Crash on Iphoto Import

Question

Aperture 3 (retail, not trial) is crashing every time I try to import my 17k iPhoto pictures. I have already tried rebuilding my iphoto library. It tends to crash at random times, sometimes i get 3k pictures, sometimes I get 6k, but it always crashes before it is done. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I've been able to resolve the issue doing the following crude process.
Details
110GB library
18K+ photos from iphoto 09 -> aperture 3 64-bit referenced masters
macbook pro 4GB ram
Process
1. Disable Faces
Preferences > General
Deselect Enable Faces
2. Show numbers on projects - this is to see the progress and make cleanup easier
Preferences > Appearance
Select show number of versions for projects and albums
3. Begin Importing
File > Import > iphoto Library
Select your iphoto library
- even if you've selected it before and you see it in the folder you must select it. You can tell it's selected when it is highlighted in gray
Select the location you want to move your photos
- to make the import nondestructive, you can only copy the files
Select Do not import duplicates
- I know some boards say that this causes it to fail faster but it works this way. If you don't use this option the import has to work in one try. Using this option you can build on each previous import.
Select the subfolder structure you want
- I use Image year/ image date / project name
Select the file name
- I use the image name
Click import
4. It will fail eventually. When it does, follow step 3 again making sure the don't import duplicates checkbox is checked.
- It took me about 2 days of importing to get this to fully import my library.
5. Cleanup empty folders. You will see that each time you restarted your import it recreated the same project structure. They are indexed by iterations. Now that you selected to show the number of photos in a project when you expand the projects you will see the empty projects. You will also see that in earlier iterations you imported photos for most projects and as you approached your last iteration you imported into fewer projects.
Expand the folders to the project level where you see projects with 0 images
Multiselect all projects with zero photos using command-click or shift-click
Delete all empty projects with command - Delete or right click and select delete items
Empty your trash can by right clicking Empty Aperture Trash
6. Reorganize your photo populated projects so that they work for you.
I share a lot of the same frustrations I've been reading in the posts. It does seem that with the last set of releases of apple products (mobile me last year, aperture 3, ilife last year, snow leopard) that quality is taking a back seat to meeting dates. It is too bad because Apple used to stand for quality first. Although, apple has the lead by far on usability and beauty, the quality is starting to normalize with the industry. Good luck.