Sunday, March 21, 2010

Image Capture - Import to Aperture - deadly bug

I don't remember Image Capture having an "Import to Aperture" and "Import to iPhoto" feature:






Is it new in 10.6?

IC has several advantages over native import. With an iPhone, for example, you can browse your images and choose which to import, and which to delete. There's no other way to mass delete iPhone images on OS X.

Now you can do that during a directed import, no need to save first to the desktop.

Update: Sh*t. Don't do this. From my Apple Discussion post of a few moments ago:
Image Capture allows one to specify Aperture as a target.

Nice feature, but Aperture can't handle video.

So what happens when the images you choose to import contain a video, and you've set IC to delete after import?

The videos are deleted, but not imported. If you were to import directly to Aperture they would be saved to the desktop by Aperture, but with this route they are deleted.

Lethal bug.
I experimented with FileJuicer and PhotoRescue recovery apps. FileJuicer didn't find ANY AVI files, and it ignored the preference settings I used. PhotoRescue found several of interest, but there's no thumbnail -- I can't tell if they're intact or not. There's no longer a MBG for PhotoRescue, so it would be a real gamble to try. We might just live without the videos.

Really nasty bug.

Update b: I am geek. Hear me roar. I knew from watching the image capture process that the images had been copied somewhere. So I went looking.

Spotlight couldn't find them, but DevonThink EasyFind is not so limited. I searched on ".AVI" and found the videos in the hidden folder where ImageCapture stores files prior to sending them elsewhere.

/private/tmp/Image Capture_Import.z2G5f9sM

They were all there. Fortunately I thought of this before this cache was emptied.

I love EasyFind.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! Thanks! You just saved a bunch of video's that I took today of my kids. Wish I read this about a month ago when I did the same thing

Unknown said...

I just got hit by this bug. This is a nasty one! Thanks for your post.. I was able to find several weeks worth of pictures and video.

Hans Gerwitz said...

OMG thank you… I just had Aperture fail to import due to lack of space, and Image Capture had already deleted them off the card. Thanks to this tip I saved 100s of pics.

JGF said...

You're very welcome Hans! Glad for the save. How did you ever find this post?

Levi Figueira said...

No luck here. I guess that when you remove your iPhone, those tmp files get deleted… :(

shedali said...

thank you thank you! It's a shame I only read this now, I've lost a whole bunch of vids but at least the ones today are safe....

Unknown said...

crap. just had this happen to me and lost a bunch of family vacation videos. I restarted so i've lost the cache. Interestingly, I've tested again on some different files with "delete after import" unchecked and Aperture was able to import videos just fine. But when this is checked, the videos don't import.

Anonymous said...

Hey has this been fixed in Aperture/Image Capture now? I have just tried to replicate the bug and can't.... cheers

Anonymous said...

The bug (or a very similar one) is very much alive and kicking :-(

Just bought an iPad and had used the camera connection kit to transfer pics straight onto it as I travelled the past couple of weeks.

All photos were viewable fine on iPad.

Connected to iMac and IC opened automatically and I told it to import them to iPhoto.

IC copied them all (800+) from the iPad to the iMac and then deleted them from the iPad (delete after import was checked), it then started importing them to iPhoto and crapped out after the first 20-30 with an "unrecognised file format"

I looked in the /private/tmp location and there are hundreds of 0kb .jpg files there - Gutted!

The only place the pictures have ever existed is the camera SD card (which has been over written many times during the trip as pictures were transfered to the iPad) and the iPad itself.

Does anyone know if the Genius bar can do low-level un-delete on iPads?

Anonymous said...

WOW! THANKS A MILLION. You saved some precious photos, and saved me a lot of time.

Pepe Álvarez Gales said...

Hi, I know this is an old thread but Im having that issue right now, I managed to find the Private/tmp folder and went through Terminal to create a "LostPhotos" folder where now I have all the files I lost (haven't disconected my phone yet) but all the files seem to be empty (Zero Kb) its like they are all RAW files or something, what should I do? HELP!

John Gordon said...

Sorry Pepe, I really don't know how to help.