Quicktime, after much thinking about it, was actually able to open a few of these 9Kb files. The weird thing is that some of them are videos which go on for a few minutes, so there’s no way that 9Kb could be the actual size.
Anyway, I’m super pleased to have everything running well again. Maybe in your Clean Aperture feature you could mention rogue files such as these, and the aforementioned zero pixel images.
Thanks again.
Gavin
Gavin,
Click on the “processing” spinner and tell me what it says it’s doing?
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Hi Joe,
I can’t click on the spinner due to the beachball of doom. I get the mouse pointer back only when it is not over the Aperture window. :\
I managed to open the activity window from the menu bar by going Window > Activity but it did not list any activity.
Gavin,
A few things. First, check permissions on the external drive. Make sure that “ignore ownership of this volume” is enabled (select drive, get info). Also try launching Aperture with the drive dismounted so it can’t get to the masters. Finally, you may have just a spinning beach ball but since before it did actually complete the “processing”, it sounds like the mouse is actually active but very slow to respond. Click on the spinner with the beach ball, and come back a while later… see if it actually opened the window.
Did you do any maintenance on the Library itself? FAQ
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Right, I dismounted the Masters drive, ran all of the maintenance above, remounted the Masters and Aperture seemed to be running nicely.
I quit, rebooted the Mac and restarted Aperture. As soon as I clicked on anything it instantly started processing. I clicked on the spinner and the Activity window came up; apparently it was “Updating Library” and Processing some files from about 2 years ago.
Why it was doing this I don’t know but it was going quite quickly through the 64 files in question, until it hit AVI file, when it slowed down to a crawl.
I wonder though whether I’ve found the answer here on this very site Processing Processing
Gavin,
Certainly worth trying, and it does sound a bit familiar. When you said “AVI file” that got me thinking it could be that codec problem many people have reported, but one of the recent Aperture updates seemed to automatically locate and remove that codec for you. You are running latest OS and Aperture, right?
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Yep, everything is up to date here. What chance for Aperture 4 delivering massive stability improvements? I love the interface and the feature set but as the briefest search on the net will reveal, there seems to be an endless list of things which cause the whole thing to come crashing down - even on machines with twice the power of mine.
Gavin,
As I’m sure you’ll hear from other users on here, you’ll find just as many complaints about Lightroom — so don’t go there expecting all your problems to go away. Unfortunately when people do switch, because they are starting with a clean library, they usually say “look how much faster/better/more stable this is!” Then, a year later, they are back in the same boat.
Of course I don’t know what the next Aperture has in store for us, but you have to also remember that there are many, many users for whom Aperture is running just fine. They just aren’t as vocal as the ones who are having issues. No one posts in the forums to say “hey, just though I’d let you know, Aperture is running GREAT on my system!” :-)
Anyway, give the thumbnail JKL slide a try, see if that does anything.
Another thing, which is also outlined in that article you linked above, you could try rebuilding all thumbnails for the project.
Be sure the check the FAQ for tips like clearing the cache, and reimporting one library into another, as well.
Problems can sneak in anywhere, and remember that Aperture is a complex database. Don’t give up on it quite yet :)
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Joe, you’re right of course about clean libraries etc. I’m not giving up because I do like Aperture very much - just want it to work like I know it can.
So I left the JKL thing scrolling when I went to bed. This morning Aperture was going as quickly as I’ve ever seen it. However the acid test is what happens if you quit and reboot. I’m sad to report that it is now back to its old ways. Processing processing….
…However I don’t think it actually is processing anything. On bringing up the OS X Activity Monitor, Aperture is using only 1-2% of CPU cycles and about 320Mb of RAM - hardly the sign of furious activity.
So I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a library issue but one more related to the Aperture installation itself, OS X, or maybe a hardware fault? Do you have any tips for completely removing Aperture from the system? I’m also contemplating a complete reinstall of Lion.
Cheers
Gavin
Gavin,
it’s not the OS. So don’t even go there.
It may be prefs or other library files, specific to Aperture. Try removing your Aperture folder in user/library/application support/ and restart your Mac, then launch Aperture and see how it’s running. Do it like this :
In 10.7, Finder, select the Go Menu whilst holding down the Option/Alt key, then choose Library. Locate your Aperture folder. Make a backup of it, that can’t be read by the System, by holding down the Control key, whilst clicking on the Aperture Folder, then choosing “Compress ‘Aperture’ “. Now Trash the original, uncompressed Aperture folder, Restart your Mac, Emtpy the Trash, launch Aperture and see how it’s running. If all is good, then you know there is a problem file in the Aperture’s Library folder. You can go through the process of putting them back 50%, then 50% of remainder etc., until you find the culprit, or just redo all your preferences etc. in Aperture itself. If Trashing this folder changes nothing. Quit Aperture, Go to the Library/Application Support/ folder again, Trash the Aperture folder. Decompress your original Aperture folder, restart your Mac, Empty the Trash and launch Aperture. You’ll be back where you started from.
The above sounds complicated, but it’s very simple and a very fast way to eliminate a large number of possibilities from the equation. It should take more than 5 minutes to do.
It is also very possible that it could be a corrupted file in Aperture. My guess is that Aperture is trying to build, or read, a Preview for one of your files. I had a number of these files when I moved from Aperture 2 to 3. Finding them was a nightmare until Apple updated Aperture to show the filenames as it was processing. A dodgy avi file sounds quite likely to me.
One way I might deal with this would be to Export any Projects that you’re fairly certain are good (that haven’t changed in a long time). Open these as a new Library in Aperture. See if all is good. If it is all good, then go back to your problem Library and export more Projects as Libraries. Open these as Libraries and see if all is well and if it is, Merge them with the first Library you just made. Continue with this process until you have either found the problem project/file or have slowly built a new Library which does not have problems.
Gavin,
Your last posts reminded me of something I had to deal with once years ago. This was, as far as I could tell, related to migrating through dozens and dozens of development versions of the software, but maybe it’ll help you too.
I discovered at some point that I had images who’s sizes were listed as (null). Once I got rid of these, all sorts of happiness ensued.
The problem is that I removed that Smart Album years ago, and I’m having a hard time remembering exactly what it was. I did bring this up in a forum post last year though; read this: Odd ‘Processing’ glitch
Also, and this is way way obscure, but look in Console for anything like this. I pulled this out of an ancient email:
9/17/09 11:46:46 AM Aperture[13092] Row (pk = 90632) for entity 'RKVersion' is missing mandatory text data for property 'name'and also
9/17/09 11:46:46 AM Aperture[13092] Row (pk = 0) for entity '(null)' is missing mandatory text data for property 'name'Look for those
RKVersionstrings and also(null)strings.I’m not sure what good it will do to see those, but it’s something I had found ages ago and reported. This was, I believe, before I found and eliminated the (null) images.
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Rings a bell Joseph.
Perhaps a Smart Folder search for : Aperture data / Master Pixel size / Empty ?
Worth trying, but I’m sure in my case the real problem images had “(null)” in there somewhere.
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?