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Media Pro Improvements? I'm eating crow...

Chawn_Crawley
So, in the past, I've railed pretty hard against Media Pro after buying it and having crashes so frequently that it was unusable.
After spending a fair bit of time setting up Photomechanic to try to act as a "catalog" of sorts to replace Media Pro, yesterday, I re-downloaded Media Pro, added my license key and began building a catalog of my library.

As I'm typing this, I'm continuing to build the catalog and have successfully imported over 28,000 images without a single crash.

I do not have my preferences set between MP and CO7 as they should be to trade xmp data back and forth just yet, and I'm importing about 3-4 sessions at a time. Nonetheless, I've never had this much stability until just now.

My goal is that once I have the catalog fully updated, I'm going to work with the preferences so that the two programs share info and see how that goes.

I guess I'm just asking, what has happened that is now giving MP a distinctly improved sense of performance stability? If I can get through this and further integrate the xmp sharing, that suggests that suddenly I'm able to use MP to it's full capabilities.

I'm really happy about this if everything holds true to the finish; honestly, I had thought that MP was quietly being forgotten about in favor of CO7's use of catalogs.

Granted, I'm knocking wood like crazy as I'm building this catalog, but pretty hopeful right now.

What's changed?

~Chawn
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Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • Permanently deleted user
    Please state whether you're using Mac or Windows and the version/build numbers of your first MP installer and your most recent MP installer. This will help more fully document your experience.

    (I've been avoiding MP because of the reports of instability, but this could be encouraging.)
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  • Chawn_Crawley
    Sure. It was Media Pro 1 and I picked t up in May of 2013. It's 1.4.1.6xxx at this moment. I'm running Mac mavericks currently and I suppose it was Mountain Lion back at the time I originally picked up.

    I'm working with .NEF's as well as some group of files that are .DNG, as well.

    Like I said, I have a bit to go in terms of fully integrating MP into CO7 that I expect to do this weekend, but I have never been able to get this far and I'm pretty optimistic.

    I also shoot a fair amount of .fff and 3fr files; I don't think they can be incorporated at all in their native format, but I'm going to see what possibilities my lie in using Adobe DNG converter and trying to make linear conversions of these files as well. That's more of a curiosity than a practical need so I'll hold off on that until I take care of the initial work I'm doing now.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Thanks. I'm on a Mac too. I tested an MP trial version on Lion several months ago (build 1.4.1.67972, dated May 2013). I didn't experience any issues, but my trial was only cursory, not a full test of a large catalog.

    Have they released a newer build? Or can we assume development has been stalled since May '13?

    I wonder if Mavericks has anything to do with your experience.
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  • Chawn_Crawley
    I really don't know. And for disclosure, my knowledge is fairly limited to that of a user and not a particularly savvy person with software issues.
    I'll certainly feed this thread with the experiences I see along the way though. As of now, I've loaded about 35K images and am going to re-read the material relative to pairing this to CO7.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    I understand. I'd be curious to know the exact build number, though. Just do a "get Info" (Cmd + i) on the application file or select About Media Pro from the Media Pro menu to find the build number.
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  • Chawn_Crawley
    Build is: 1.4.1.67972

    I also have gone back through the setup tutorials to integrate it with Capture One and have been completely successful in being able to trade metadata and rating info back and forth between programs. I could NEVER accomplish this before.

    For the Hassy attempt, the only way I can add that type of file is via Tiff. No big deal. I stick with Phocus for converting those files; and I actually do a small JPG export to package in a session so I can whip through them in Photomechanic so I've no real need to go further than that.

    If a day comes along when Phase develops a completely different body than the 645, and the Schneider leaf shutter lenses have fewer reports of problems, I'd switch out my MFD to a Phase system in a minute. These days I'm putting much more importance on software than hardware.

    In any case, I'm quite happy right now. If this hold strong for a week, I'll state publicly that it's a safe purchase, lol.
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  • nggalai
    Morning,

    for what it’s worth, I’ve been on 1.4.1.67972 on Mac since it came out in May 2013 and have only encountered one issue – web galleries still don’t work properly for me (neither I nor Phase One were able to reproduce the issue; sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn’t with the same images even). But: Media Pro has never crashed on me and synchronising both C1 settings and metadata via XMP has worked flawlessly so far.

    Mind, my volume of images is far smaller, I work in photo journalism and, for lack of a better term, “documentaryâ€, so my main catalog only holds about 15.000 images, back catalog another 20k or so.

    Still, I hope Phase One hasn’t abandoned Media Pro in favour of integrating catalog functionality to Capture One. It’s been almost a year now since the last MP update, so one starts to wonder.

    Cheers,
    -Sascha
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  • Permanently deleted user
    [quote="nggalai" wrote:
    [. . .] one issue – web galleries still don’t work properly for me (neither I nor Phase One were able to reproduce the issue; sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn’t with the same images even).

    This would be a deal breaker for me, as I rely on the Web Galleries feature. Are you using an unusual file type? Which Mac OS are you using? I'd be curious to hear if others are having problems.

    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    Still, I hope Phase One hasn’t abandoned Media Pro in favour of integrating catalog functionality to Capture One. It’s been almost a year now since the last MP update, so one starts to wonder.

    Yes, a 10-month silence is not encouraging (to put it mildly). If the Web Galleries feature is truly buggy, and Phase One isn't committed to further development, then I'll just stick with Expression Media.
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  • nggalai
    [quote="syncrasy" wrote:
    [quote="nggalai" wrote:
    [. . .] one issue – web galleries still don’t work properly for me (neither I nor Phase One were able to reproduce the issue; sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn’t with the same images even).

    This would be a deal breaker for me, as I rely on the Web Galleries feature. Are you using an unusual file type? Which Mac OS are you using? I'd be curious to hear if others are having problems.

    I’m mostly using “native†DNG files from M9 cameras. It’s quite weird, sometimes web galleries work with no problems whatsoever, sometimes generating the gallery hangs after 10 images.

    As I usually need to only present some 5-20 images to customers at one go, rather than a couple of hundreds, I export the key files from Capture One, resize them in a Photoline batch, and upload them with an FTP client instead. Still, I’d love to be able to directly export/upload from Media Pro, using Capture One development settings, but as I don’t know what (sometimes) breaks the export process … well.

    The issue has been around since OSX 10.8.x, up to 10.9.2. Your mileage may vary, best give the test version a shot.

    Cheers,
    -Sascha
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