Catalog import failed, unable to read Aperture catalog file

Chris-H

• December 19, 2016 10:52

Hi there
I'm migrating from Aperture 3.6 to C1 v10. After several library imports went smoothly, I am now getting a C1 error message

Catalog Import Failed Unable to read the catalog file

Here's for background:

I've divided my Aperture library into several smaller ones with ca. 5k pics each. I've moved these from my internal iMac HD to an externally USB-connected one. So far I've imported ca. 19k pictures into C1.
When I had the first error come up, I simply re-exported into an even smaller Aperture library of ca. 1k pics - which was then imported ok. But with the next import the problem came up again. So I've re-exported to a mini Aperture library of just 200 pics - which could be imported to C1 in a snap. However, the ext try with an equally small exported library failed again...

I wonder if this rings a bell with anyone, and if one of the Pro's here can point me to a solution?

Thanks all! Chris

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  peter Frings

  • December 19, 2016 13:21

  I had similar issues importing LR catalogs (which were imported from Aperture...).
  
  Tech support suggested to switch off the openCL preferences, and then things went better. But at some point, it started failing again.
  
  I then found that by removing the log files in ~/Library/Logs solved the issue!? Every time I got the "not supported" error, I trashed the log files and then it imported OK. Go figure... I don't even understand why that should affect the import process!
  
  So, maybe it's a pure coincidence, but you can give it a try.
  
  HTH,
  Peter.

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  Chris-H

  • December 19, 2016 16:17

  Hi and thanks for the quick reply.
  I've tried your suggestions but no luck for me. Also I've tried PO-support suggested catalog verification but that was all fine and a new attempt of importing did not succeed.
  
  However in the meantime I have isolated the problem to just this one small Library that contains shots from 2013 December. (I had split up my Aperture library into smaller ones by year and month.) All other years went fine. Hence I assume there must be some sort of corruption in the data of that one particular library. The pictures themselves look unsuspiciously in Aperture. I've tried repair permissions (now "First Aid") in Apple's Disk Utility app.
  
  I'm now trying to narrow down further by making smaller increments of libraries and trying to import these into C1. Maybe it's just a single picture that leads to the problem.
  Any suggestions to identify a bad picture are most welcome!
  
  Thanks.

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  SFA

  • December 19, 2016 16:33

  Some file types are likely to be more suspect than others.
  
  Tiffs, if there are any, might be good to isolate.
  
  Very small jpgs?
  
  Raw files in an unsupported format perhaps?
  
  Note that many of the previous constraints within C1 have recently been addressed for the benefits of the wider user audience. However whether such changes are pertinent to importing libraries from other applications (and have resulted in updates to the import process programs) is a question for the Phase team I would suggest.
  
  
  HTH.
  
  Grant

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  Chris-H

  • December 20, 2016 10:21

  Thanks Grant - sadly the pics are all regular size, all jpg, no edits, just plain stuff that I want to keep.
  Guys thanks for now - I'll go about importing pic by pic and find the bad apple. Don't want to steel your time.
  Cheers

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  Chris-H

  • December 20, 2016 11:25

  Just to close this one - I've manually imported the pics to my new referenced folder structure and it went smoothly. So it seems the problem has been in the library files that Aperture created from this specific set of pics. However.
  
  What I learned:
  1. Break up your Aperture library into smaller ones
  2. Import one by one
  3. If one import fails, break the library in 2 smaller ones and try again, likely one will be fine, the other one not... Repeat.
  
  Thanks again for your ideas and suggestions.
  Chris

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