I just bought Aperture, as a last ditch attempt to try and get a good export of all of my "projects" (photos and videos in many of the projects) into folders named by event/project. I tried first using the Unified library (my source is originally iPhoto), and then brought them in via a complete library import.
What happens is this, when I select:
- All of the projects in the Projects view, I can only Export Library.
- If I go to Photos view, and select all, I can do the Export Versions and get all of the photos cleanly exported. BUT no videos are exported. All videos are MP4 and completely fine in iPhoto/Quicktime.
- I can set a filter in Photos to show only Video, and the files show up fine, but I seemingly have to export them separately which is not ideal. They should export embedded in the Project.
I've also tried iPhoto To Disk, but it has its own bugs and they have been unable to resolve them. (Double folders, some files don't export, etc.)
I've spent about $150 now trying to do the simplest thing, export about 5,000 photos and videos to:
2008-8-Baby photos
2009-9-Dog photos
etc.
(All events are named as above, so it's using project names vs EXIF dates)
Can anyone help? I can use iPhoto OR Aperture, but since I paid for Aperture and it's more flexible, I feel like I should get some use out of it 🙂
(At this point I just can't justify $140 for Lightroom, or commit to their CC to get it…)
Best Answer
While this doesn't answer your question precisely, this may help prevent frustration attempting to export all photos and all videos simultaneously.
Create a smart album in Aperture or in iPhoto setting conditions to find all the video like in the image below:
Its just not clear what video formats are compatible with Aperture or iPhoto, so adding every format you can think of to these conditions won't hurt anything.
Once the smart album is created, you can select all the videos in the album and export them in one step.
Alternatives
darktable
Alternatively, for an application more powerful than iPhoto, and holds its own against Lightroom or Aperture, I've discovered darktable, which
darktable can be installed manually, but is also maintained as a port using MacPorts, if you prefer to use package management. I've included step by step instructions for installing MacPorts and darktable below.
GIMP
An extremely powerful alternative to editing photos is using the GIMP. The GIMP can be installed manually, or built from source using MacPorts. I've included instructions below on how to install the GIMP using MacPorts. If you know Adobe Photoshop well, you may want to demo using GIMPshop, which very cleverly and conveniently reconstructs the look and feel of the GIMP to appear and behave nearly just like Photoshop... and its all for free.
MacPorts
MacPorts is a robust, stable, mature and easy to use package management solution, for OS X. It is modeled after FreeBSD's ports system, which has been adopted as the basis of NetBSD's pkgsrc. I highly recommend MacPorts.
install Xcode 5.1.1
MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_5.1.1.dmg is the most recent version for Mavericks (after registerring for a free developer account, and logging into developer.apple.com, that link will begin your xcode download). Once the download completes, lets just do it all in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app (don't be afraid of the terminal!):
install MacPorts
Get to know MacPorts
add MacPorts to your $PATH:
install darktable and the gimp
migrating from Aperture to darktable
That's really all there is to it. If you can follow a recipe to bake a cake, you can do this too. And you can keep all your ports updated to quite simply with:
MacPorts will not interfere with the use of OS X, Aperture, iPhoto, Lightroom, nor with any other software. It keeps everything it installs in its /opt directory (and any full gui applications it builds in /Applications/MacPorts/ ).
more free software available
searching macports for "photo" returns 17 more ports besides darktable, while searching for "image" returns a whopping 260 more ports of image utilities
If for whatever reason you are unsatisfied and/or need to remove MacPorts:
to completely uninstall MacPorts