IPhoto, iCloud Photos, QTKitServer-iPhoto and QTKitServer-Aperture all hanging

Question

iMac mid-2011, 8 GB RAM, 1TB Internal Hard Drive, Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9, iPhoto 5, Aperture 3.5
My iPhoto library, iCloud photos and some Mac OS X Mavericks file called QTKitServer-iPhoto and QTKitServer-Aperture keep hanging and not responding. Tried repairing permissions and repairing iPhoto library multiple times. Tried re-downloading Mavericks and that did not fix it. Called Apple Support. They said they could not help me beyond what I had already tried (Apple Online Support has really gone downhill since the last time I called) and to go to my local Apple retail store to see a Genius.
After running hardware tests, the Genius told me that my iPhoto library was too large and that was what was causing iPhoto and iCloud photos to hang. Even though he acknowledged that the QTKitServer operating system file is not supposed to hang. The Genius put in an additional 8 Mb memory to see if adding more memory would help (apparantly iPhoto is supposed to give back some memory when you close it and it does not). So Apple is not flushing memory when an App is closed. Apple's apparent solution is to add more memory that you have to purchase. However, the same three files kept not responding even with the additional memory. So I passed on the additional memory until I get the iPhoto problem solved. He also said my external hard drive, a WD 2TB hard drive that I bought from the same Apple retail store two or three years ago, looked like it was failing because there were lots of disk I/O errors in the system log, even though the drive appears to work fine and disk utility reported no problems when I ran Verify Disk on the external WD drive two days ago. I do not use this drive hardly at all (I backup my iMac to my Time Capsule), exept to keep a backup copy of my iPhoto library and Documents folder, and it has lots of original pictures that are not in my existing iPhoto library. I copied my iPhoto library and Documents folder to it last night and they seemed to copy fine.
So if my iPhoto library is really too big, and that is what the issue is, my problem is that there is no apparent way to break up my existing iPhoto Library into multiple small iPhoto libraries, without losing all of my keywords, titles, photo edits, event names, album names, folders and projects etc. The last time I tried breaking up my iPhoto library into smaller iPhoto libraries, even though I told iPhoto to export  keywords and titles, it did not. And the Genius did not know if it would work now or not.
My question is to those of you who have large iPhoto libraries and are using Mac OS X Mavericks and iCloud Photos - how big are your iPhoto libraries? What is too big? Does anyone have an iPhoto library the size of mine that is working fine (who is also using Mac OS X Mavericks and iCloud)? When I talked to Apple online support, they said big iPhoto libraries are 100,000 photos and up. The Genius said anything over 1,000 is big. That's quite a spread. Currently I have 24,000 photos, most of which have been edited in some way or another, and about 1/2 of which have new titles, mulitple keywords assigned, faces and places assigned, etc., since I imported the original master photos. The Genius told me to duplicate my existing iPhoto library, create a new iPhoto library, import all of the folders in the iPhoto database except the Masters folder, and see if iPhoto still hung. If it did, he said it was all the data attached to the photos that is the problem, in which case I would need to create another new iPhoto library and import only the Masters file (images only). I think if I import only the Masters from my existing library, I will lose not only all of my keywords and titles, but also all of my photo edits, event names, album names, folder names, projects etc.
So I wasted an entire afternoon at the Apple retail store, only to buy a new external hard drive (that I may not even need), was told to buy more memory (that did not solve the problem - I passed on that), and I am no further ahead than I was when I went in. I need to know if there is any way that I can break up my iPhoto library into smaller libraries and retain all of the metadata and photo edits?
Finally, when I got home, I discovered that my husband with whom I had shared some of my photo streams, still had photos showing in shared photo streams that I had removed from iCloud two days ago. It removed them on my iMac - the place where those streams originated, but apparently left the thumbnails in the shared photo streams of everyone that I had shared the photos with. As soon as I clicked on an actual photo on my husband's iMac, the photo suddenly vanished and all the photo thumbnails in the stream did too. But the empty shared photo stream still remained on my husband's iMac and he had to physically say "Unsubscribe" to get it to go away. So something is not working right with iCloud photos, which is no doubt why iCloud photos is one of the files that keeps not responding.
Then, when I set up my iMac again this evening, and looked at iCloud on my iMac, all of my photo streams (not just the four that I had removed two days ago) were gone! And when I went into Aperture, the photo streams were all there, but with zero photos in them. Now last night when I boxed up my iMac to take to Apple, those photo streams were all there and they all had photos in them. So where did they go? And why, when you are the originator of a photo stream, and you tell iCloud to remove the photo stream, it says that it does but it leaves remnants of it with the other people you have shared it with? It seems to me that iPhoto, iCloud, and the fact that Apple is not flushing memory when an app closes is the problem with my iMac, not the size of my iPhoto library, or my external hard drive, or the fact that 8Gb of memory is apparently no longer enough memory for decent response with Mavericks (which I thought was designed to help solve some of the memory issues that OS X has).
I need help and help is apparently nowhere to be found at Apple.
Is there anyone out there who can help me?

Answer 1

If you're using iPhoto 5 as you say then, yes, 24k photos is heading close to the Limit of 25k. iPhoto 6 is good for 250,000 images, iPhoto 11 is good for 1,000,000.
I'm going to guess that's a typo and that you have iPhoto 9.5.
I've simply never heard of "too many photos" causing the problem you describe. You don't need more memory. You don't need to break up the Library. "Flushing Memory" is a non-isssue. One of the big improvements in 10.9 is in memory management.
There are a couple of ways to break up a Library while preserving everything. It's dead easy with Aperture - export projects as Library - you can do it with iPhoto simply by duplicating the Library and deleting from the two libraries or use iPhoto Library Manager.
But, as I say, 24k is a small Library. My main library is more than twice the size of that.
Are Aperture and iPhoto using the same Library?
As a Test:
Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'
Import a few pics into this new, blank library. Is the Problem repeated there?
Post back with the result.