Unavailable Masters

Hi,
I've got a problem with importing images into my main library. I took a few thousand shots at my brother's wedding and imported them to my MacBook's copy of Aperture. I exported a copy of that project on the DVD and kept a local copy.
Once I got home, I've tried to import the project into my iMac's Aperture. Everything appeared to go ok except that all of the images have a small arrow pointing to 2 o'clock with a yellow triangular warning sign. I believe that this means that the masters are unavailable, but I am not sure.
I am unable to consolidate or relocate masters and I can't manage referenced files. The images are intact in the approj file.
Finally, the laptop's hard drive has since died, so re-exporting the original project is not an option.
Can anyone help me, please?
Thanks and best regards,
Dan

Odd that it's won't let you manage referenced masters when it thinks they are missing, not sure why that would happen. If nothing else works, you could always just copy them out of the project and reimport the masters by themselves.
I've always transferred lots of projects between my laptop and desktop using both referenced and managed masters, never had a problem with it so far.

Similar Messages

Aperture, versions unavailable masters

Greetings,
What I have done.. It has been a while working with aperture.
I started to reorganize my photos after a couple of years.
I had a library saved on an external hard-disk and I opened it. But I'm not able to export the photos.
This is in the right, bottum corner:
Trying to export I get this message:
I have no clue where the "masters" are and if I actually still have them... Can I restore or have it back "fully"?
Any help is most welcome!! Thank you in advance.
This is the version of aperture:

The masters would be the original photo files, either .jpg or RAW from your cameras. Since Aperture cannot locate them you must have used referenced masters. This simply means that each version points to some external folder for the original file. What you see in Aperture is just a small jpeg saved in the Aperture database. You need to look through your disks to find the original photos. You could use Spotlight and enter the filename for one of the missing photos. You can reconnect referenced images to their masters. See your Aperture help.

Unavailable Master Images are present

Trying to relocate masters to an external drive using Aperture 2.1. Project with many albums which I am relocating to folders with the same name as the album on an external drive. Most of the albums I was able to relocate. There are 4 where I get the "unavailable master images cannot be relocated" message. When I select and image to show in finder, it shows its location on my internal drive. I have rebuilt the library and still get the same message. I have gone to Manage referenced files and located all the images in the bottom window then click reconnect all. Still get the same message about unavailable masters. What am I missing?

I am having the same problem. I had all my master images stored in one folder on an external 300gb hard drive. However, I noticed that in aperture, it said I had only 15,000 images while in the folder showed ~17,000 masters. What were these extra 2,000 images? I decided to try to separate these "unconnected" images from the real masters by relocating all my master images into another folder. All went well until I got the following warning:
"Unavailable master images cannot be relocated. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again."
I was able to move most of the masters, but Aperture says I still have 3,009 masters in the original folder (which if I navigate to in the finder contains ~5,000 images). The strange thing is that if I right click on one of these images in aperture and select "show in finder" it finds them with no problem. It can't find them thought when trying to relocate.
I have tried rebuilding the aperture library, manually moving the images into another folder and then attempting to relocate, and copying the masters to another hard disk and linking aperture to those masters. All with the same result.
I am using Aperture 2.1.
Any help here would be great.

Was working on building Power Point using photos from IPhoto

Also using Aperture to pull photos for presentation. Suddenly in Aperture, I lost my two most recently imported files and can't relocate. Please advise if you've had the problem. I've also discovered thatnow I'm not able to export ANY photos out of Aperture, but get the pop-up that says "Versions with Unavailable Masters Can't be Exported. Try Again". It makes no difference dates of projects/album. Pop-up occurs regardless. I'm absolutely frozen in Aperture and have lost the two most recent files. Please help, I've still got things to place in Power Point Slide Presentation. Thanks. BigDJimbo

Leonie; regarding the exporting, I'm confidant that I hit the right button to get from either Iphoto or Aperture 3 to my desktop in order to insert into the Power Point.
As far as relationship between IPhoto & Aperture, I merely had both on the laptop with the IPhoto storing the majority of my photos up until I made the commitment recently to use Aperture 3 exclusively so my more recent new photos were downloaded from my Nikon directly into Aperture before doing post production and then were stored in project files to access as needed at a later date.
On this particular project, I went straight to IPhoto when there was a file I needed, hit export and put them into Desktop where I would retrieve them as needed for insert into the Power Point. Likewise, photos that had been downloaded and postedAperture files were exported the same way.
One other thing that might shed some light on this entire mess is that on both of the lost projects, I had gone into them to extract select photos to share with family and friends after I'd done my post production work on them. These photos were then exported to Desktop and were later inserted into e-mails for sharing. The shared photos I've found in the Aperture Library, but the hundred or so other "unprocessed" photos in the same Aperture 3 project are no where to be found. Go figure.
Thanks again Leonie for your input in solving this mystery.
Jim

I created a form with Single Choice fields, 4 days with times listed. But, I want the user to only be able to choose one time, and the time chosen to be unavailable for other users. How do I do this?

I created a form with Single Choice fields, 4 days with times listed. But, I want the user to only be able to choose one time, and the time chosen to be unavailable for other users. How do I do this? I have 4 blocks of Single Choice fields in order for the summary page to give me each day in the final report. But, I need the user to be able to make a selection of any day and time and that apointment to no longer be available to future users when they log in. Plus, when the user clicks on the time, they are unable to change their mind and choose another time. Here's the link if you want to see what I'm talking about: 2015-2016 Workload Apportionment Review

I'm afraid not. It's not rocket science but you need to do some coding.
You'll need to find a script (php) and save it to your local site folder. Then reference the script in your form's action attribute like so.
<form action="path/form-to-email-script.php" >
The input fields in your HTML form need to exactly match the script variables.
I'm assuming you're hosted on a Linux server which uses PHP code. Linux servers are also case sensitive, so upper case names are not the same as lower case names. It's usually best to use all lower case names in your form and script to avoid confusion.
Related Links:
Formm@ailer PHP from DB Masters
http://dbmasters.net/index.php?id=4
Tectite
http://www.tectite.com/formmailpage.php
If this is all a bit beyond your skill set, look at:
Wufoo.com (on-line form service)
http://wufoo.com/
Nancy O.

Missing (most, but not all) masters from managed project

I just found that I have a one project in my library where most of the raw master files (NEF) are missing. The project contains 160 photos, but only 14 masters are present and these are randomly distributed in the project (not sequential files). My entire library is managed (not referenced). All photos were imported at one time.
All the edited versions appear in the browser with no problem, including the "full" version and the Quick Preview ("P"). Oddly, when I press "M" to view the master image, it displays correctly with no adjustments, but the message "Master Image not Found" appears where it would normally say "Master Image." I only noticed the masters were missing when I tried to export a version and got the follwing message:
"Versions with unavailable master files cannot be exported. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again."
I searched in the library and vaults for original the filenames, but they do not exist in either location. If all the masters were missing, I would have concluded that I imported that project as a referenced file and later deleted the masters, but 14 of the 160 are still there.
I have two questions:
First, does anyone have any idea how the master files could be deleted so I can avoid this in the future? I am beginning to think this is simply a corruption of the database (not reassuring).
Second, is there any way to recover the versions that clearly exist in the project so I can reimport these as masters? While viewing them in the browser, I can zoom in to the original resolution on both the master and the edited version, but can't perform any further edits to the image (although I can add metadata). I'd be happy to retrieve a JPEG version, even though it appears I have lost the original raw file.
By the way, I have already performed all three library repair options on Aperture launch (Repair Permissions, Repair Database and Rebuild Database).
Thanks for any help,
Dave

From the OP's other thread:
I have three vaults (on three HDs) backing up one Aperture library (two onsite and one for offsite backup). Two of the vaults simultaneously became corrupted and I could no longer back up to them.
That plus the live library seems like 3 to me.
You wrote:
With managed-Masters one can back up a broken Library to a dozen perfect drives and all that results is a dozen identically broken Libraries.
Which is why backing up without verify the backup is a meaningless exercise. This goes for any backup method, How do you know your TM or CCC backup or simple copy of your masters is good?
If the Masters are backed up prior to Aperture the problem resolves (versions still lost).
And this is true also for managed libraries.
If (backed up) Referenced Masters are used and the Library becomes corrupt the problem resolves (versions still lost).
Not sure what you are trying to say here.
Proper use of Vaults also save Versions, but only prior to the time that the Library became corrupted - and we do not necessarily know the instant a Library becomes corrupt.
Proper use of vaults also saves masters if the library is managed. Ans see above for why we verify backups.
Look I agree that the masters need to be backed up in other than the vault (or TM or CCC or any one place). I use the Aperture backup dialog in the input window:
But once the masteres are backed-up referenced masters has no inherent saftey advantage over managed masters. In fact if all you do is backup before import and then place the masters on their own disk they are slightly less secure as they are only in two places.
In my operation I have my masters in three places, the import backup location the library and the vault I create from that library. In fact I have multiple vaults so in fact I have my masters in a minimum of 5 places. And its all fairly transparent.
So continue to sing the praise of referenced masters, for some and in some situations they are the way to go But from a security standpoint they have no advantage over managed masters.

Trying To Understand My Masters Situation

I have over 40,000 photos managed by Aperture. They include a mixture of my old iPhoto library and purely Aperture images. They are managed as referenced masters. I wish to move the photos to a new hard drive and have come to a puzzling issue which I need help understanding before proceed and perhaps make a mistake.
I thought I had imported the iPhoto library some time ago. It has been on a separate external drive (I will call it drive 1) and the Aperture masters are on another external drive (drive 2). Examining the files on drive 2 the iPhoto master files appear to be there. By using Get Info it is apparent the file sizes are correct for them being masters. This does indicate that I have imported the iPhoto Librarty at some point in the past.
When I selected all photos in Aperture >File >Relocate Masters I get a dialog box which informs me that one or more of the masters are unavailable.
So I connected drive 1 and repeated the process. This time I get a dialog telling me that if I relocate files in (drive1) that it may corrupt the iPhoto Library and asks oif I wish to relocate anyway. This indicates to me that Aperture has been using the iPhoto files as the masters even though there appear to be the same iPhoto photos also appearing with the rest of the Aperture masters on drive 2.
How do I determine the exact situation? Should I import the iPhoto library and somehow deal with the possibility of duplicates appearing on drive 2? Or4 should I just do the relocate masters process and not care about removing the iPhoto library from its current location - I don't use iPhoto aftr all?
Need some experienced feedback please
Aperture 3, Snow Leopard.

Thank you foir getting back to me but I already know which drives my photos are on. The iPhoto photo masters are on both drive one (in the iPhoto library) and a duplicate set of the same photos are on drive two along saide the more recent Aperture only masters.
Aperture seems to be connected to the Aperture only masters on drive 2 as it should but doesn't appear to be connected to the iPhoto masters on that drive. Instead it is connected to the originals still in the old iPhoto Library on drive 1.
I am uncertain as to whether it is best to (a) attempt to connect to the unconnected iPhoto masters on drive 1, (b) start again by importing the iPhoto library into Aperture making sure it copies the masters onto drive 2 & connect to them, or (c) Relocate masters leaving the existing structure intact. It means the old iPhoto library will be deleted in the process. I do not use iPhoto so that doesn't worry me but I am concerned that the library might get damaged on the way to the new location.
Since Aperture works fine with the current arrangement I lean toward choice (c) but wonder if choice (a) might save confusion in the furture.

Missing files "Unavailable master files cannot be relocated."

Please help
I have missing masters -
I had 25,000 referenced masters in a directory next to the aperture library and ran consolidate (thought it was successful) but now I see 1012 "Missing" Masters. When I do "Locate Referenced Files" Aperture says I do not have any referenced files. But if I go do a Finder search for files in the old referenced location they are all still out there - (and not in the Aperture Library Masters) (They all have the "Arrow/Triangle/exclamation mark" badge)
So my question is - can I connect the "Missing" to the existing file? Or do I have to delete all the "missing masters" and loose all the aperture metadata I have on them?
I have read all the treads I can find and have not seen the same issue -
"Locate Referenced Files" is not an option.
and if I run relocate on the files I get this error:
"Unavailable master files cannot be relocated.
The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again."
Any advice or help from the community would be very appreciated - this is my first post - hope it was intelligible
(living in a cave like you do)
John P.

Hi Frank,
Yes my aperture library and the "master" directory are right next to each other in ~/Pictures/. The history of this is as follows:
1. I copied my entire library and masters from my laptop to my iMac ( was out of room )
2. I verified everything was good - looked fine
3. Deleted my MacBook libraries.
4. Consolidated my library - in prep to clean up
5. Did a bunch of heavy cleaning efforts like merging projects within the library.
6. Ran a program to find duplicates - all it does is add keywords to suspect images.
7. Then I tried to relocate masters to a new directory and it errored out
8. Did a search for all "missing" (1000)
9. Started reading all the blogs - looking for answers
10. Ran all the repairs I could find
11. Posted this help request.
12 1/2 - now looking at the SQLlite blogs out there - but as you can see my situation is... Odd. I wish I could query the aperture DB directly and see what it is thinking....
* Sorry - everyone. I'll try to get back to the rest of the replies later tonight

"Unavailable Master Images Cannot be Relocated." error; Reconnect no help.

Seeking help with strange behavior in Aperture that elicited a shrug from the Genius Bar at the local Apple store. They suggested I post a question in this forum.
I'm using referenced files in Aperture. When trying to move some of them to a different location on the same drive, before I even get the dialog to select a location, I get the following message:
"Unavailable Master Images Cannot be Relocated. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again.".
So, as instructed, I go through the steps to reconnect the images. At least I think I do since Aperture doesn't complain. I can also select "Show in Finder" and the image is found from within Aperture without incident. In other words, the image is "found". Also, the image is not tagged as "offline".
After all of this, I get the same error: "Unavailable Master Images Cannot be Relocated. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again.".
So, I am a bit lost as to what to do since Aperture provides no further instructions other than to reconnect the images. I also get the same error when I try to consolidate the master into the Aperture DB.
I hope someone has encountered this situation or similar situation before and can provide a remedy. I want to avoid reimporting the images since I will lose all keywords, and adjustments. Painful.
Thanks,
Joe

Not sure if we're facing the same issue but here's what I did, avoiding the need to redo all the adjustments and add keywords again. Maybe your situation can be fixed in the same way?
I have all my masters stored outside Aperture Library in separate folders on my hard drive. I just don't trust having all the originals inside Aperture. Maybe it makes life more difficult, I don't know. Then I import the folder to an Aperture Project to work on the photos. Maybe 1 in 20 is a 5 star keeper.
I ran out of HD space on my MBP (Nikon D200 RAW files are 15 meg each) so I copied the folders on the HD to a backup HD and then deleted the original folders and their contents on the main HD.
Now I want to take the 5 star pictures and make a print or upload a photo. In Aperture the referenced file is still there but I can't export or make any adjustments because "the selected Master image is either offline or not found."
So I go to "File/Manage Referenced Files" and the File Path tells me what I have to create. It tells me the volume and path "[user]/Pictures/8-9-08 RS Shag Rock" for example, and it's in Red. So I create a new folder on the HD with that exact name. Then I go to the Back up HD, find the 8-9-08 RS Shag Rock folder, find the photo I want and drag it back into the new folder on the HD. The File Path turns black and we're back in business.
Next time after the BU, I'll leave the folders on the main HD and just delete the contents and save a step when I need to bring some back. Obviously if you have a lot of files to move, it would just be simpler to copy the whole BU HD folder, and delete the pics on the Main HD you don't need for now.\
Hope that helps.

Consolidation error: Unavailable master images cannot be consolidated

I'm trying to consolidate all of my referenced images into a managed library.
I did a global search for all referenced files, selected all, then clicked on 'Consolidate Masters'. This worked for all but 200 of my 4K images. I got the following error message at the beginning of consolidation:
"Unavailable master images cannot be consolidated. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again".
The problem is that each of my 200 remaining referenced images is, in fact online. Aperture knows exactly where it is. I've tried to 'reconnect' using Manage Referenced Files but that dialog confirms that Aperture knows where the file is and no 'reconnection' is possible because nothing is 'de-connected'.
While this is frustrating, the truly confusing thing is that I can simply run the Consolidate Masters command again and some more of the remaining images are consolidated. I'm now down to about 175 but it has taken about 5 iterations.
Does anyone have any idea what Aperture is trying to tell me or what I can do about it?
Thanks and take care,
Jeff

Just to add more to my confusion, I did another global search to get a count on my referenced and master images. I would expect that any image is either referenced or managed. If so, the total of referenced images plus managed should equal the total number of images. Same with offline and online.
Sadly, that's not the case for me.
In keeping with my above post, I was down to 144 Referenced files with 3,373 managed images. This should be a total of 3,517 total images. Unfortunately, when I remove all filters, I have 3,899 images in the library. I'm not sure where the other 382 images are.
I selected all referenced images and ran consolidate. I again had the 'reconnect' message. After running, there were now only 131 referenced images remaining. I assumed that I had consolidated 13 images (144 - 131) and that I would then have 13 more managed images. Unfortunately, I still had only 3,373 managed images, the same as before.
I suspect there is something fundamental about Aperture that I'm misunderstanding. Any ideas what it would be?
Thanks and take care,
Jeff

Masters Missing

OK, so now that I have gone through the dumb process of buying Aperture 3, after the trial ended, and deleting the trial version before making the purchase even though there is a "BUY" dialog in the trial version when you open it after it expires! Now all my masters appear to be missing one of the libraries. I can see the pics, I can open them, but non of my plugins work because supposedly there are no masters. I get Version Masters are missing errors. If I try to Consolidate or Relocate masters I get errors to the effect that Unavailable Master Files cannot be consolidated or relocated.
Whats the deal with this process thats already cost me about 5 hours of work?

If your master files are missing, you need to reattach them, not relocate.
Select the previews in the Browser and from the File menu select: Locate Referenced Files ..

Lost Masters

I have a number of photos in Aperture that seem to have lost their masters. I can view the versions that I created by working on the masters, yet I cannot export the versions, because Aperture tells me that the master is unavailable. I cannot find the master in my Vault either. I am storing my masters in the Aperture Library, which I think may have been a mistake.
Could the files have been disconnected from the Masters during my Leopard upgrade? Does anyone know how to make the masters available again? Thanks.

I hope I haven't misunderstood your situation, so here goes ...
To relocate your Library file, see the last post in this Luminous Landscape thread.
Your Masters can be physically separate from your Library file. At the time of import, you can select the options for "Store Files" that are other than "In the Aperture Library".
If your Masters are already in your Library, simply select right-click on the Project Name, one at a time, and select "Relocate Masters for Project ...".
If the images which you want to move out of the Aperture Library and into physical Folders live in different projects, select those images and then choose "Relocate Masters ..." from the File menu.

Consolodating Masters from another user

A while back I imported a couple of my iPhoto libraries into Aperture. More recently I have set up my computer with two users, a "work" users and a "personal" user. iPhoto is in my Personal users and Aperture is in my Work user (though I moved it from the Personal user where it originally resided).
Now I want to consolidate the photos from my iPhoto Library in my Aperture library. I do have one iPhoto library in my Work users, and "Consolodate Masters" worked fine for that one. But for the iPhoto libraries in my Personal users I get the error:
"*Unavailable master images cannot be consolidated.* The selected master images are either offline or not found. Please reconnect them and try again."
Obviously it does not know to look in the "Pictures" folder for my Personal user. How do I go about reconnecting them? My only thought is that I have to copy the files from my Personal user's Picture folder into my Work user's Picture folder, and reset the file permissions before consolidating. But I would rather not drag around tens of gigs of files if I don't have to, particularly because I only want to consolidate them so that I can delete most of those files from my Aperture library without impacting the originals in iPhoto.

Bump.
Anyone? Bueller? My whole photo organization project has been on the back burner for a month because I don't know how to to proceed any further with this problem.
Message was edited by: ArisaemaDracontium

Merging libraries duplicates masters.

This question is related to merging a library on an MBP with an iMac/MacPro base computer with a referenced library.
When you have managed masters on a MBP and merge the library back to your base computer, it copies the masters across to the base computer, but also leaves the original masters on the MBP. How do you remove the unwanted masters from the MBP?

I knew you'd say that
The reason I asked such a daft seeming question is this. The library on the MBP is a copy of the library on the iMac. It's kept up to date by merging as required. All the images on the MBP library show as offline masters as it's a referenced library, except for the masters in this particular project as they are managed. I want to delete the masters on the MBP but keep the previews available (as with all the other items in the MBP library.)
If I just put them in the trash and delete them, it'll delete the project as well.
I could relocate them then delete them, but the project would always show them as unavailable. When I next merge my library with the iMac, would it then change over to looking in the correct place?
Is my best option to delete the project then merge it back into the library from the iMac.

What happened to my masters? Please help!!!

I have worked so far with aperture on my MacBookPro 17 storing the masters and library on an external 500 Gb Lacie drive with no problems. I recently purchased a MacPro and decided to copy the entire folder with all of my photos from the Lacie to an internal disk on my MacPro.
So I plugged the Lacie on the MacPro and copy/paste the entire folder (library included).
I then installed aperture on the MacPro and assigned the library located on the new drive. At first when opening aperture it said masters were offline so I had to RELOCATE all the masters in all projects.
What happened next: I reconnected the Lacie on my MacBook Pro and opened aperture. All masters are unavailable! Opened the folder on the Lacie that I previously copied from and found that almost all images are missing. Reopened the folder on the MacPro drive and discovered that almost all of my images are duplicated! eg. image001 and image001 (1).
Anyone experienced something similar or just have an idea please help!
Thank you in advance for your support
Regards
Guido

I'm not sure I can help but I will ask a few questions to get it started.
1. You do have your masters, right?
2. When you say you are looking at the "folder" with all of your masters on the Lacie drive, do you mean you are looking at the contents of the Aperture library on that drive, using "show package contents", or are your images actually in a folder. If they are in a folder, they are referenced. That is an important distinction.
Sounds like Aperture wasn't aware of the images you copied to the Mac Pro and "relocated" the ones from the Lacie drive to the new location on the Mac Pro then deleted them from the Lacie drive. The deletion surprises me but that's what it looks like it did.
I think I'd try to start over. I would:
1) Back up that new folder on your Mac Pro just to be sure you don't lose your masters. Truly, don't skip this step.
2) Assuming that the masters are referenced (i.e., in a folder, not in the library), copy all of the masters (the originals, not the copies) back to where they were on the Lacie drive then make sure it works with your MacBook.
3) Delete everything from the folder on the Mac Pro.
4) I'll drop out from here because I have never moved a library with referenced images and someone else could probably give you better advice on how to do it right.

Unavailable Masters

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