Can't quit when using Metadata reminder

[Tahunga]

Just found a new, very irritating bug. I decided to use the "Display embed ACDSee metadata reminder" option. i.e. Preferences>General>Metadata> second option. Since I did this, each and every time when I try to close ACDSee Photostudio 6 the app asks me if I want to apply the metadata, which is what this option is all about. HOWEVER, when I say "Yes" the app ALWAYS applies all the metadata and then ends with a message telling me that it can not find one picture. It does not tell me which one. And the only solution is to "finish" the process. At that point in time I am looking at the standard "Manage" window. And when I go to the ACDSee Photo Studio 6 menu column the "Quit ACDSee Photo Studio 6" is ALWAYS greyed-out.

At this point the app works as it should, except I can not quit it. I successfully tried to change over to the View and to the Develop windows, but the "Quit ACDSee Photo Studio 6" is ALWAYS greyed-out. I also tried the short-cut Command-Q, but absolutely nothing happens. The only way to quit the application is to "Force Quit" it using the Activity Monitor.

[david@acd]

HI Tahunga,

Thank you for this report. May I ask some questions:
1) Which version of ACDSee Mac are you using? If you haven't already, please upgrade to the latest version (6.2.1681)
2) Would it be possible to see a screenshot of the message telling you it cannot find one picture?
3) In the Organize pane Special Items section, please select Embed Pending. Does this return the one item that is causing the problem?

Regards,
David

[Tahunga]

Hello David,

I am using ACDSee Photo Studio 6, Version 6.2.1681

Here is a picture of the error message telling me that the picture does not exist. https://www.dropbox.com/s/4oew7dx644efydb/2020-05-06_11-20-44-Doesn%27t%20exist.png?dl=0

I did some more tests on this as I thought it might be related to me Pentax RAW (PEF) pictures only. But that is not the case. The message also appears on some .png .psd .DNG and MP4 files, most of which are quite old (back from 2011). The latest pix are mostly PEF format and were taken on our trip to Newfoundland in 2018, so relatively new.

Here is a picture of one folder which contains a number of images with a Metadata pending icon https://www.dropbox.com/s/zkr8id62ovn0h4r/2020-05-06_11-04-54-Pending.png?dl=0

And here is a screen video which tries to attach the metadata to the images https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bplw6a07fo39ur/2020-05-06_11-09-03%20Embed%20MetaData.mp4?dl=0

...and as can be seen from this last screenshot, the pending icon is still there https://www.dropbox.com/s/1e96tu6idq1jh7g/2020-05-06_11-17-08%20Still%20Pending.png?dl=0

And if I go to the Embed Pending in the Organize pane Special Items section the images still have the pending icon. Of course doing this shows me virtually hundreds of images, mostly from previous years.
Hope this helps,

....Tahunga

[Tahunga]

David,
Forgot to tell you about the first issue I wrote in this bug report. Namely the "Display embed ACDSee metadata reminder" option. After all the above tests I decided to turn the "Display embed ACDSee metadata reminder" option back on. When I quit ACDSee I did get the metadata notice/question as I should. The app started to Embed MetaData in about 995 pictures. Here is the screenshot of the progress https://www.dropbox.com/s/htnx4ybt2s4lgpn/2020-05-06_11-49-46%20Embed%201000%20pix.png?dl=0

When it was nearly finished and only showed 1 Item left (see the screenshot) the process ended showing 11 images in the error report https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xasw834ila2png/2020-05-06_11-59-21-Nearly%20finished.png?dl=0

.....and when I tried to quit ACDSee I noticed that the QUIT command in the main menu was greyed out as mentioned in my first post. https://www.dropbox.com/s/afa18c77436oczg/2020-05-06_12-05-11-Busted.png?dl=0

And while ACDSee showed as if it was all working fine in the Activity Monitor, the only way to quit is to Force Quit the application https://www.dropbox.com/s/8jfmk0jpjnvaxow/2020-05-06_12-06-48-ForceQuit.png?dl=0

....and when I started up ACDSee again and ran the "Embed Pending Option in the Organize Window > Special Items > Embed Pending the result showed again 909 images requiring "Embed Pending" including a couple of the 11 pictures shown in the previously shown error message, except they do not seem to be the same pictures https://www.dropbox.com/s/6n0k8sv6entup48/2020-05-06_11-59-21-Different%20PIX.png?dl=0
So if the 909 pictures are not the same, why do I have 909 after I ran the embedding procedure and for a mere 11 out of the 995 pictures the process seemed to have worked. But obviously something is going really wrong with this.

.....Tahunga

[david@acd]

Hi Tahunga,

Thank you very much for the detailed info. I've reviewed this and have the following comments:

- I believe this issue is occurring because the photos you're working with are "orphans" (that is, the ACDSee database contains records of these photos, but the actual photos no longer exist at the original location on the filesystem (due to being moved, renamed, or deleted outside of ACDSee, or because they are on a non-local Volume (e.g. a removable drive) and that volume isn't currently connected to your Mac).

- You can confirm if an item is an "orphan" by double-clicking on its thumbnail. An "Item not Found" dialog will appear if it is.

- If the item can't be found on the filesystem, then embedding metadata will not work (since embedding means writing the metadata to the file itself).

- One way to resolve this is to recover the orphan. For example, if it's on a removable drive that is disconnected, reconnect that drive. If the orphan can't be recovered, another way to resolve this is to remove the orphan from the database (but note this will also remove any associated ACDSee metadata). You can remove one-by-one via the orphan dialog I just mentioned, or you can use the Tools > Optimize Database > Remove Orphans button to remove all orphans on a selected volume at once. I recommend backing up your database via the Tools > Back Up Database command before doing any database operations with important data.

- You mentioned the Quit command is disabled. I confirm this issue and it has been logged in our internal bug tracking system. You mentioned you need to force quit but I found there's a simpler workaround: you can just click the red button in the top-left corner of the app window to quit the app.

Regards,
David

[Tahunga]

Hi David,
I tried once more the following steps with the described results:

• Clicked on the "Embed Pending" option in the Organize window. 918 images were found, all showing an "embed pending" icon.
  • Double-clicked on about ten of these pictures. All of them opened as they should. i.e. none of the ones I clicked were orphans.
  • Highlighted all 918 images.
  • Right-clicked one of the highlighted images and selected Metadata>Embed ACDSee Metadata...
  • Received the message:
    • Do you want to embed the metadata?
    • When you organize your files ....
    • 918 files have been selected to embed metadata.
    • I did not highlight the "Write sidecar files for formats that do not support embedded XMP"
  • The process went through all 918 images and ended with an error message:
    • This file does not exist. No data was written.
    • When I opened the attachment to this message I got a list of 63 images. I noted three of these:
    • Went back to the database and searched for these three images
    • All of them had been re-named (by me) and therefore were considered orphans.
    • So I ran Tools>Optimize Database>Remove Orphans as you suggested.
• Next I clicked on the "Embed Pending" option in the Organize window once more. This time the app found 859 images!!!
  • Highlighted all 859 images.
  • Right-clicked one of the highlighted images and selected Metadata>Embed ACDSee Metadata...
  • Received the message:
    • Do you want to embed the metadata?
    • When you organize your files ....
    • 859 files have been selected to embed metadata.
    • Again I did not highlight the "Write sidecar files for formats that do not support embedded XMP?
  • The process went through all 859 images and ended with an error message:
    • This file does not exist. No data was written.
    • This time when I opened the attachment to this message I got a list of 5 images.
    • I noted these 5 images:
    • Went back to the database and searched for these images. All of them had been removed (by me). So they were indeed orphans again.
• And one more time I clicked on the "Embed Pending" option in the Organize window. And again, I got 859 images!!! Why so many, after I did run the Tools>Optimize Database>Remove Orphans??

So as always ..... you were right about the orphans. But it is still not clear to me:

• why I continue to have so many orphans, and
• I also wonder if all of this means that whenever one re-names an image the original file becomes an orphan. I noticed that when I rename images in bulk (e.g. a folder full of images) each image ends up with an Embed Pending icon.
  
  Thanks for all your tired-less help. It is appreciated.
  
  .....Tahunga

[david@acd]

Hi Tahunga,

Thank you for the update. As you probably saw, the Optimize Database command presents your database content grouped by volume (e.g. the local volume and each non-local volume are listed separately). The Remove Orphans command only removes the orphans from the selected volume, not all volumes at once. Is it possible your database still contains other orphans on other volumes (e.g. other removable drives or network shares)?

A second question: was your database created on a different machine than the one you're currently using?

Renaming a file from within ACDSee should never result in an orphan, because if you use ACDSee to rename a file, the database will get updated accordingly.

Regards,
David

[Tahunga]

Hi David,

1. I am fully aware that the "Optimize Database" command shows a list of many volumes. In fact, most of these volumes are not used by me for pictures. The only two volumes I use are my primary Picture Database (an external hard drive) and the computer's own hard drive, which I use just to test picture editing things. It is these two I optimize on a fairly regular basis.
2. YES, my database is created and mostly used when the hard drive containing the picture DB is attached to my iMac. But since it is a removable hard drive I once in a while attach it to my macBook Air. That works just fine, except now I see small issues with ACDSee.

.....Tahunga

[andynick]

I read this post with interest because I was getting the same error message: "this file does not exist. no data was written" when trying to embed metadata.
I also experienced the inability to quit the app whenever this happened.
I ran the "Embed Pending Option in the Organize Window > Special Items > Embed Pending, and I found that the first few images were all orphans. Once I deleted the orphans (one-by-one in this case) I was able to successfully embed the metadata in the remaining files, and the app is working normally again!
Thanks for the useful advice - it worked very well in my case.