Transferring Catalogues to a New Computer
Capture One has been successfully installed on my new computer but without the catalogues that I had on the previous computer. These were backed up but File/Restore Catalogue doesn't recognise them. I can open the backed up catalaogues but the images in them are marked as Off Line. It seems, therefore, that I can't simply return to working with any of them from the point I had previously reached. I assume that all the detail of the RAW file is present in my saved TIFF files, so I can import from there if, for example, I want to make a print, butthat if I want to explore a different crop I would have to import the RAW file and begin the editing process again from there. Or is there another way of pickking up the threads of my previous work?
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You can copy the actual catalogs (catalog folders) from the old machine to the new machine. No need to use File > Restore Catalog.
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Thanks for responding Walter but it's almost certainly too late to copy from the old machine. The people who built the new one had difficulty booting it up to copy everything that they did. They installed Capture One afresh and I hadn't thought to brief them about the catalogues. As I said, I can open them from the back-ups which have copied, but they've lost their links to the RAW files. I hadn't had a problem with booting up the computer before taking it in to the people who built the new one, but I tried to do it after getting both machines home and I couldn't either. (I tried to do this because although most files had copied a few had, mysteriously, appeared not to have done - one document which I had first created in 2019 but updated frequently opened at first in its original form, though fortunately and equally mysteriously it opened in its latest saved version the next day!). So it's only the link between the catalogues and the RAW files that I don't have, and probably have to accept that I won't have.
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You may well be able to restore the link to the files. If you have a folder of images, it will be shown in the Library tool in the Folders section. But that folder may be shown as off line. However, if you right click it and choose Locate... you should be able to navigate to where that folder can now be found, and Capture One will restore the link.
Ian
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Thanks Ian. That has worked with one folder. It presumably has to be done folder by folder rather than catalogue by catalogue, but I will only need to do it if/when I want to return to particular images in a catalogue so that shouldn't be a problem.
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It was quick and easy enough to do that with all the folders in that catalogue. But I don't remember how I got that catalogue from my back-ups into the newly installed Capture One in the first place. It seemed straightforward at the time, but I haven't been able to repeat it with my other catalogues.
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Do what Walter Rowe suggested a few days ago - just copy the actual catalogs from the old computer to the new one.
Ian
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Sorry Ian but the old computer was on its last legs and wouldn't boot up any more. I have now disposed of it. As that wasn't how I got the one folder that I have into C1 on the new computer there must surely be a way to do it with the other folders . I stumbled on it before - I just can't find or remember it now.
And I'm now having another import problem. I'm trying to import three new folders into a new catalogue. They are showing separately by time of import but under Folders/In Catalogue they are being merged into just one. I want them listed separately, as has always been the case with my older catalogues..
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Did you have any backups of your old computer, and if so can you copy them from there? (Like Mac's Time Machine, or some Windows equivalent?)
Or if you have the backed-up catalogs as mentioned in your first post in this thread, you can copy the backup to the new computer, then rename it so that Capture One sees it as a catalog not as a backup. You can just delete the .backup from the end of the file name (so, for instance, MyCatalog.cocatalogdb.backup becomes MyCatalog.cocatalogdb). As before you will probably need to use the Locate... function.
If you are importing new folders into your catalog, then are you adding them to the catalog (so that the folders appear in the Folders section of the Library tool), or copying them into the catalog so that the images appear in the In Catalog section of the Library tool)?
In the In Catalog section, images are stored inside the catalog structure itself. There is no folder structure - but you can organise images into Albums which are virtual collections. If you want to keep then in their existing folder structure, you are better just to leave them in their existing location (assuming that isn't just a memory card) and add the folder to the catalog. That way you take up less storage space on your computer, you keep the size of the catalog file down, and you retain your existing system of folders. (You can, of course, still create albums with some of the images in.)
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Taking the import problem first: in the Library tool I select a catalogue or create a new one I then click on import and select the folder I want to import and go through the "select all"/"import all" sequence. The folder is then listed under recent imports with just he date and time. In the past the folder has also been listed under Folders with its name, and this is how I recognise it when I want to work with it. But the three folders I imported this afternoon, though separately listed under Recent Imports are not listed at all under Folders. All that is shown there is the total number of images included in the catalog (though the images themselves are of course in their original location on my C: drive). When you say "just to leave them in their existing location (assuming that isn't just a memory card) and add the folder to the catalog", isn't this what I have been doing? And why isn't the folder named so that I can recognise it?
As for the original question, my catalog back-ups are on the C: drive of the new computer. But I surely can't just import them into C1 because the import procedure is based on having a catalogue into which images (folders) are imported. Or would C1 recognise that what is being imported is actually a catalogue and place it separately within the Libary tool? Or alternatively could I import it to a newly created and therefore empty catalogue, as a catalogue within a catalogue? I am nervous of experimenting with ideas like those in case I simply create more problems. But somehow I did transfer one catalogue from those back-ups into C1, and those images are now accessible.
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Import process
In a catalog, one way of importing a folder of images is to hit the Import button in the toolbar, then choose Import From and find the folder. Note carefully the options in the Import To section. See this example where I am importing a folder called Downloaded Images.
If you want to leave images where they are and just have them indexed in the catalog, you should choose the first option Add to Catalog. It sounds to me as though what you have done is choose Copy into Catalog. (What Copy into Catalog does is leave the images where they are but create extra copies inside the catalog, and work with those. If you had done that then although they appeared in the Recent Imports section, the folder would not appear in the Folders section. You can check whether that is what has happened by right clicking any image in the most recent import collection, and choosing Show in Library. If it takes you to the In Catalog section of the Library then this is what you have done.)
Getting your catalog backups into Capture One
You can create a catalog and add a catalog to it if you want to - you go to File > Import Catalog and choose Capture One Catalog.
But I don't suggest you do that.
Instead just rename the backup catalog by removing .backup from the end of the filename, then in Capture One use File>Open and select the catalog in question.
Ian
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Create a new catalog named for the old catalog, run ONE backup of the empty catalog. THEN you can try to restore from one of the prior backups. CO won't let a catalog do a restore until it records that at least one backup was made.
Alternatively COPY the newest time-stamped backup folder to the folder where you want to use it, and rename the time-stamped folder to the name of the catalog. Then open that COPY. As you have already learned you can open backups as a catalog.
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Thank you, Ian, in regard to the import process. After going round in a few circles I now have the import process as I want it - and as it always used to be! I reckon 'Import to/Add to Catalogue' was the default setting on my previous computer but with the installation of the latest version of C1 on the new computer that changed. A small problem was that at first I couldn't find 'Add to Catalogue' but I came across it almolst by accident - it was hidden under 'Copy to Catalogue' and emerged when I happened to right click on that. So one problem solved. Now to resume working on the other.
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Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I have now recovered most of my catalogues. In the end the process was simple enough: for each catalogue, I "created" a new one with the same name, which elicited the response that it already existed and invited me to open it; then, File/Restore Catalogue, and Locate for each folder in turn. I think this is what I originally tried to do but there were two factors that caused confusion. The first was that, until I had sorted out my Import Process, the folders weren't being listed and therefore I couldn't use Locate. The other was that when they were listed it was under a "fictional" F:/ drive (a carry-over from my old computer which had an SSD for programmes and a traditional drive for data). At first I thought Locate was simply removing the folder to which I was trying to apply it. In fact it was moving it to C:/, but I didn't realise this as the list under this heading wasn't being displayed until I happened to click on C:/, when they all appeared, with the images accessible.
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