Aperture Library Import Recipe
I have posted part of this before in an obscure thread, and I have received a couple of comments that I should post it more prominently.
If you have a big Aperture Library with considerable metadata, here is my detailed recipe based on the 17000 Image Aperture catalog I have just finished importing.
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1) Starting with my Aperture Library - Preparation
- COP will not recognize not import version names. I changed all my File names to match the Aperture version names. (optional Using an Applescript, I put the original filename into the IPTC "source" Field, and the Aperture import date into the IPTC "JobID" field)
- COP does not recognize the Keyword hierarchy in Aperture Library. Changed all the keywords in Aperture so that COP will recognize the hierarchy upon import "TopLevel | NextLevel | ... | BottomLevel"
- Extracted the Keyword list from Aperture and copied it into the COP plist file, so that it becomes the master list of keywords present in all COP Catalogs and folders
- COP does not recognize smart folders, copied the images from each smart folder into an album of the same name
- COP does not recognize stacks, copied all the images in each stack into an album, indicated the stack pick with a color code, all the non-picked images with a different color
- COP does not recognize many Aperture adjustments - using a smart folder at the library level, selected all images with each kind of adjustment, added a keyword indicating what adjustment type was applied.
- Divided the Aperture Library into chunks of 4000 to 6000 images, separated as top level folders, plus two folders of about 50 images for the purpose of testing
- Exported each of these top level folders as a new Aperture Library - so these new libraries are clean, no trash, no processing required
2) COP - Testing
- Set COP to "Prefer Sidecar XMP over embedded Metadata"
- Make a test catalog, import the Aperture Test Libraries. After each import select the "all Images" folder to force syncing the Metadata and create previews.
- Check carefully after each import to make sure that all images and Metadata make it across correctly.
- If not, go back and fix what needs to be fixed in the Aperture master Library, re- export the Test Libraries, repeat steps above until happy with the results
3) COP - First Main Import
- Re-export your first for real Aperture library chunk
- The Import process appears to be limited and slowed down by available RAM, so I make a number of choices here which seem unusual, but the purpose is to free up as much RAM as possible, and requires COP to use as little RAM as possible.These choices are indicated by "**"
- ** Start by setting COP to "Prefer Sidecar XMP over embedded Metadata" and "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" to "No"
- Create a COP catalog which will become your Main Catalog, in the place where you want it to be permanently.
- I would not set it up so that COP treats the managed images in your Aperture catalog as referenced images, I think it is better to have a common pool of images which are referenced by both tools, or to move the entire set of images into an COP Catalog file. Personal and complex choice - YMMV
- ** Create Group called "Dummy" in the COP catalog
- ** Turn off all optional SW in your MAC - emails, browsers, antivirus, dropbox, other users
- Import the First Aperture Library into the COP catalog - ** as soon as the import starts, select the "Dummy" group with your mouse.
- The import proceeds by importing all the image files and counting them as it imports - when COP has finished counting image files it seems to hang, but it is continuing to write to disk and process. On my machine that takes another 40 minutes to complete, and uses a very large amount of RAM. Best leave it undisturbed. If the import fails due to lack of application memory, this last part is where it fails. On my machine, and import of 9300 images fails for this reason.
- One the COP Activity menu disappears, and COP once more reacts to the mouse, set COP "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" to "Full", now select the COP "all Images" folder. This will cause COP to sync all the Metadata and generate previews for all the imports. This probably takes another hour or so.
- Check carefully after the import to make sure that all images make it across correctly. Count to make sure the number of images in the catalog match the number of images in the library.
4) Remaining Imports
- Make any other changes needed in the main Aperture library and re-export all the remaining top folders
- Import each Aperture library into your main Catalog, one by one, following the procedure above. Especially as the size of the main catalog grows, be sure to turn off "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" during import, and to select a something that causes no images to be shown during import, to get the highest speed and lowest memory usage.
FWIW my iMac has a 1 TB magnetic drive, 16GB of RAM and a quad core i5 processor. Machines with 32GB or RAM and SSDs will probably execute this much faster, for those with smaller RAM you might have to cut down the size of the import.
Finally, this is only my best guess based on experimentation and other comments posted in this forum. If you other members of this community find better ways,I think there would be considerable value in posting them here.
Some of these steps are pretty high level, and require referring to other postings in this forum. If further details are needed, this is a good place to ask those questions and post answers.
If you have a big Aperture Library with considerable metadata, here is my detailed recipe based on the 17000 Image Aperture catalog I have just finished importing.
---------------------
1) Starting with my Aperture Library - Preparation
- COP will not recognize not import version names. I changed all my File names to match the Aperture version names. (optional Using an Applescript, I put the original filename into the IPTC "source" Field, and the Aperture import date into the IPTC "JobID" field)
- COP does not recognize the Keyword hierarchy in Aperture Library. Changed all the keywords in Aperture so that COP will recognize the hierarchy upon import "TopLevel | NextLevel | ... | BottomLevel"
- Extracted the Keyword list from Aperture and copied it into the COP plist file, so that it becomes the master list of keywords present in all COP Catalogs and folders
- COP does not recognize smart folders, copied the images from each smart folder into an album of the same name
- COP does not recognize stacks, copied all the images in each stack into an album, indicated the stack pick with a color code, all the non-picked images with a different color
- COP does not recognize many Aperture adjustments - using a smart folder at the library level, selected all images with each kind of adjustment, added a keyword indicating what adjustment type was applied.
- Divided the Aperture Library into chunks of 4000 to 6000 images, separated as top level folders, plus two folders of about 50 images for the purpose of testing
- Exported each of these top level folders as a new Aperture Library - so these new libraries are clean, no trash, no processing required
2) COP - Testing
- Set COP to "Prefer Sidecar XMP over embedded Metadata"
- Make a test catalog, import the Aperture Test Libraries. After each import select the "all Images" folder to force syncing the Metadata and create previews.
- Check carefully after each import to make sure that all images and Metadata make it across correctly.
- If not, go back and fix what needs to be fixed in the Aperture master Library, re- export the Test Libraries, repeat steps above until happy with the results
3) COP - First Main Import
- Re-export your first for real Aperture library chunk
- The Import process appears to be limited and slowed down by available RAM, so I make a number of choices here which seem unusual, but the purpose is to free up as much RAM as possible, and requires COP to use as little RAM as possible.These choices are indicated by "**"
- ** Start by setting COP to "Prefer Sidecar XMP over embedded Metadata" and "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" to "No"
- Create a COP catalog which will become your Main Catalog, in the place where you want it to be permanently.
- I would not set it up so that COP treats the managed images in your Aperture catalog as referenced images, I think it is better to have a common pool of images which are referenced by both tools, or to move the entire set of images into an COP Catalog file. Personal and complex choice - YMMV
- ** Create Group called "Dummy" in the COP catalog
- ** Turn off all optional SW in your MAC - emails, browsers, antivirus, dropbox, other users
- Import the First Aperture Library into the COP catalog - ** as soon as the import starts, select the "Dummy" group with your mouse.
- The import proceeds by importing all the image files and counting them as it imports - when COP has finished counting image files it seems to hang, but it is continuing to write to disk and process. On my machine that takes another 40 minutes to complete, and uses a very large amount of RAM. Best leave it undisturbed. If the import fails due to lack of application memory, this last part is where it fails. On my machine, and import of 9300 images fails for this reason.
- One the COP Activity menu disappears, and COP once more reacts to the mouse, set COP "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" to "Full", now select the COP "all Images" folder. This will cause COP to sync all the Metadata and generate previews for all the imports. This probably takes another hour or so.
- Check carefully after the import to make sure that all images make it across correctly. Count to make sure the number of images in the catalog match the number of images in the library.
4) Remaining Imports
- Make any other changes needed in the main Aperture library and re-export all the remaining top folders
- Import each Aperture library into your main Catalog, one by one, following the procedure above. Especially as the size of the main catalog grows, be sure to turn off "AutoSyncSidecarXMP" during import, and to select a something that causes no images to be shown during import, to get the highest speed and lowest memory usage.
FWIW my iMac has a 1 TB magnetic drive, 16GB of RAM and a quad core i5 processor. Machines with 32GB or RAM and SSDs will probably execute this much faster, for those with smaller RAM you might have to cut down the size of the import.
Finally, this is only my best guess based on experimentation and other comments posted in this forum. If you other members of this community find better ways,I think there would be considerable value in posting them here.
Some of these steps are pretty high level, and require referring to other postings in this forum. If further details are needed, this is a good place to ask those questions and post answers.
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Eric:
Thanks for putting so much effort into this recipe. Where may I find it?0 -
You are quite welcome Norm - I didn't notice your response since notifications aren't working. I don't understand your question about where to find "it", could you explain or expand on your question? 0 -
For some reason I missed your first post with the actual recipe. I found it. Thanks for documenting all that effort! 0 -
Hi Eric, thanks a lot for your effort!
I'm still struggling with the import of small Aperture libraries (about 1000 referenced photos each).
After importing into a fresh C1 catalog, everything seems to be fine.
However, a database check says: "DB ok, debug failed".
After repairing both checks are fine. But all adjustments, metadata and star ratings from Aperture are gone in the C1 catalog.
Did someone else face the problem when checking the database integrity?
And is there another way to just re-import the adjustments, star ratings and metadata from Aperture?0 -
I am still debugging the process of migrating an 80,000+ image Aperture Library in C1 8.
I have done it a couple of times and then started over due to bad results. But, I can see that this will work once I figure it all out.
I think it will be great the next pass if I move all managed files into my referenced master folders before import. C1 doesn't seem to have a way to move them out of the catalog in a way that will maintain my master folder structure.
I will probably make a new structure for all new files. But, I think it will be easiest to keep all older files in their old folder hierarchy.
How large is too large for a C1 Catalog? Should I split out each year, project, etc into separate catalogs?0 -
I have a 2009 iMac with Core i5 processor, magnetic hard drive and a 16GB of RAM. Open CL Hardware acceleration is set to Auto for both display and processing.
With this setup, my folder with 17,000 images is getting a bit big. Response of individual projects and albums is OK, but clicking on "all images" with Viewer=off results in a 60-80 second delay before C1Pro responds to the mouse and is able to scroll. If I go do something else and then come back to "All Images" I get a similarly long delay.
Looking at the activity monitor I would say the CPU usage nor the RAM usage which is not bottlenecking, more likely it is disk usage as I can hear the disk drive rumbling incessantly as C1Pro works, and it is reading up to 20MB per second.
Possibly with a newer iMac with better HW acceleration and an SSD hard drive, this might be sped up.
How to subdivide is whole different and very personal question.
One thing I do is I keep all my incoming images in a separate catalog until I'm finished the initial sorting and editing, I only put finished projects in the main catalog.0
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