I am about to give up!

I am so frustrated about Aperture 3 that I am about to give up. I have searched help in the Apple Support forums and other places on the web, with no luck. Can anyone here give me some advice? I purchased the Aperture 2 tutorial (macProVideo), but I find no help there either. This is the problem:

I lived quite happily with Aperture 2 for a year or so. The speed was ok (I have a 2x2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon MacPro with 6 GByte RAM and at least 30% free space on all drives). I then installed Aperture 3, converted the Library (it took a couple of hours), and A3 seemed to work fine for a couple of days. Then, suddenly, when I started Aperture, the spinning wheel started and the message "processing" showed in the lower part of the main window. This locks up Aperture, and it is not possible to cancel the processing or open any Aperture menus. The only way to quit Aperture 3 is to use the Cmd+Alt+Esc keys. - I was able to open the preference menu immediately after I started Aperture (just before the processing started again), and I checked that face detection was NOT active. All settings seemed to be normal. I thought the solution was to wait, so I actually let the Mac be on (with the "processing") for more than four days, but it didn't stop. I have only about two thousand images in the library.

I then made a backup copy of the library file, deinstalled Aperture, searched for prefs files etc. and deleted them. I restarted the MacPro, installed Aperture 3 again, and it seemed to work fine for a couple of minutes. Then the frustrating "processing" started again, and it has continued for a couple of weeks now.

What is going on here? I just can't understand it, and the conclusion is that Aperture 3 is not usable on my Mac (which is very healthy, no error messages when checking the harddrives etc.)

I tried to install Aperture 2 again, but it won't install. The choice is greyed out in the installer. Is this because there are still some Apterture 3 files on the system drive? What files should I delete in order to do a 100% fresh install?

My last try was to install Aperture 3 again, and delete the library file first (I have the backup on a different drive). I then imported a couple of images from my iPhone, and you can only guess what happened? Yes, after a minute or so, Aperture 3 started to "process" these six images, and it has going on for an hour! It makes me crazy.

Unless I get some serious help on this one, I am going to switch to Adobe's Lightroom. Dear Apple, what kind of product is this?

Hi Helge,

I'm sorry to hear about your problems with Aperture 3. I've been reading up about this and it seems to be an issue that affects Ap2 upgraders only...

Have you run software update to get the latest updates for Ap3 and your system?

I'd like to link to a couple of threads on Apple Discussions:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11082211&#11082211

and this thread.... page 28 or 29 looks promising. Look for the post by Eric Robertson on Feb 23rd & replies to his solution on page 29:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2331026&start=405&tstart=0

Here is what his post suggested:

"Launch activity monitor before launching A3. Launch A3 W shift key down. Go back to activity monitor and select the A3 process and the open info on the process. View open files and ports. While leaving the open files window visible, go back to A3 and manually start processing. When it hangs, scroll through the open files window and look for a master image file that is open.

Once you find the file, write down the name and use the activity monitor to quit A3. Launch A3 again w shift held down. Find the master you wrote down and all versions of that master and disable the retouch brush on the master and all versions.

Repeat that process until A3 completes processing. "

Hope this helps Helge!
Rounik

Thanks a lot for the reponse. I will follow the steps later today and let you know how successful I will be fighting this ugly monster! (I wonder if Apple know about this problem and have any plans to cure it. I have downloaded the update to Aperture3, but it made no difference.)

Helge

Hi Helge,

I suspect the Aperture developers have come across the numerous threads about this issue... especially as one of them is over 30 pages(!)... but the best way to let them know about any issues or feature recommendations is through the feedback form:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html

Thanks
Rounik

I have given my feedback using this link twice, and I have also sent crash reports with code to Apple when Aperture 3 is freezing. - I wonder if Apple has any solution at all to this?

Hi Helge,

Unfortunately, AFAIK Apple don't reply directly to users who give feedback on any application.

Have you checked any of the threads from Apple Discussions to see if any more solutions have been offered?

I'm hopeful that Apple are working on fixes - but there is no official way of knowing whether they acknowledge the issue and/or when an update fix will be released.

Thanks
Rounik

I finally found what I think is the reason behind my problems with Aperture. By following your advice, I discovered that a video clip from my iPhone had been transferred (weeks ago) to Aperture, and when I deleted this clip, Aperture stopped processing all the time. I wasn't aware that video clips could create this kind of problem.

Is there a setting in Aperture that prevents video clips to be imported? I am using FinalCutPro for video, and I want video clips to be placed in a separate folder on my hard drive.

Hi Helge

Great news! Really glad to know you found the root problem and thanks for posting back your solution.

I'm not aware of a filter to prevent video clips being imported from an iPhone into Aperture... What settings are you currently using to import photos into Aperture?

Would it matter if Aperture imported the video clips and then you set up some kind of automator action to move any video clips to a different location?

:)

Rounik

Sorry for the delayed response hete. How do I set Aperture to store videoclips in a different place?

If you need to do a clean wipe of Aperture use http://www.appzapper.com/

I'm sorry I can't help with the issues. I haven't used Aperture in at least a year. I would definitely look for updates in the Apple Aperture Discussions: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=184

I personally use LR as Aperture 2 was no comparison to LR2. I tried both at version 2 but LR was much better. I've heard the Aperture 3 got a lot of much needed updates and now might be on par with LR. I'm now using LR3. Tough to compete when the whole photo suite is basically Adobe. LR, ACR, Bridge and PS makes for a solid workflow.