Problems with counter in renaming interface not maintaining consistency across multiple libraries

Question

Happy New Year, all.
We have a problem in Aperture that I was curious if others had, and I'm hoping somebody has figured out a workaround they will share with me. Originally, we used Aperture and it had one huge library for our different types of photography. We had to change away from that setup because if there was a problem it would take ages to troubleshoot a ~500GB library and perform actions like rebuilding the library. We didn't want to do this, but splitting into six libraries has improved the speed in general and has made rebuilding smaller individual libraries quicker.
We shoot a lot of photos and want each photo to have a unique number (along with a custom name). We set up a rename option in Aperture that has "Custom Name_Counter" and set counter to be six digits. The problem this seemed to create is that the counter in the rename function doesn't produce a unique number consistently across libraries. If I'm in library A, and I rename a batch of files, the counter will go up and remember its last number as long as I stay in Library A. The minute I switch to Library B, the number is at where it was the last time I used Library B. This indicates to me that the preferences travel with the library.
Does anybody know a way that I can have a global preferences file, rather than a library preferences file? It seems it maybe used to be this way, but one of the version 3 upgrades forced me to delete a preferences file for the Facebook bug a couple of version 3 subversions ago.
On a different note, another problem with renaming is that it is so slow. Renaming master files for even 100 or so files takes minutes. Does anybody else have this happen? Sometimes it's faster, but I haven't been able to figure out a pattern to this.
I've submitted feature requests for revamping the renaming interface for Aperture for at least a couple of years. It never seems to improve. iView Media Pro, a program I used six years ago, had a great renaming setup and I wish Aperture
Maybe it's time to reinstall Aperture. I bought it on disc, so it's not through the App store. Does anybody have experience reinstalling? I would, of course, like to keep keywords and other preferences.

Answer 1

hallerphoto wrote:
Machine is a Mac Pro dual quad-core 2.16 GHz.
I am unaware of a 2.16 GHz Mac Pro tower. Are you referring to a Macbook Pro or to an iMac? Or is it a configuration I am just unaware of?
My concern is that it seems that you may be making major workflow compromises that might be better dealt with by hardware changes as feasible. E.g. most 2.16 GHz Mac CPUs are about 1/6 as strong as a top Mac Pro today or about 1/4 as strong as today's Macbook Pros, and that has huge implications on Aperture performance.
Also, graphics processors of the 2.16 GHz era were ridiculously weak compared to modern Macs. Aperture has historically performed best with strong GPUs (e.g. the strongest G5 towers would not run Aperture without a GPU upgrade). If you stay with the existing box a GPU upgrade may (if feasible) be in order.
You did not mention RAM, which has defining impact on Aperture performance.
Even if no hardware upgrades are made, it is useful to know what hardware performance bottlenecks may exist. So some questions:
• Which Mac(s), exactly?
• Which OS version and which Aperture version?
• How much RAM is on board?
• If a Mac Pro, which GPU card is in use?
• What mass storage (hard drives and SSDs), how connected and how full?
Thanks.
-Allen