Lightroom Import stalled

[DaveO]

Hi.

I am attempting to import my Lightroom catalog and I what I see is as per the attached image.  At step three there is a spinning circle, a message about files being missing and the list of root folders is blank.

It just sits there with the spinning circle and rescanning the root folders makes no difference.

Does this normally take a long time of this indicative of a problem?

[Bullock]

I'm in trial mode and have exactly the same problem
but when I end the 'spinning circle' process the LR-keywords appear in iMatch... unfortunately some are in the right hierarchy (like I put them in LR) but a lot are just added at the end of the categories list standing on their own
[and each new database I create is 'read only' after I start iMatch again... despite I'm still in my first days of trial... but that's another topic ;-)]

[Mario]

Adobe does not document the Lightroom catalog and there are many different versions of the catalog database produced by different versions of Lightroom. Adobe made many breaking changes over the years.
Adobe has of course no interest in making switching from Lightroom to other software easy,

I have created the Lr importer app based on catalogs I have analyzed. This does not mean that it will work with all catalog variants in use.
but you don't need the Lr importer app. The Lr importer app is just a convenience feature.

Just add the same folders you have in Lr to your IMatch database using the normal way (drag & drop from Windows Explorer or the "Add/Update folders button in the toolbar:



If all files have been added, you can run the Lr importer app to import your keyword list or collections. IMatch will automatically import all metadata written by Lr to your files.


2. If the Lr importer app reports that it cannot files linked in the catalog, the catalog is either corrupted or in a format not supported by the Lr import app yet.
Please upload your catalog somewhere (cloud space) and send me a link to support email address. I can then look at the catalog and see what is different and how to handle it possibly.

unfortunately some are in the right hierarchy (like I put them in LR) but a lot are just added at the end of the categories list standing on their own

IMatch fully supports Lr hierarchical keywords. But most likely Lr has produced a ouf-of-sync list of keywords in the hierarchical Lr keywords and the flat XMP/IPTC keywords. And this can cause issues sometimes when IMatch imports keywords. This also depends on whether or not you use a thesaurus and how the thesaurus is set up.

We need to see the keywords in one of your files which has these issues.
Upload the file somewhere and place a link in your reply.
Alternatively,

1. select the file in a file window and then go to Tools > ExifTool Command Processor.
2. Select the List Metadata Preset and run it
3. Select everything in the right panel, copy to the clipboard with Ctrl+C, paste into Windows Notepad and save as a text file. Attach this text file to your reply.

[Bullock]

Adobe does not document the Lightroom catalog and there are many different versions of the catalog database produced by different versions of Lightroom. Adobe made many breaking changes over the years.
Adobe has of course no interest in making switching from Lightroom to other software easy,

I have created the Lr importer app based on catalogs I have analyzed. This does not mean that it will work with all catalog variants in use.
but you don't need the Lr importer app. The Lr importer app is just a convenience feature.

thanks Mario for the fast and detailed answer!
DAM (in depth) is a new topic to me (besides some basic LR-keywording I didn't know much)... i'm doing some reading and testing the last days...
and yes I've too admit: I still use a very old LR-Version (3.6; just for keywording)

Just add the same folders you have in Lr to your IMatch database using the normal way (drag & drop from Windows Explorer or the "Add/Update folders button in the toolbar:



If all files have been added, you can run the Lr importer app to import your keyword list or collections. IMatch will automatically import all metadata written by Lr to your files.

I first tried to use the LR-import-App right from start, after that I did it the way you describe above but both times the list of root folders was blank and the 'keyword'-circle kept spinning for over an hour and I lost patience ;-) I got confused and I checked the forum and found DaveO's original posting ...
interesting thing: out of curiosity I just created a new LR-catalogue containing a tiny part of my old catalogue and LR shows the same behaviour as iMatch regarding the hierarchy: some is right, most not! strange (for me at least) but I think we don't need to dive deeper into this because at least the keywords appear in iMatch now... so I'm gonna rebuild the hierarchy (as I said some of it is right anyway) manually which will take some time because I have a lot of keywords but I take this as a training lesson to get used to iMatch [I'm bored of testing all the different software... I made my decision... it's a good one for you ;-)]

[Mario]

If you have a small catalog which produces the problem, please send it to my email via support email address.
Please include details about the actual folder layout on your machine you have used to create the catalog. This is not always easy to figure out from the strange way Adobe stores this in the catalog.

Having an actual catalog here should allow me to improve the Importer App for all users (especially the new users coming from Lr).
Thank you.

[DaveO]

Hi Mario,

I sent you an email with a link to a copy of my LR catalog.   I tried creating a small catalog with a few images in it and this would have imported OK and didn't show the problem I first reported so it isn't an issue with the version of LR I am using but the specific catalog.

I ran the LR find missing file option which did flag up some as missing which were files I exported from LR for uploading and then deleted.  I had mistakenly ticked the include in catalog box when exporting.  I removed these missing files from the LR catalog and LR flags up no missing files but the problem still persists.  I can optimize the LR catalog and it reports no errors.  LR shows 93 more files in the catalog than iMatch determines in the LR import.

I am currently importing my images manually so this is not urgent and I sent you the catalog in case you want to investigate further.

Dave

[Mario]

Yes, that would be great.
Lr does some pretty obscure things in its catalog when recording which files are where. I wonder how the initial developer (Adobe bought the product but did not develop it from scratch) has initially designed this to work...
Maybe it's just some flags or records I have never seen before. Such things happen.