Moving a tricky iPhoto library to Aperture

[LimeiBook86]

Hello everyone,

I have an odd iPhoto problem and I hope there's a solution. Maybe one of you has an answer.

So I've had my iPhoto Library since around 2002 or 2003. Since then every time I upgraded iPhoto my Library came with me. So from my iBook to my PowerBook to my iMac to my new iMac. The problem is my library has grown quite large. It's now a 252.9 GB file. My iMac's internal drive is having trouble holding that with all my other files, I'm using 890GB out of a 1TB HD which also has Windows 7 loaded on there... so yeah. I looked into Aperture and decided to purchase it (the multi-drive photo management feature really sounded good, plus the other features are very nice).

Anyway when importing my library into Aperture things just froze, they stopped. I eventually got an error about not finding a photo or this or that and I had to click continue. But it totally made my system hang, and I'm envisioning this happening thousands of times with me having to click a response each time. I'm on a 2011 i7 27" iMac with loads of RAM, so the only reason I can see is my iPhoto library being tricky. I've had issues previously, I just recently rebuilt everything, rebuilt the thumbnails, rescued orphan files, etc. But for at least a few years I've had a problem where iPhoto looks to a server for data/photos. It's trying to connect to my long-gone PC over the network (IP 192.168.0.193 it says) where I guess some files were stored... So either this is hanging up Aperture's importing process, or something else. So I guess I can sit through the process... or do something else...

The 'something else' I thought was exporting iPhoto's photos & videos via the Export menu via iPhoto into regular files, then import them into Aperture. Does this make any sense? My only concern is I want to make sure all my video files export as well. Although I guess I can make a smart album and manage that separately.

I'm going to try and import again to Apeture, I'll capture any dialog boxes I get if that helps... thanks!

Edit: I'm in iPhoto and using the Export menu to export 48k photos... I'm clicking 'cancel' on each photo it can't find... hopefully this'll work, even if it'll take forever.

 

[ChrisA]

Hello everyone,

I have an odd iPhoto problem and I hope there's a solution. Maybe one of you has an answer.

So I've had my iPhoto Library since around 2002 or 2003. Since then every time I upgraded iPhoto my Library came with me. So from my iBook to my PowerBook to my iMac to my new iMac. The problem is my library has grown quite large. It's now a 252.9 GB file. My iMac's internal drive is having trouble holding that with all my other files, I'm using 890GB out of a 1TB HD which also has Windows 7 loaded on there... so yeah. I looked into Aperture and decided to purchase it (the multi-drive photo management feature really sounded good, plus the other features are very nice).

Anyway when importing my library into Aperture things just froze, they stopped. I eventually got an error about not finding a photo or this or that and I had to click continue. But it totally made my system hang, and I'm envisioning this happening thousands of times with me having to click a response each time. I'm on a 2011 i7 27" iMac with loads of RAM, so the only reason I can see is my iPhoto library being tricky. I've had issues previously, I just recently rebuilt everything, rebuilt the thumbnails, rescued orphan files, etc. But for at least a few years I've had a problem where iPhoto looks to a server for data/photos. It's trying to connect to my long-gone PC over the network (IP 192.168.0.193 it says) where I guess some files were stored... So either this is hanging up Aperture's importing process, or something else. So I guess I can sit through the process... or do something else...

The 'something else' I thought was exporting iPhoto's photos & videos via the Export menu via iPhoto into regular files, then import them into Aperture. Does this make any sense? My only concern is I want to make sure all my video files export as well. Although I guess I can make a smart album and manage that separately.

I'm going to try and import again to Apeture, I'll capture any dialog boxes I get if that helps... thanks!

Edit: I'm in iPhoto and using the Export menu to export 48k photos... I'm clicking 'cancel' on each photo it can't find... hopefully this'll work, even if it'll take forever.

I think MAYBE you were storing some of the photos outside the iPhoto library. I think Apple uses the term "referenced" for that. Be sure to move ALL the images inside to what Apple (I think) calls "managed". Set up Aperture to do the same.

The "hang" is because the computer is waiting for a server that does not exist and it will wait for a while before it gives up.

 

[LimeiBook86]

Well I manually went through 50k photos... I copied them all to an external HD in about 70 separate folders to make sure none of the same file names were taken etc.

So now I made a smart folder called 'Videos' that shows all video files (File type is set to 'Not Photo') and it shows about 1,700 videos. My problem is I can't export them! Going to File > Export and selecting 'Original' it doesn't do anything, no matter how many times I click 'Export'. Nothing happens or exports.

I can't even drag-and drop these files to my desktop or external hard drive. I even tried to 'Burn' 4.3GB of videos to a DVD, but I got a burn error. I'm really wondering what's going on here. I can't figure out how to export the videos.

Update: It seems that only 368 videos out of my 1,745 videos are actually in the library. So when I selected all, it wouldn't do anything since I had items selected that weren't' actually there. This is all very odd. There are thumbnails (not missing thumbnails) so I'm not sure exactly what's wrong, or where the videos went. A lot of these were definitely there before... either way I guess I have to organize this better. Very frustrating