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Converting Large Aperture library to Aperture 3

jonoslack

Active member
HI There
I followed the instructions on the Aperture website to the letter:
It Didn't Work (of course it may work for you).

This procedure did work for me - of course, it doesn't come with any guarantee, but as long as you have backed up properly it won't cause any grief.

Before I describe it one thing I would say is that you shouldn't expect to use your computer for any very heavy processing while this is going on, and that you should restart it at every possible opportunity (i.e. after each stage).

I tried the proper update routine 3 times, and each time it came up with a message:
*Your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory*
despite the fact that there was nearly 200gb free on the hard drive.
This is what I did:

1. made a copy of my Aperture 2 library somewhere else
2. moved the live copy to a different folder
3. Opened Aperture 3 (which then created a new empty library)
4. I opened preferences, switched OFF face detection
5. I switched off 'New Projects automatically generate previews'
6. Imported my old library (from the different folder)


This was slow, but didn't freeze the machine, and you could see it working (it took about 8 hours with my 47,000 photo library). Incidentally, I think it's the number of pictures that's at issue rather than the size of the library.

When it's finished importing. _Any fiddling or looking around will likely just freeze aperture_.
*CLOSE APERTURE
REBOOT YOUR MACHINE*

Open Aperture (this may take several minutes, and it may say it isn't responding - don't believe it! - you can check in the Applications / Utilities / Activity Monitor if in doubt.

When it's opened, click on Window / Activity - this will probably tell you that it's updating the library - with a huge number of properties to update (it was something like 87,000 on mine).

If you want to do anything - then pause this procedure first - if it's been going for some time, then pause it, close Aperture and restart your machine.

You should do this every 2 or 3 hours anyway (restarting your machine) -(because it's much much faster after it's restarted).

It took my computer (17" MBP 2.66 unibody with 4gb Ram and 200gb free on HD) 2 days to do this procedure - now I seem to be cooking.

Of course, there may be many other ways of making this work, and this may not work for you but having tried the proper 'upgrade' option 3 times, and it simply didn't work.

all the best
 
J

Jamesmd

Guest
Thanks sir ,
are you running A3 32 or 64 bits?

Cheers

James
 

LJL

New member
Jono,
Thanks for your experiential walk-through for the Library conversion. It seems to make a lot more sense, and it works, as you have outlined. That is the good news.

I am seriously considering finally moving everything to AA3, after fiddling with PS, C1, and others, and selectively bringing stuff into Aperture. The strategy I think I am going to follow is more akin to Eoin's perspective, and one I have used with AA2....create more but smaller Libraries that are more subject specific. Realizing that does make it a bit harder to do any total Library search, with the new Library switching capabilities of AA3, it seems like it may not be a difficult thing....a bit more tedious, but not onerous ;)

With all of the new and improved tools in AA3, it is finally looking possible to maybe start abandoning some of the other plug-ins and other handling that required PS. There still will be a need for PS for certain handlings, but those may become one-offs. Keeping all the RAWs separate (as referenced files) also permits easier access for other app use. While it would be wonderful to work from one grand Library, my collections are just way too big to permit the sort of thing you have done, but creating more "bite sized" chunks in separate Libraries may do the trick for me.

Thanks again for your bruting through things to find a way to get folks running and converted with AA3.

LJ
 
J

Jamesmd

Guest
Realy faster .
First switch to full 64 bit mode and after import , it's kind of magic
at least it was for me

cheers
 

jonoslack

Active member
Hi James
Great information, thank you - I'm not sure if it's faster, but it certainly allows running Aperture with other programs without everything going into slug mode!

all the best
 
J

Jamesmd

Guest
I probably find it faster because I normali have many programs running at the time .
If you look at memory and CPU , it does look like CPU is more relaxed and memory is asigned faster.

Cheers
 
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