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Strategies for migrating away from Catalogs

Permanently deleted user

With the time afforded during the recent C-19 pandemic, I've spent a goodly amount of time in C1v12 processing my photo inventory.

I'm about halfway through my 60k images, and I've now corrupted the catalog for the second time. I can still work in it for development, but many catalog functions cause C1 to hang.

So, as to not beat a dead horse any longer, I've decided to migrate away from catalogs.

What I would like to do is the one session approach, where no files are imported, but I use the folder tree to browse around.

I found the "official" workflow for moving catalog images to a session, and frankly it's beyond absurd.

Has anyone cleanly moved from catalogs to sessions and what lessons did you learn. Knowing what not to do is oftentimes more important than knowing what to do.

Thanks in advance.

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6 comments

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  • Michael Woeller

    In for any recommendations as well since, to be frank, I find the cataloging and metadata handling in the Catalog workflow to be the worst part of C1. I have tried to inventory my photos much like you, but even just simple metadata changes to one field across many images can crash the program. Even if I manage to exit cleanly, I can reload the software and catalog and not all MetaData edits are saved and the filter counts are wrong. It's a shame because I absolutely love the look of my images, but can't really use the catalog. And having seperate sessions for each shoot/sub-shoot is absurdly daunting. 

    Sorry for the rant, but frustrated as I have tried to rebuild this catalog 4 times in the last week and it's not going well 

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Thanks for the show of support. I have filed support cases, and frankly that's a huge waste of time.  Capture One isn't interested in fixing catalogs.

    A while back, I had made of list of C1 improvements in that section, the first of which was fix the catalog. Lily, who did the article about saving catalog files to sessions, captured all my suggestions into a support request except the fixing the catalog. Yes, the number one suggestion was ignored.

    Let's see if anyone responds with helpful info. All I know is if I loose any of my work that I've done so for, I'm going to be most displeased. Even more displeased than I am now. 

    cheers,

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Well,

    I've found the solution.  It's very slow, but it works.

    Turning on the date filter in the library pane, I can select photos by the year taken.

    Then select File -> Export Images -> Original.

    Tick all the boxes except "Export as EIP"

    For export location, for now I'm exporting to a blank NAS box that I happened to have, but a large USB drive would work just fine.

    Luckily my organizational scheme is centered around a year/monthday scenario, so I set sub folders just so, and then Export naming is simply the ImageName token.

    This doesn't build previews, but writes the development settings out into a subfolder named Settings120 in files with the ".cos" extension.

    I did a test run, opened my omnibus session in C1, and browsed to the exported folder and all my edits were there.  It still took a moment to build the previews, but this is what I'm looking for.

    Once done, I'll merge the Settings120 folders back into my main photo depository in the appropriate folders.

    Then I can be done with Catalogs forever.

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  • Permanently deleted user

    So, I decided to try writing to my Samsung USB SSD and this is significantly faster than to the NAS box.  So that is where I'm headed.

    Cheers

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Final comment:

    I copied the CaptureOne folders from a partial export to the appropriate folders on my other storage drive and then opened Capture One in my "omnibus" session as a test session.

    This will definitely work out as the speeds are commensurate with what I was getting by working in a catalog.

    Highly recommended!

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  • Permanently deleted user
    • Edited

    I've been using Capture One this way for a couple of weeks. While I've lost all of the "features" available in Catalogs, I'm much more comfortable working this way with standalone development files that can be managed effectively.

    If only we could get C1 to embed the development settings into xmp files as the rest of the industry does....

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