ACDSee Pro 2 and 2.5

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Conversion and installation woes

(11 posts)

  • mrwul
    Member

    Okay, so ACDSee tells me an update is available, 2.5 built 333

    (Whilst knówing from the past that sofar every upgrade of ACDSee brought along a lot of problems
    -the time before the last time I had to return to the previous version of ACDSee.. - I made a backup
    of the present database - so I cud always return to the last working version)

    Download and start install.

    Everything okay, database location, drive mapping, etc.
    ACDSee - restarts after install ...

    Traditionally ACDSee has not noticed the installed previous version, so we start from scratch,
    meaning the startup folder where ACDSee is looking is \my pictures and all settings are gone.

    And of course the database is located somewhere on my C-drive, instead of looking
    on under F:\ACDSee Pro2\Database - where the previous version was located - or copy the
    'old' database to a new user defined location and start conversion from there.

    I close ACDSee - ACDSee starts 'retrieving the list of files that need to have ACDSee metadata embedded'...
    retrieve-retrieve-retrieve ... after 10 minutes or so "ACDSee encountered an error and will close down".

    Great...

    Relaunch - I start out to configure ACDSee (Tools/Options) first.
    Seems it is too complicated to write an option to export all settings, so, in case of any updates or
    re-installs, the settings cud be imported and users are up and running again. Best thing is that ACDSee
    shd simply take over the previous settings. After all, during set-up it found the location of the previous
    ACDSee and also the location of the database.

    Anyway, I went as far as upto the screen where I can select the database-location. There I thought
    that it would be best to just click on OK and relaunch ACDSee again. Else the changes might be too many...

    So, here we go: 'OK' and close.

    Hm... again ... "Retrieving the list of files... bla bla" Is this a repeating thing each time ACDSee is
    closing??
    This is gonna take too much time now, I'd like to do something else than waiting on ACDSee.

    So, this time, after a few minutes, cancel/close.

    Start ACDSee again - got to watch at the hourglass for say 5-6 minutes... this might as well take an hour!

    So: close ACDSee again.

    First I copied the ACDSee database from my C-drive to the F-drive (new folder for 2.5 database)

    Start ACDSee again. Continued with options - set databaselocation to the new folder on F.
    There ACDSee prompts the user to close and restarts, so let's do it.

    However... no..., no... not again "Retrieving the list of files...etc."!

    This time I let it go and went on to do something else in the living room.
    After 20 minutes I got back and ACDSee showed the "Embedded database info in files"-window.
    Questioning: "Do you want to embed the metadata?" Clicked on Yes and donot ask me this again.

    Progress bar shows up and ACDSee encountered a system error.

    Closed down ACDSee...

    Relaunch ACDSee.
    I am lucky!! It starts showing thumbnails and I think categories are there and also I see some notes.

    Have not gone thru all the categories, folders and notes though, I hope they are all there and
    ACDSee did not mess things up.

    Close ACDSee

    Oh NO !!!
    Retrieving...

    will un-install 2.5 and go back to 2.0 again.
    Also this time - the upgrade is a mess - what a waste of time...

    rgds
    ==
    [attachment=12:SnagIt_1...10.25.49.jpg][attachment=13:SnagIt_1...10.26.51.jpg]

    Posted On September 13, 2008 - 04:25 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    mrwul said:

    Hm... again ... "Retrieving the list of files... bla bla" Is this a repeating thing each time ACDSee is
    closing??

    Starting with 2.5, ACDSee is trying to embed all the db info (keywords, categories, ratings, etc) for your files into the files themselves. Once it has successfully done this for your existing files, it would not need to do so again except for files for which you have edited the db info - or files added to the catalog.

    ACDSee can be instructed to do this on exit by turning off via Tools->Options->Database->Display embed metadata reminder. You would still be able to explicitly embed metadata at any time via Database->Embed Database Information.

    As for the problems with crashing and db info not being converted properly, several others have reported similar things, and they are being worked on.

    Posted On September 13, 2008 - 01:14 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • kvl
    Member

    mrwul said:

    Okay, so ACDSee tells me an update is available, 2.5 built 333

    ...

    The same here. Normally a software upgrade will take about an hour.
    Not with ACDsee. This wil take days!
    Again the ACDsee productionteam failed to present an professional upgrade:

    1) New database on the wrong directory

    2) All connections between categories and images are gone
    while Ratings and Auto Catagories are still there

    3) All personal setups are gone

    4) All images have to be read in again if opening a directory.

    5) The "retrieving the list of files that need to have ACDSee metadata embedded"
    is not working on selected files or directories but on the complete contents of the
    database. How long will ik take to retrieve/write the information of 90,000 images?
    I gues it will be days!!!

    6) There is no decent readme.txt to explain the concequences of the upgrade.

    How hard can it be to do these things in a customerfriendly manner? Well, not so hard,
    if you are willing to take the customer serious en stop acting like a amateur:

    - Warn your customers in advance that there will be a database conversion.

    - New features are nice but must not be activated automaticly.
    First you have to give your customers a warning and a choice.

    - Survey the customers database and make a calculation for the time needed
    to do conversions.

    - Copy all the customer setups to the new program.

    - Stop using a antique databasesystem en start using MySQL.
    It is faster, better organised and customers can readout the database with other tools.
    Also your program will not run deadslow when there are to many catagories in the root.

    - Make sure your program keeps responding if it is doing long jobs.

    - Make new options available on a selection/directory level instead of the databaselevel.

    ACDsee still have some advanges but it's main advantage is the fact that converting to
    another system takes to long....

    Posted On September 14, 2008 - 01:48 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    kvl said:

    1) New database on the wrong directory

    Could you explain what you mean by this?

    2) All connections between categories and images are gone
    while Ratings and Auto Catagories are still there

    Is that using the latest build, 333? I understand there were some problems with db conversion in the first release - 332 - that affected some people. I personally didn't experience any problems with categories not being preserved with 332, but if you didn't try 333, maybe you should.

    4) All images have to be read in again if opening a directory.

    Could you provide more detail? While there are lots of problems being reported here, I haven't hear anyone else complain of this, and I certainly don't see that problem myself.

    5) The "retrieving the list of files that need to have ACDSee metadata embedded"
    is not working on selected files or directories but on the complete contents of the
    database. How long will ik take to retrieve/write the information of 90,000 images?
    I gues it will be days!!!

    Good question. Actually, it *does* operate on just the file whose metadat has been modifed since the last embed operation. But the first time you run it, that may mean *everything*. So I'd say, if you want to use the feature, definitely allocate a lot of time to let it run. But the good news is, once it's done, it's done - the data is there. It won't be necessary to re-write the info unless you change something, and then only those files will be modified.

    Posted On September 14, 2008 - 03:35 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Tankred
    Moderator

    Regarding...

    Point 1, he possibly means that after the so called upgrade, the Pro 2.5 database is in the default path and not the one where the database of Pro 2 was.
    Point 4, he possibly means that thumbnails have to be created, again, although they were already set up in the old database that has actually been converted.

    Posted On September 14, 2008 - 03:49 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • kvl
    Member

    Marc Sabatella said:

    Good question. Actually, it *does* operate on just the file whose metadat has been modifed since the last embed operation. But the first time you run it, that may mean *everything*. So I'd say, if you want to use the feature, definitely allocate a lot of time to let it run. But the good news is, once it's done, it's done - the data is there. It won't be necessary to re-write the info unless you change something, and then only those files will be modified.

    That's not good news. That means I cannot work for 1-3 days since all files have to be done
    in one run. Besides that the "Retrieving Files" dialog gives no information about the number of files
    already done. As mrwul already stated after the "Retrieving Files" dialog there will be another dialog
    wich needs attention. But when will that be? 1 hour, 1 day?????
    On top of that I just have to hope ACDsee will not encounter an error and have to close (in my opinion
    this means that ACDsee still has a problem with memorymanagement).

    P.S.: A little bit of good news: The "Retrieving Files" dialog needed 25 minutes. Maybe it rememberred
    information from the last (cancelled) run. The next dialog ("Embedding Database Information in Files")
    does have a indication of the number of files and the percentage (wauw!).
    Offcourse there is bad news: In 5 minutes it has done 200 files. So 90,000 files will still take 38 hours.
    Since I have to produce images almost every day I hope someone can tell how to do this???
    Thats why I said this function must work on selections of images....

    Posted On September 14, 2008 - 04:58 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    kvl said:

    If there are a lot of problems the developmenteam have done a bad job!
    Offcourse you don't see the problems. Last year you also saw no problems.

    Actually, I have seen problems, but not the specific ones I asked about, which is why I asked. Anyhow, my point wasn't to imply that problems don't exist. Just that more explanation would help. I still don't understand the thumbnail regeneration issue. Are you saying *every* time you enter a folder, it regenerates thumbs? Or just the first time after conversion of the db? If the latter, that would be expected if you didn't choose the option to regenerate them. Even if you did choose the option to convert thumbs, one of the problems I have seen is that IPTC & EXIF data, while imported, doesn't seem to be handled properly, resulting in missing IPTC and EXIF tabs for some files. And that does also regenerate thumbs. So it seems to me one is best off not bothering to choosing the option to convert thumbs/EXIF/IPTC - unless this has been fixed with 333. Which is is why I'm wondering *exactly* what kind of behavior you are seeing.

    Anyhow, after running Catalog Files on my machine to re-read the EXIF & IPTC info and rebuild thumbs, everything seems fine. So again, I'm wondering if your problems are ongoing or if they would be fixed by a catalog operation.

    That's not good news. That means I cannot work for 1-3 days since all files have to be done
    in one run.

    If you've got that many files, yeah. it will take a while. That's why I don't bother; I've turned it off sand simply continue using Batch Set Information as I always have.

    Since I have to produce images almost every day I hope someone can tell how to do this???
    Thats why I said this function must work on selections of images....

    I agree that would be better. I suppose if you *have* to run this operation but wish to do work in the meantime, you could try doing so in a separate window. But while ACDSee does support multiple program windows, it tends to not let you do much in one window if the other is involved in a long operation involving the db.

    Posted On September 14, 2008 - 11:04 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Tankred
    Moderator

    Marc Sabatella said:

    Are you saying *every* time you enter a folder, it regenerates thumbs? Or just the first time after conversion of the db? If the latter, that would be expected if you didn't choose the option to regenerate them.

    Where exactly do you see all this options you are referring to repeatedly? After the "upgrade" from Pro 2 to 2.5 I only have one button and that says "convert" and nothing else.

    Posted On September 15, 2008 - 12:53 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    Tankred said:

    Where exactly do you see all this options you are referring to repeatedly? After the "upgrade" from Pro 2 to 2.5 I only have one button and that says "convert" and nothing else.

    The option I am referirng to showed up during the upgrade when it offered to do the convert. But I see it if I try running the convert directly from 2.5. It's on the third screen of the wizard, after you select the version & folder. Two options: one to "Rebuild thumbnails, EXIF, and IPTC data for local files" and the other to "Optimize database files after convert". But while I *did* select this option, and did get my thumbs converted, and also got my EXIF and IPTC data at least partially converted because it was searchable, I still had to run Catalog Files to get ACDSee to show EXIF and IPTC tabs in the Properties window. So I would have been just as well off not having selected the option to convert thumbs/EXIF/IPTC. Perhaps 333 has fixed this; I don't know. But for me, on 332, it worked to convert then Catalog.

    Posted On September 15, 2008 - 04:01 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Tankred
    Moderator

    Thank you for the explanation, I will try this when I have the time to do some tests.

    Posted On September 15, 2008 - 04:32 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • mrwul
    Member

    As I wrote in my first message: over the years I went through a number of upgrades.
    Each upgrade brought along a lot of problems and complaints.
    After a number of builts the product finally seems to properly work.

    From my point of view the majority of problems are related to conversion and location of the database.

    1) Why is it that (at least in my experience) the upgrades donot import settings of the previous version?

    2) The setup of this new version definitely detects the previous version as it shows the folder names and database location...
    => Why is it that the new version persists in storing the database on C:\somewhere\\\ .. ??

    3) I have installed ACDSee on my 'F'-drive (Folder: F:\ACDSee Pro 2\),
    The database is located in F:\ACDSee Pro 2\Database\
    The database backups are located in a totally separate folder (F:\ACDSee-Backups\)

    From MY point of view... the ADCSee setup should:
    1. ask users whether the upgrade shd be installed into the same folder of the previous version;
    2. ask users to select current the database location (actually ACDSee shd detect the location itself);
    3. ask users to choose whether the new database shd be stored into the same folder as the previous one, or, alternatively, select a new database-location;
    4. ask users whether ACDSee shd import settings of previous version. If not, then new ACDSee will startup with default settings;
    5. ask users for the database backup folder, so future backups will be stored there as well, or create a new folder for backups;
    6. ask users whether ACDSee setup shd create backup first before installing the new version;
    (this might be skipped shd users already created a backup just befóre they started the setup, like me)
    7. based on the above skip the drivemapping window.

    brgds
    ==

    Posted On September 16, 2008 - 02:08 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

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