Lightroom 3 import problems

[Bonnie Block]

I have beconme totally frustrated with Lightroom 3. The import dialog is for all practical purposes unusable for me. The program hangs badly when asked to import. It eventually switches screens --but will hang at any attempt to import--from anywhere. Forget even trying to get something off of a cf card.
It might eventually get the job done--but I do not have 24 hrs to wait to look at images from a card.
It is set exactly the same as LR 2.7 which runs very well on the same machine (8 gigs ram). The program itself, if you can get an image loaded works very well and is blazingly fast. Just no import--and that is a problem. :o
Has anyone eles here experienced this. It is becoming a major and well known topic on the Adobe LR forum--but there are no answers----and the few replies from Adobe are not encouraging. It seems to work fine for some and others not--but no rhyme or reason to why.
Bummer. :(

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Bonnie,

I used to copy from CF cards to the designated directory via Lightroom 2x. copying files used to take time. So these days, I directly connect the camera to the comp and copy files via canon utilities. Then open lightroom and import the files to catalogue. That is actually faster. I haven't tried to copy via lightroom 3 as I find doing it through the canon utilities route is faster. If you are using Canon, then you can follow my route.

The Lightroom 3 is much faster than the 2.7 version as far as importing into catalogue or other things. Batch processing is also better now. There are lot of presets and the conversions that I used to do, can be done faster by the presets with a few tweakings here and there.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

PS: Please remember at the end of the day each paying customer, is like a unacknowledged beta tester for the next version. ;)

[Bonnie Block]

Hi Bonnie,

I used to copy from CF cards to the designated directory via Lightroom 2x. copying files used to take time. So these days, I directly connect the camera to the comp and copy files via canon utilities. Then open lightroom and import the files to catalogue. That is actually faster. I haven't tried to copy via lightroom 3 as I find doing it through the canon utilities route is faster. If you are using Canon, then you can follow my route.

The Lightroom 3 is much faster than the 2.7 version as far as importing into catalogue or other things. Batch processing is also better now. There are lot of presets and the conversions that I used to do, can be done faster by the presets with a few tweakings here and there.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

PS: Please remember at the end of the day each paying customer, is like a unacknowledged beta tester for the next version. ;)

Hi Sabyasachi,
Thank you for your thoughts and information on this subject.
Unfortunately for me--I often have 5 or 6 full cards or up to 2-3 thousand images on a laptop that come in from a week long photo shoot. I do some event shooting. LR has always been my go to program for cataloging--and downloading off of the camera is inpractical for this purpose.

2.7 works very quickly on my machine--my only hangup for slowness is a wireless connection from my laptop---but it is not that slow.
LR 3 almost refuses to open the import dialog--it might take a couple of hours to even bring up the thumbnails --and I have yet to even get to the part of importing files. It cannot be used to import the files from a small card, even when they are already on the main hard drive of the computer. (forget other drives ;))
It is just dissapointing not to be able to use the new version and its capabilities and have to remain with LR2.7 after paying for the upgrade to LR3. Hopefully there will be a patch that will fix this problem for those of us that are
"stuck"
Thanks again for your comments and happy shooting!


off of the camera is not practical.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Bonnie,
Not sure about your problem. Even with my Lightroom 3, I have no issues either in importing or copying and importing.

I mentioned about copying from the card without lightroom, because I find it is faster. My average import size is 1000 plus still shots per day and video clips. The Mark IV shots as well as video clips are large and gobble up space and fills up the cards fast. Ofcourse, I shoot max 3-4 frames in a burst, if everything is right and hardly shoot 10fps. May be the UDMA cards that I use help in downloading faster. I guess, you need to check some settings somewhere as 2-3 thousand at one go won't be an issue.

Do you shutdown your laptop? I find if I just hibernate my laptop for a few days without shutdown, then lightroom 3 tends to behave erratically.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Bonnie Not at my end, LR has been working great !! Importing wise I would suggest going manual. I make folders with the year, place, date then copy from card to folder. After import will select all and make one to one previous for faster viewing... will take a while but just away from computer or do something else !

[Alan Lillich]

Bonnie,

Have you tried dragging the files off the CF card to disk and then having LR import in-place? I started doing this a while back for speed, and I had noticed problems in other apps (mainly Nikon Transfer) reading from the cards. This is my process:

1. Have at least 2, preferably 3, disks - main and backups.
2. On each disk create a trip folder, and within that a folder for each day.
3. Put the CF card in a good reader, UDMA and FireWire 800 in my case.
4. Drag the images from the card by hand to the main daily folder.
5. Drag the images by hand from the main disk to each of the backups.
6. At the same time start LR doing an in-place import from the main disk.
7. As each backup finishes reformat the cards in the camera.

For me, step 4 this way is a lot faster than having LR do the import from the card.
This does mean your initial import is using the ugly camera file names. In LR3 you can there is a Rename Photos command in the Library menu that gives you all of the same controls as the import dialog. I Select All in each daily folder and rename to the folder name plus a sequence number.

hope this helps,
Alan

[Bonnie Block]

Hi guys,
Thanks for your imput. This is an elusive problem and affects some users, and some not. There is a thread on the LR forum with over 37,000 views and close to 750 comments--with no resolve. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656635?tstart=0 People are not happy.
I don't have just an slow import problem--I cannot get the import dialog to come up and render any previews to even get started. It might take 15 minutes just to recognize the drives on my desktop system. Once it does--it will hang on the simplest of files with very few images.
It is period--unusable to me. LR 2.7 runs great--no problem with anything. And for that matter ACR, DPP or any other import program have no problem accessing the drives. I should not have to micky mouse my set up
just to preview images on a cf card or my C drive for that matter. It is not just a matter of being slow--it is unusable---
Dissapointing. :( They messed with something that doesn't jive with my system.

[Bonnie Block]

Bonnie,

Have you tried dragging the files off the CF card to disk and then having LR import in-place? I started doing this a while back for speed, and I had noticed problems in other apps (mainly Nikon Transfer) reading from the cards. This is my process:

1. Have at least 2, preferably 3, disks - main and backups.
2. On each disk create a trip folder, and within that a folder for each day.
3. Put the CF card in a good reader, UDMA and FireWire 800 in my case.
4. Drag the images from the card by hand to the main daily folder.
5. Drag the images by hand from the main disk to each of the backups.
6. At the same time start LR doing an in-place import from the main disk.
7. As each backup finishes reformat the cards in the camera.

For me, step 4 this way is a lot faster than having LR do the import from the card.
This does mean your initial import is using the ugly camera file names. In LR3 you can there is a Rename Photos command in the Library menu that gives you all of the same controls as the import dialog. I Select All in each daily folder and rename to the folder name plus a sequence number.

hope this helps,
Alan

Hi Alan,
Thanks for the suggestion. I will study this and see if it helps any. But, even bringing up the import dialog screen can be challenging. I can get my system drives to show up on the screen--but that is about as far as it will go---it hangs very quickly when you start to look at any files.