OK - I've got about 1,000 RAW pics from a Hawaiian vacation, from which I have used approximately 250 for a 37 minute slideshow I made in Aperture 3. The whole thing is beautifully synchronized to music - to the beat. Its great. I have two questions -
1) Is there a way I can de-link the slideshow from the masters (without exporting)? Originally I liked how it updated the show with any edits I made to the files, but now its screwing up the slideshow as I create new versions for post processing work and all these new versions end up in my slideshow as essentially duplicates.
2) The export file is huge, like 25 GB even at 720p, presumably because these are RAW files? Doesn't seem like a 37min video should be that large. Is there a way to reduce the export size without converting all these files to JPEG and doing the whole slideshow over again?
Any advice would be much appreciated. Thx!
Bill,
1) Not sure why you’re seeing duplicates in the slideshow. When you make edits for other output, are you first creating a new version of that image? If you only have one version and you edit that one, then yes that change will be reflected in the slideshow. However if you create a new version first, it won’t.
Here’s some things to keep in mind…
Presumably you’re stacking new versions automatically (menu Aperture > Preferences > General > Automatically stack new versions), because if you DON’T have that enabled and you ARE creating new versions whenever you go to make another edit, something really weird is happening.
So again presumably you’re creating a new version of an image, and editing that. And for some reason you’re seeing that show up in your slideshow. When you stack versions, whichever is the “Stack Pick” will show up wherever that stack is used, unless you assign an Album Pick, which you can do in the slideshow (which is, technically, an album itself). So you may want to define all the images in the slideshow as Album Picks, that way no matter how you arrange your stacks outside of the slideshow, it won’t change the chosen images for the slideshow itself.
If you are unclear on the concept of Picks, read this entry I wrote last year: “Aperture 3 Stacks, Picks and Album Picks”.
Since you have so many slides, it’s conceivable that you’d edit an image at some point forgetting that it was used in your slideshow, and risk messing up your show. Therefore I recommend that in addition to marking all images in the slideshow as Album Picks, further identify them so you can see that they are in use when looking at them elsewhere. I would either assign a keyword like “DON’T TOUCH—in a slideshow!” or apply a color label to them.
2) What settings are you using on export; just the default “HD 720p” preset? That does sound awfully big. It has nothing to do with the RAW files; the export doesn’t contain the photos themselves, it’s a video render at the chosen resolution and compression.
Open the 25GB file in QuickTime, and get info (command-i) and copy the settings into a reply for me. I am interested in the Format, the FPS and the Data Rate.
cheers,
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks for the reply Joe. Response below….
1) I was not automatically stacking new versions, and when I would create a new version from master, the new version also appeared in my slideshow. I don’t usually use stacks because I don’t like how only the stack pick shows up in the mac OS when adding or searching for pictures, but perhaps that’s foolish as I see now that when I automatically stack new versions, while all images in the stack appear in the slideshow, only the stack pick is actually active. So to clarify - I should stack versions unless I want one of these versions to also appear in the slideshow, in which case I just unstack it?
2) Regarding the export size, I’ve never actually been able to complete the export because I only have 16GB of HD space left. When I click export and select HD 720p from the drop down list, it says the file size will only be 1.4GB. When I try to export it, I get a message saying I need 19.5GB of free HD space to complete the export and only 1GB are available. Free up disk space and try again.
Bill,
1) That’s… really odd. But I just tested it and I see what you’re seeing. I think that’s a bug. When you create a new version, and you’re not in the slideshow, I don’t think you shouldn’t be seeing that new version show up in there. It actually happens with Albums, too. That’s with auto-stack disabled.
However, with auto-stack enabled, the second image will also show up — but it won’t play because only the primary image in a stack will show up.
Which you already figured out — so yes, you’re correct. Stack ‘em so they don’t show up, unstack ‘em if you want them to.
2) ah, dude you need more free space. Go forth and delete!! I highly recommend the totally awesome and totally free OmniDiskSweeper. This makes it super easy to see what’s hogging disk space and delete files you don’t need. You should, as a general rule, keep at least 10% free; 15% to 20% is better. So unless you’re working on a 160GB drive, you should have (a lot) more space available. Your overall system will feel much snappier once you’ve cleared at least 10% space (the OS uses that for virtual memory, of which OS X uses a lot of).
The final file will likely be closer to that 1.4GB that it says it’ll be. I’m thinking that it needs the space for an initial, uncompressed export which it will then compress for you (all automatically). But it needs the space to work.
@PhotoJoseph
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1) Hopefully that bug will get corrected in a new version, because its pretty lame. This is a decent short term workaround, but honestly it makes me want to just use imovie.
2) I am working from a 160GB hard drive, prob a 3 year old macbook. I’m just getting into “enthusiast” level photography and have been using Aperture for about 4 months. Since I started shooting RAW my hard drive has been obliterated. I’m at a decision point on workflow, storage, backup - and am leaning towards an external HD to store the RAW masters end RAW edited files I’m no longer actively working on, then maybe figure out how to clone the drive as a backup. I’ll also check out OmniDiskSweeper.
I just purchased your $35 Aperture 3 video tutorial, so I’m hoping to gather some workflow, storage, and backup tips from that. Thanks for your help…..you’ve got a great site going here.
Bill,
1) It may not be a bug, but an unfortunate necessity because of how images are paired together. The ability to not stack on new versions is actually a new feature; it used to be that they were always stacked, and you had to manually disconnect them. Time will tell.
2) wow pretty good guess on my part then on the 160GB drive ;-) OK, so your options now are to either export your video to an external drive with sufficient space, of course clear up space on your existing drive, or get a bigger internal HD. Moving Masters to an external drive is the easiest solution, and since you can selectively move just the ones you’re no longer actively working with, that makes for a pretty good workflow. You can still see your photos in Aperture that way, and even drag them into emails (for example) if you have Previews turned on, but you just can’t edit them unless you plug back into your hard drive. But again for older projects, that’s usually a very acceptable solution. Then that should free up the space to keep your most current/active projects online (meaning on that hard drive) and available for editing.
@PhotoJoseph
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