It’s been a while since I last tried Aspect. It seems most of my original qualms have been addressed, so I’m trying again.
Forgive me, but I’m still confused by libraries. Specifically, where they should be created. I run a MacBook Air with 512GB, so most of my photos are on a big drive attached to a Mac Mini running as NAS (I assume the following questions apply to any NAS, though)
I tried creating an empty library on the NAS drive. Then I added a folder of images via “Add folder(s) to Library…”. My network is a bit slow, but after over an hour, Aspect had only processed 50 of 15,000 images. Everything about everything felt slow to the point of unusable. I’m not terribly impatient, but I don’t want to live like that .
So, I deleted the library and started over, putting an empty library on the laptop’s HD. Added a folder of photos that were on the laptop. Much faster.
I’ve been tinkering with adding the NAS as a device, etc, but before I get to far into it I’m hoping for some advice on how to approach this. I’ve read a bunch of posts and what documentation I could find, but I’m still not sure I understand it.
Assuming that running the library on the NAS is prohibitively slow, what are my options? I’d like to include all of my photos currently on the NAS, and eventually migrate everything into a nicely-organized Aspect library (or libraries?).
Should I continue using the library on the laptop HD and configuring sync settings? If I do that, how do I get the NAS photos into the library gradually? Is that even possible?
This is a lot slower than anything I’ve seen personally, although I remember there was a similar report quite a while back. I’ll see if I can find that tomorrow, because I currently don’t remember what the conclusion was. To possibly reproduce the issue locally, does your setup look roughly like this?
MacBook → Mounted network share → WiFi → Mac Mini → USB → External HDD
Does the network share use AFP or SMB, or maybe something else?
I’ve been tinkering with adding the NAS as a device, etc, but before I get to far into it I’m hoping for some advice on how to approach this.
To prepare for adding the NAS library instance, you’d first configure the synchronization settings:
Load the “laptop” library instance
Open the synchronization pane on the right side of the window, click the ⋮ next to the library instance entry and choose Configure…
Set the storage settings to MANUAL SELECTION or one of the LIMIT … modes, as appropriate
Depending on whether you’d use the network share, or the network synchronization of Aspect, the setup would then look roughly like this:
Using the network share:
4. Go to Library → Add New Device…, choose External Hard Drive or NAS and select a new folder on the network share
5. Switch to the “NAS” library instance under Library → Switch Active Library Instance
6. Use File → Add Folder(s) to Library… to add the existing photos to the NAS library instance
7. Switch back to the “laptop” library instance
Using network synchronization:
4. Start Aspect on the Mac Mini
5. On the MacBook, go to Library → Add New Device…, choose Another Device Running Aspect, click connect, enter the pairing code and finally click Send Invitation
6. Accept the invitation on the Mac Mini and choose a new library folder on the external drive
7. Also on the Mac Mini, use File → Add Folder(s) to Library… to add the existing photos to the NAS library instance
Since for the “network synchronization” option the existing photos will be scanned directly on the Mac Mini, it should be faster than going through the network share and it’s also a bit more flexible and robust regarding the network setup. The downside is that Aspect (which could also be the server version) needs to be running on the Mac Mini in order for the synchronization to work, and editing images that are not stored on the MacBook doesn’t currently work.
If I do that, how do I get the NAS photos into the library gradually? Is that even possible?
With the scanned folder approach, you can also choose individual sub folders bit-by-bit instead of selecting the root folder for all photos. The photos stay where they are in either case, getting them actually organized into the library folder is then always done gradually by creating events and explicitly moving them into the library folder.
Oh, that’s true, we’ve changed that recently (1.0.0-rc.22) when it became clear that having this in a single list is confusing with regards to the “library” vs “library instance” nomenclature that we are using. I’ll fix that tomorrow!
This is very helpful, thanks. I think I’m beginning to wrap my head around the way Aspect works.
I’ve been disenchanted with keeping most of my photos on the NAS, and this round with Aspect has me rethinking things, so I hope you don’t mind another question.
What if I were to attach a large HDD to the laptop for the photo archives and put the second Aspect library instance there instead of the NAS. I’ve avoided this because I like having access to everything even when the laptop isn’t docked. “Smart Previews” in Lightroom Classic are how I’ve handled this in the past, but wouldn’t a time-limited library on the laptop and a “keep everything” instance on an external HD work much the same?
Honestly, the laptop is docked 90% of the time anyway.
I could potentially even keep the NAS drive instance as a sort of backup, yes?
That should certainly work and it’s actually pretty much how I have set things up currently.
I’ve looked at past performance issues and realized that the runtime library that we are using still has an issue where logging a runtime error will freeze the program for about 400 ms on macOS and eventually leads to secondary errors that make working with the application impossible. I was somehow under the impression that this got solved a while ago by a change in the compiler, but now realized that only the part where stack traces were incomplete got fixed, and the freezing issue is still present.
So if you get a lot of lines starting with line "----------------" in the $TMPDIR/aspect-log.sdl file, that could be an explanation for the slow progress (Open Terminal, enter open $TMPDIR, press return and, from the Finder window that appears, open aspect-log.sdl with a text editor).
I’ll see if I can get a fix for the freezing issue into the next compiler release, or make a quick fix locally for the next Aspect release.
There is one other thing I didn’t realize earlier. When adding the initial scanned folder through the library creation dialog, we are doing a special light-weight scan to speed up the library creation process. In particular, file checksums will not be computed immediately, but later as part of the “Analyzing Images” activity. However, when adding scanned folders after the fact, the regular scanning process will be used, which computes checksums immediately and thus needs to transfer all file contents over the network during the scan.
In this case, a slow WiFi connection could actually result in a massive slowdown, so this might also be an explanation, depending on how large the folder is in terms of total gigabytes.
I think I have found the reason now. There have been a few recent crash reports where the application was force-quit by the user because it was so slow during the initial scan. Judging by the activity in the log, there have been a lot of edited images involved, and, with the very recent external editing improvements in 1.0.0-rc.28, those edited files are now retrospectively associated with their originals during the scan.
Since this process was never meant to work for large numbers of added files at once, I’ll probably just look for a way to disable the detection during the initial scan, as well as when adding new scanned folders.
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