Problems syncing photos with iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV and iPhoto 8.1
Posted on December 8, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager, iTunes | 4 Comments
Update: 3/30/10 According to Apple, this bug has been fixed with the iPhoto 8.1.2 update
A bug has recently cropped up in iPhoto (version 8.1 appears to be the first version with the bug, and the bug remains as of version 8.1.1) which can cause problems when attempting to sync your photos using iTunes to any device, such as an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. I’ve seen a whole bunch of reports of iPhoto Library Manager users encountering this bug, enough that I thought a blog post describing the problem and the solution would be helpful.
Symptoms
If you suffer from this bug, when you open iTunes and attempt to sync a device with your iPhoto library via iTunes, you’ll get an error reading “iTunes cannot sync photos to (whatever device you’re using) because of a problem on your computer. An unknown error occurred (-50)”.
When using iPhoto Library Manager to try to look at an affected library’s contents, you’ll get an error message reading “The album data file for this library is malformed. Encountered unknown ampersand-escape sequence at line X”.
Cause
The root cause of this problem is triggered by the following setup:
- You’ve created a custom slideshow in your iPhoto library
- You have used the “Music” button in iPhoto to assign a track from iTunes to play while the slideshow is being displayed
- The track you chose has an ampersand (&) character anywhere in the name of the song, the song’s artist name, or the song’s album name.
It’s actually the path to the song that’s relevant, but since iTunes organizes your music into subfolders based on these three fields, an ampersand existing in any one of them will result in the file’s path having an ampersand in it. An example is illustrated below, where a song by “Rob Thomas & Santana” is selected as the music for a slideshow
Solution
There are actually a couple different ways to work around this problem. I’ll list them here in order from simplest to most complicated.
- Delete the slideshow. Simple, but effective. But on the other hand, you lose your slideshow!
- Turn off music for the slideshow. Uncheck the “Play music during slideshow” checkbox and then click the “Apply” button to save your changes. But what if you still want to have music during your slideshow…?
- Choose a different song. Select a different song, one where no ampersand character occurs in either the song name, artist, or album title, then click “Apply”. But what if you really really want that specific song you spent hours and hours choosing from your vast music collection to find the perfect one?
- Remove all the ampersands. The only way to keep using the same song will be to remove any offending ampersands that occur in the path to the song file. For this, you’ll have to open up iTunes, find the song in question, and change the name, album, and/or artist to remove any ampersand characters in those fields. After you’ve done so, you’ll also need to go back into iPhoto and re-choose the song in the slideshow music settings, to make sure iPhoto is updated to point to the song’s new location.
One additional source of ampersands is if your entire media folder is located inside a folder or drive with an ampersand in the name. For example, if you store your iTunes media folder on an external hard drive and have named the drive “Music & Video”, then this will cause all your songs to have an ampersand character in their path. If this is the case, then you’ll need to rename the hard drive or folder to remove the ampersand.
Once you’ve done that, if you quit iPhoto, open up iTunes, and try syncing your device again, you should now be able to successfully sync your photos. If you still get an error, double check and make sure that the changes you made in iPhoto have “stuck” (click that “Apply” button!), and if you have multiple slideshows, that you’ve checked all of them for potential troublemaking music settings.
Snow Leopard compatibility
Posted on August 25, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, PlistEdit Pro, PowerTunes, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | Comments Off
Since Apple announced yesterday that they are releasing Snow Leopard on the 28th, I thought I’d post a quick note about the compatibility status of our products. I’ve run all of them through a thorough testing suite over the last few weeks to try and find any potential compatibility problems.
iPhoto Library Manager
Updated 9/16/09: A handful of users reported crashes when attempting to copy photos on Snow Leopard using iPhoto Library Manager 3.5.3. The cause of this bug has been found and fixed in iPhoto Library Manager 3.5.4.
PowerTunes
There are no known issues with Snow Leopard for the current version (1.1) of PowerTunes.
PlistEdit Pro
Only one issue was found in version 1.4.1 when running on Snow Leopard, but it was a fairly large one: plist files would not open in PlistEdit Pro when double clicking them from the Finder (the “Open” item in the File menu still worked properly). I just posted version 1.4.2 of PlistEdit Pro today, which fixes this problem, so if you encounter this issue, just use the “Check For Updates” menu item to update to 1.4.2.
I do my best to find any issues before an OS X update is released, but if you have any problems upon upgrading to Snow Leopard, please e-mail support@fatcatsoftware.com with a description of your problem, and we’ll try to get things figured out ASAP.
See iPhoto Library Manager in action at ScreenCastsOnline
Posted on August 18, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
ScreenCastsOnline.com is a website that features video tutorials on using various software on your Mac and instructions for performing handy tasks. This week, iPhoto Library Manager is included as part of a continuing series of video tutorials on how to manage your data among multiple Macs. The screencast shows you how to set things up so you can use one of your iPhoto libraries from multiple machines, and how to use iPhoto Library Manager to copy stuff back and forth between two or more computers. It’s a pretty slick video, and I highly recommend checking it out, along with the rest of the site (they have a very large catalog of videos already produced). There’s even a coupon code included with the screencast that will let you get 15% off a purchase of iPhoto Library Manager!
iPhoto Library Manager user stats
Posted on July 30, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under iPhoto Library Manager | Comments Off
Starting with version 3.2.5 of iPhoto Library Manager, I started using the extremely useful Sparkle framework to handle automatic downloading and installation of updates from within the application. When users opt-in to automatically checking for updates, they can also choose to submit anonymous profile data when checking. This sends basic information such as what type of machine they have, what version of iPLM they have, their version of OS X, their version of iPhoto, and so forth. This info gets collected in a database where, until now, it has pretty much just been collecting virtual dust. I finally decided it was time to do a little data analysis and see if there were any interesting trends I could discern from the data. I’m posting in hopes that both developers and users might find some of this info useful.
First, however a couple things to note about the data:
- Information is transmitted every time iPLM checks for an update. This check occurs when the user opens iPLM, but no more than once a day. This means that users that use the program more frequently will have a larger representation in the sampled data that users who only open iPLM on occasion. So, all the numbers you see here are based on number of checks, not necessarily the number of users. However, I feel that this approximation is good enough for sussing out general trends.
- Apparently, when I changed webhosts over from Dreamhost to Slicehost, I neglected to transfer the data that had been collected thus for over to the new server. D’oh! As a result, the data starts at the beginning of 2008, rather than several months beforehand.
- Due to a build configuration mixup with iPLM 3.5.2, profile information was not being sent correctly by that version. Since it was released in early June, that means the data for the last two months is pretty much worthless. So, the data presented will range from 01/2008 through 05/2009.
iPhoto adoption rates
The first thing I was curious about is how quickly users of iPLM update to a major new version of iPhoto when one is released by Apple. The data I have only covers one such release, iPhoto ‘09 (version 8.0), which was released in January 2009. Here is a graph of the usage rates of different versions of iPhoto by iPLM users:
As you can see, it only took about two months for iPhoto 8 users to surpass iPhoto 7 users. Granted, people who use iPLM are probably more advanced users and thus more likely to upgrade, but I still found this to be pretty impressive. And yes, there are still a few people out there using iPhoto 1 and 2. 
OS X adoption rates
Unfortunately, since my data doesn’t start until Jan. 2008, it doesn’t cover the release of Leopard, which came out in Oct. 2007, so this isn’t the most exciting graph in the world, but you can at least get a sense of how many people are using Leopard these days:
iPLM updates
I don’t know how useful this really is, but I figured it might be interesting to see how quickly people updated to a new version of iPLM once it was released.
So it looks like it typically takes about two months for ~80% people to get updated to a new version after it gets released. However, keep in mind that this is data that’s only coming from people with auto-updating enabled, so there’s no telling how many users there are out there that have it switched off and are still running old versions. Overall the adoption rate seems pretty good though.
Registration rates
iPLM’s method of enticing people to buy a full license for the program is to limit access to a handful of “power-user” features such as copying albums and merging libraries. People can use iPLM for basic stuff for free without any time limit, but they need to buy a copy if they want to be able to copy their photos around easily.
It has also been speculated by many in the Mac developer community that the same users who are likely to upgrade their version of OS X are more likely to purchase third party software. Let’s see what the numbers are for iPLM:
It’s not huge, but there is a noticeable increase in the percentage of registered users as you move up the OS X food chain. My next thought was how registration rates compared to the version of iPhoto being used:
Now that’s more like it! It looks like users of newer versions of iPhoto are much more likely to have a registered copy of iPLM than those using older versions of iPhoto. This makes some sense intuitively, since the more involved you are in taking and organizing your photos, it seems you would be more likely to need iPLM and to update to the latest version of iPhoto, but it’s always nice to have data back up your assumptions.
Purchase iPhoto Library Manager and get 25% off Duplicate Annihilator
Posted on May 15, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
I’d like to announce a promotion that I’m running along with Brattoo Propaganda Software, makers of Duplicate Annihilator. Duplicate Annihilator is a program designed to track down duplicate photos in your iPhoto library. It has several different algorithms for finding duplicates, and also several different options for what to do with duplicates that have been found (delete, move to the trash, mark with a keyword, etc.), and is very useful for trimming down your iPhoto library.
For a limited time, if you purchase a copy of iPhoto Library Manager, you will receive a coupon code for 25% off a purchase of Duplicate Annihilator. You can download Duplicate Annihilator for a free trial to try it out, and if you like it, you can use the coupon code you receive on the receipt page after purchasing iPhoto Library Manager to receive your 25% discount.
Update: 11/04/2009 The Duplicate Annihilator promotion has now ended, so any further purchases of iPhoto Library Manager will no longer include a coupon code
iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 released
Posted on May 5, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | Comments Off
At long last, iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 is now available! The main focus of this update is providing support for transferring the new Faces and Places data introduced in iPhoto ‘09. If you use the new version to copy photos from one library to another, and you have tagged faces in those photos, those face records will be recreated in the destination library. Similarly, if you have assigned places to photos or events that you’re copying, that data will now also be copied over along with the photos. This was probably the most complex new addition to iPhoto in quite some time, so updating iPhoto Library Manager has taken a good while longer than usual. However, with the help of some intrepid beta testers, the new version is now ready for general use.
You can use the “Check For Updates” menu item within the program to update to the new version, or you can download it here as well. This is a free update for anyone who’s already a registered user, so no additional purchase is necessary to update to the new version.
For those interested, here are the complete release notes for the new version:
iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 release notes
- Tagged faces are now transferred along with photos that are copied/merged between libraries in iPhoto ‘09
- Places data is now copied along with photos when performing a copy or a merge in iPhoto ‘09
- iPhoto Library Manager now creates its own log files and logs progress and error information as it copies photos (accessible from the Window menu)
- When using the “Import Photos” menu command, if the user selects an iPhoto library to import, we now perform a merge instead of treating the library like a plain folder
- Fixed a crash that could occur when copying photos on a PPC machine
- Fixed a bug where copying photos that were imported as aliases could result in an unneeded “modified” copy of the photo being created in the destination library
- A printable version of the help is now available at http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/Help/print/index.html
- Removed the preference setting for double clicking a library – double click now always opens the library in iPhoto, and a single click edits the library’s name
- When the user clicks the Cancel button, we now present a dialog to verify that they do in fact want to cancel the operation
- Removed the preference for relaunching iPhoto during a merge. This pref was for working around a bug in iPhoto 6, so we now just relaunch automatically when merging with iPhoto 6.
- Photos that were published to a MobileMe gallery are now always included in the main library during a merge, and not just in the gallery itself
- Fixed a problem where movies and original versions of photos would not be copied for some users
- Added a “selection” property to the Applescript dictionary so scripters can access the currently selected library
The last iPLM 3.5 beta (hopefully)
Posted on May 1, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | Comments Off
After finally tracking down and squishing the last couple major bugs this week, there are now no known bugs left for iPhoto Library Manager 3.5. I’m going to put up one last beta version, which you can download here, for people to try out over the weekend. I’ll be tying up a few loose ends over the weekend, and assuming nothing else major comes up, I’ll be aiming to do a final release early next week.
iPLM 3.5 getting close to release
Posted on April 13, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
The beta testing for iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 has been going well, although it’s taken a bit longer than I would have ideally liked it to, both due to issues in the program and “real life” delays. However, those who’ve tried it out have helped uncover a number of different bugs, and the number of bug reports has been steadily dwindling. Thanks to all who’ve provided reports on your experiences with the beta!
I’ve posted several new builds since the initial beta went out, and we’re now up to beta 12, which can be downloaded here. This fixes a couple persistent crashers from beta 5 onwards, along with several improvements in the photo copying process. If you’ve been running a previous beta and have encountered problems, I highly recommend downloading the new one.
There are still several minor items to be done before 3.5 can go final, but there are no more major changes to make, and currently no known issues. Of course, we’ll see if anything crops up this week as people have a chance to test things out, but I’m hopeful that the final release will be ready sometime next week. But, as always, nothing is written in stone, and I won’t be finalizing the release until I’m confident things have been sufficiently tested.
iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 public beta
Posted on March 11, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
Work on iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 has been progressing well, and things are now to the point where the major new features are up and running. However, given the relative complexity of the new features (especially transferring faces data between libraries), I’ve decided to do a (hopefully brief) public beta of iPLM 3.5, so I can get it tested out on a wide variety of setups and make sure to get all the kinks worked out.
The main additions are, of course, the ability to copy Places and Faces data from one library to another when copying photos under iPhoto ‘09. This includes both copying individual albums/events and merging libraries. There are also several other changes and bug fixes included in the release (full release notes are at the bottom of this post).
This is pre-release software – I’ve tested things as thoroughly as possible, and there are no known bugs in the beta, but there is still the possibility of issues popping up, especially when dealing with library setups I haven’t been able to test myself. I strongly recommend backing up your iPhoto libraries before doing any major photo copying.
So, if you have iPhoto ‘09 and want to try out copying photos between your libraries while keeping your Places and Faces intact, you can download the public beta here. Note that I haven’t yet done my full suite of tests on earlier versions of iPhoto, and there isn’t really much in the way of new features for those earlier versions, so if you haven’t upgraded to iPhoto ‘09, there’s probably not much point in downloading the beta.
The system requirements are the same as 3.4.5, and you still need a registered copy in order to perform advanced features such as photo copying and merging. I will be posting updates as bugs get reported and things get fixed – you can use the “Check For Updates” menu item from within the program to check for and install any new updates. If any issues arise, please contact support@fatcatsoftware.com.
Update 4/3/09: Things have been progressing well, and iPLM 3.5 is getting close to completion. There are still a couple issues that need working out, but nothing major at the moment. I’ve just posted a new beta, 3.5b5, that is now available for download. Due to a mistake in 3.5b4, the “Check For Updates” menu item will not detect this new version if you have 3.5b4 currently installed, so you will have to download it manually instead from the link above.
Changes in iPhoto Library Manager 3.5 public beta
- When the user clicks the Cancel button, we now present a dialog to verify that they do in fact want to cancel the operation
- Removed the preference for relaunching iPhoto during a merge. This pref was for working around a bug in iPhoto 6, so we now just relaunch automatically when merging with iPhoto 6.
- Removed the preference setting for double clicking a library – double click now always opens the library in iPhoto, and a single click renames the library
- iPhoto Library Manager now creates its own log file and logs progress and error information as it copies photos (accessible from the Window menu)
- Photos that were published to a MobileMe gallery are now always included in the main library during a merge, and not just in the gallery itself
- Fixed a problem where movies and original versions of photos would not be copied for some users
- Tagged faces are now transferred along with photos that are copied/merged between libraries in iPhoto ‘09
- Places data is now copied along with photos when performing a copy or a merge in iPhoto ‘09
- Added a “selection” property to the Applescript dictionary so scripters can access the currently selected library
iPLM 3.5 progress update
Posted on February 23, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 5 Comments
Just thought I’d make a quick post to give a progress update on iPhoto Library Manager 3.5. The update is going well, although it’s been slowed a bit by “real life” events such as moving into a new apartment last weekend, etc. At this point, support for Places is basically working, and I’m probably about halfway through getting Faces copying to work. I’m also going to be taking this opportunity to make a few other miscellaneous improvements and some rewriting of the help docs to fix some out of date information and such. So, the end of February goal probably isn’t going to happen, but hopefully it shouldn’t take too much longer than that.
My thanks in advance for everyone’s patience, I’d like to take my time and be thorough in testing to make sure the release is worth the wait.
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