Aperture Import stops at 1004 files

[softwarereg]

Hi - I've just purchased Lightroom classic, and am new to the tool, and am attempting to use the built in Aperture import plugin to import my Aperture library. However, everytime I get to 1004 files, the import hangs. I've tried 3 different libraries, and each one hangs at 1004 files, without any apparent errors. I can't find anything that indicates there is a limit to how many files you can import, but it's odd that it keep stopping at 1004. Does anyone know if there is anything I can do (a setting somewhere) etc to import the full library into Lightroom. I really want to switch to this new tool, especially since Aperture isn't supported any longer, but I'm stuck if I can't figure out how to get the images into Lightroom to begin with? Thanks!

I'm using Lightroom Classic on iMac running High Sierra.

UPDATE: I tried importing 2 smaller (sub 1000 files) Aperture Libraries into Lightroom Classic... it once again failed with the total count reached 1003 this time. First library contained 485 files, second contained 771 and failed at 518). Once again, no errors logged.

Message was edited by: software reg

[vscharpenphoto]

I have almost the same trouble using Lightroom Classic CC 7.1 on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.2 (17C88).

The only difference, I tried 2 different Apertures libraries, but both stuck at 2024 images.

[andréh11364517]

Hi there,

I have experienced a similar problem and noticed that when my import stalls (at 1527 imported images), my system memory (12 GB) is entirely used up by Lightroom. When I end the stalled import, shortly thereafter I get a system message that I am running out of system memory and need to close unused programs.

When I tried with smaller libraries, it would work, but eventually I ran into the same problem with those, too.

So I think that the Lightroom version I'm using is having a memory leak issue.

I'm on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.2 running Lightroom Classic CC 7.1. !

[john beardsworth · Accepted solution]

Suggestion for both of you. Remember that the Adobe developers had to figure out Aperture's structure - Apple didn't help - and they may not have seen all the possible problems. If you can't identify unusual images or odd metadata that are breaking the import process, your best way forward would be to use the old manual way to migrate which people used before Adobe introduced its import plugin.

[andréh11364517]

Thank you, John!

I've been avoiding to do this manually. I guess I will migrate my aperture library to Apple's Photos do have continuing access after Aperture's demise and start a new library in Lightroom.

[MontanaKarl]

I'm in the same boat - froze after importing 1002 files / 5% with Lightroom Classic.   In this similar thread, an Adobe rep suggests downloading / importing with Lightroom 2015 CC (for which the import plugin was developed) - and then convert the catalog to Classic. 

Import from Aperture stalls at 5%

Seems like he/they would be more direct and just say "the import plug-in doesn't work with Classic", or Classif has a memory leak we haven't fixed yet...

I did a lot of reading / experimentation with exporting folders for import vs using the plugin and I found that the plugin produced superior and consistent metadata across all images - original and full size version previews (be sure to regenerate all previews for import) - as well as retained all Aperture organization.

I deleted my LR 2015 when I installed Classic.   Now to see if I can find it or a download to see if that really is a solution as it was for the fellow in the linked thread...

[MontanaKarl]

I can confirm that import zipped through my 19,000 image Aperture library using Lightroom 2015 CC.   Then opened catalog in Lightroom Classic and it updated.  All seems good.

Only issue I have to look at tomorrow was 53 images that did not import - but were copied to a "NotImported" folder inside the LightroomMasters folder.    Predominant file format for those was BMP and GIF - very old scans / captures - and a handful of JPG and TIF files.  "Unsupported asset type" - so something about the formats must be too ancient.

It's a shame that Adobe delivers the Aperture Import plug-in with Lightroom Classic, yet it doesn't work properly there.  But, at least 2015 is an easy download and provides a transition workaround.

[thebebinator]

Yes, this worked for me too. I was getting hung up after a thousand or so photos. Installing the older version (2015) from the creative cloud app worked fine on my 14k photo aperture library. Thanks so much.

Note, you can install the old version by clicking the little dropdown arrow beside the current version in the creative cloud application.

[Steve-L]

This was also my exact issue doing import from Aperture to Lightroom Classic on latest version 8.3. I have 19,000 photos to import and after 1,514 imports it ran my system out of memory and stalled.

After installing LR 2015 CC alongside the current version (kudos to Adobe at least for allowing this to happen) I used the Aperture Import plug-in and it's now happily chugging along much faster and is about 35% done with no problems.

Amazed that Adobe has not addressed this problem in Classic version 8.x. With Apple announcing that Aperture will not even RUN in next MacOS version I would imagine there would be thousands of hold-outs like me that are finally being forced to move old content out of Aperture.

Even worse is that my actual intent is to get my Aperture content to the Lightroom cloud version (confusingly just renamed last week to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom!). Sadly there is not direct migration so I have to use LR Classic to migrate before doing another migration from LR Classic to the Cloud Lightroom. Then THIS issue with the importer being a memory hog crops up!

So now my path is Aperture > Lightroom 2015 CC > Lightroom Classic > Lightroom Photoshop (Cloud).

Whew!

[John Willis]

How did you get the Lightroom 2015 CC.  It doesn't show up in the 'other versions' diaglog?

[John Willis]

Just an add-on.  I had to get on the phone with Aperture support and then after a complete explanation they gave me access to the LR 2015 download.  And that worked fine for my 85000 Aperture images, which I then merged with my current version of LR.

[shonza]

I realise this is a long time ago - but can I just check whether there's any other solution other than LR 2015? I am downloading it and will try it but I wanted to check as this is old (and I am REALLY a laggard in moving over, but . . . long story)

This is my issue: I am having huge problems with this importer. I am running Lightroom Classic 8.4 on a MBP with1.7 GHz Intel Core i7, and 8GB memory, lots of disk space, running Mojave (10.14.6).

I had all sorts of problems with Aperture prepping the library for the move, presumably because Aperture / Mojave is no longer supported or compatible with Mojave, I don't know. I cleaned out all the previews except those for adjusted images, made full size previews for those (1,800 adjusted images in a library of 25,000) - at first I was able to break up the library into a series of smaller libraries each of which imported fine into LR, so I learnt the ropes of the importer.
But the final section of the library (which for some reason Aperture won't let me break down (when I save a project as a new library it somehow includes all the images anyway) is  20,000+ images and I seem to have to import that in one go. And every time I run the importer it gets to somewhere in the 700-1,000 image point and crashes with memory issues. It shows that LR is using 50+gb of memory. I can run activity monitor and see the memory usage climbing up and when it hits about 47-50 it crashes and there's nothing I can do

As a consequence I am restarting LR and restarting the import and it picks up where it left off and seems to be working towards completion, but it will take me something like 25-30 imports of 850 or so each to get this done. and each one takes about 10 mins to start because just starting the importer triggers the "checking aperture library" process which takes a good 5 mins, and this happens three times while choosing the various settings needed to run the importer (I am importing previews for adjusted images, I am leaving images as referenced in current location, and I am moving the previews into the same folder).

Is there ANY solution to using the importer properly

[BobShawAU]

For everything above regarding checking all images are referenced I did this using Smart Albums for "Missing"" and "Managed" images. The big one though is Keywords. Lightroom does not accept Keywords with punctuation or nested keywords.

The solution I found after several fails was that you MUST go through your in use Keywords in Aperture while it is still working and remove any keywords that have punctution marks, are duplicates or are nested inside other folders. Having done that it is now chugging away and after several days is at 34% on 106,000 images. 

In Aperture, create a new Smart Album called Keywords. Click on the little inspector at the right to define the Smart Album. Click Keyword and you will see all the in use Keywords. Click one or more keywords that has punctuation, is a duplicate or is nested as indicated by parentheses and then go through them as above using the Edit Keyword menu at the bottom of the Keyword HUD. Assign all visible images to the same keyword so that all of the Keyword in the right hand column of the editor are unique and un-nested. You don't need to worry about un-used keywords. If you delete a keyword it will ask you first if images are assigned to it. 

Once you are done I used the settings in the image attached. Good Luck. Bob

[kpoulton]

LR Classic version 8.4.1 (Sep 2019) seems to have solved the problem. 

8.4 was consistenly failing for me at about 1000 photos, showing 2042 threads and ~12,500 ports in Activity Monitor (but only 2 GB memory).  8.4.1 is now up to 1700 photos imported with only 50 threads open.

I had to wheedle Adobe support chat to get it since they only support versions 10 and 11 now.  They gave me a URL to download the .dmg installer. It works on my macOS 10.12.6.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for putting together the pieces of this puzzle.