PSE7- bad conversions of Slideshows

[larrymcg]

I recently posted about many issues with PSE7 versus my previous PSE5 version. You can read all the gory details at
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48450

But now I'd like to start discussing individual issues.

I have 12 slide shows that I created with PSE5. All 12 show up in the PSE7 organizer but one of them, a slide show with only one slide, does not show up when I do a FIND>By Media Type...>Projects. However, it exists in the organizer and double clicking it displays it as a slide show with one slide.

That's kind of weird, but the really nasty problem is that only 2 of the other 11 slide shows have all the correct photos. Most of the other 9 have one or two photos where the image is the wrong image but it has the correct caption. And a couple of them (including one with over 200 photos) have every photo displayed as totally black but with the correct captions.

Something nasty went wrong in the catalog conversion because I can run the PSE5 Organizer and they are ALL correct.

PSE7 claims there are no disconnected photos and that the PSE7 catalog does not require repairing.

Mostly I don't really need the slideshows any more but it gives me the willies that there may be other issues that will be much more serious.

Is this a common issue with slide shows when moving from an earlier version to V7?

--Larry

Added info: I should have noted that this is after completely uninstalling and reinstalling PSE7 and AIR and Inspiration Browser (whatever that is).

[larrymcg]

Things get weirder and weirder. Today there are 4 slide shows that have the correct slides. Yesterday it was only two. And in some of the others, the slides that are wrong are different ones than yesterday. It's like random!!! And very unsettling. What other random changes are going on? If this keeps up PSE7 is going to be outta here!
--Larry

[johnrellis]

This is just an educated guess, but perhaps you're encountered one of the known problems with PSE 6/7's handling of drives, which can result in intermittently flaky behavior. Download and run the utility "psedbtool":

http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Downloading,_Installing,_and

This will quickly identify any such problems in your catalog.

[larrymcg]

Ran the psedbtool. It was completely happy - no errors, etc.
I have two internal hard drives. "C" has about 4300 files (as psedbtool counts them) and "F" with somewhat less than 900. None missing or offline.
--Larry

[johnrellis]

Hmm, I don't recall anyone else reporting problems with converting PSE 5 slide shows to PSE 6/7 or reporting such flakiness with PSE 6/7 slide shows made from scratch.

If you copy and paste the full output of "psedbtool" here, I can check another suspicion having to do with the way PSE 7 converts catalogs using "relative" filenames. If you had encountered that problem, I think it's likely you'd be seeing other issues as well (such as not being able to save in a version set), but it's worth a quick check.


And a couple of them (including one with over 200 photos) have every photo displayed as totally black but with the correct captions.

That usually indicates one of two things:

- The photo is "missing", e.g. because you moved it using Windows Explorer. But in that case, PSE would prompt you to reconnect the file before letting you open the slide show project.

- The internal id of the photo recorded in the slide show’s project file is incorrect. This can occur because of conversion problems, and is probably what you’re seeing.

Open the slide show with 200 black photos, and click on the (black) preview of one of the photos. On the right, you should see the filename of the photo (click to see full-size):

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/14aPQ3Sz08gpf86oAL0wEyHyWyLS4I1_thumb.png (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=14aPQ3Sz08gpf86oAL0wEyHyWyLS4I1)

Does a filename appear, and does it look correct? Search for that filename using Find > By Filename to see if it is in the Organizer and looks like the right photo. What happens when you click More Editing to invoke the full Editor on it?

[larrymcg]

If you copy and paste the full output of "psedbtool" here...

OK, here is the full output:

psedbtool version 1.06
Opening catalog C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs\My Catalog\catalog.pse7db
Photoshop Elements version: 7
Total files : 5168
Total files missing : 0
Total files offline : 0

PSE Volume Table
----------------------
Path used by PSE : F:
Status : online
Total files : 834
Total files missing : 0
Description : MCG
Serial : 58AB-15F8
Drive_path_if_builtin: F:
Type : builtin_drive
Id : 34347
----------------------

Path used by PSE : C:
Status : online
Total files : 4322
Total files missing : 0
Description : LMM
Serial : CC51-55A6
Drive_path_if_builtin: C:
Type : builtin_drive
Id : 2842
----------------------

Path used by PSE : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs\My Catalog
Status : online
Total files : 12
Total files missing : 0
Description : database relative
Serial : amoc:database_relative_volume
Drive_path_if_builtin:
Type : database_relative_drive
Id : 2
----------------------

Windows Drives
Drive Type Serial Path
A: removable_drive 0000-0000
C: builtin_drive CC51-55A6
D: readonly_drive 0000-0000
F: builtin_drive 58AB-15F8
G: removable_drive 0000-0000
H: readonly_drive 0000-0000

[larrymcg]

For a black photo in a slideshow, black except for the caption text, no filename is shown and the editing stuff is greyed out.
For a photo which is the wrong photo, but has the correct caption text, the filename corresponds to the displayed photo and if I go to edit it pulls up that photo.

By the way, all of the slideshows are still fine in PSE5.

I have no problems saving in version sets in PSE7.

--Larry

[johnrellis]

Path used by PSE : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs\My Catalog
Status : online
Total files : 12
Total files missing : 0
Description : database relative
Serial : amoc:database_relative_volume
Drive_path_if_builtin:
Type : database_relative_drive
Id : 2

This "database relative" volume was what I was interested in seeing, but since it only has 12 files on it (probably the music samples that PSE imports by default into a new catalog), it's not the cause of your problems. Adobe introduced "database relative" volumes in PSE 7 to fix a bug in PSE 6 that screwed up slide shows if you moved or renamed your catalog using File > Catalog. But in the process of fixing that bug they introduced more serious ones relating to backup/restore.

[johnrellis]

For a black photo in a slideshow, black except for the caption text, no filename is shown and the editing stuff is greyed out. For a photo which is the wrong photo, but has the correct caption text, the filename corresponds to the displayed photo and if I go to edit it pulls up that photo.
This strongly indicates that the internal file ids stored in the slide show project files are screwed up (some ids refer to the wrong photo, some ids refer to no existing photo in the current catalog).

I don't know of any practical way to fix that. Project files (*.psess), which are stored in the "projects" subfolder of your catalog, are binary-format files not easily edited.

I'm curious -- how did you do the catalog conversion? By File > Catalog > Convert, or implicitly using the backup/restore method? Are PSE 5 and 7 on the same computer?

[larrymcg]

This "database relative" volume was what I was interested in seeing, but since it only has 12 files on it (probably the music samples that PSE imports by default into a new catalog)...

The path listed is for a folder called "My Catalog" and that folder has a folder "Projects" which has 12 files in it. They are *.psess files with the names of the 12 slide shows. The My Catalog folder seems to have the PSE7 catalog and other files in it.

Interestingly, one of the slide shows does not have a name (in PSE5 or 7) and the psess file for it is ".psess". Makes sense!

By the way, I REALLY appreciate the work you are doing to help work this out.

Thanks,
Larry

[larrymcg]

I'm curious -- how did you do the catalog conversion? By File > Catalog > Convert, or implicitly using the backup/restore method? Are PSE 5 and 7 on the same computer?

By File>Catalog>Convert.

I'm not sure what the backup/restore method is but I'm constantly turning off the Backup/Synchronization facility. Something keeps turning it back on. I think it was happening when I was experimenting with sharing an album on Photoshop.com (which is another bag of worms to be addresses separately).

PSE5 is on the same PC. Since installing PSE7 I have fired up PSE5 Organizer a couple times to check on its view of slideshows and some other anomalies I've wondered about. PSE5 uses a different catalog and I haven't done any editing or other changes with PSE5.

I should mention that when I uninstalled PSE7 and then installed it again, I had the virus stuff off, the firewall off, the spyware stuff off during the entire uninstall/reinstall process.

--Larry

[johnrellis]

The path listed is for a folder called "My Catalog" and that folder has a folder "Projects" which has 12 files in it. They are *.psess files with the names of the 12 slide shows. The My Catalog folder seems to have the PSE7 catalog and other files in it.
Ah right. That's all consistent and correct. In PSE 7, files (including project files) which are stored in subfolders underneath the catalog folder are marked as residing on the "database relative" volume.

[johnrellis]

I'm not sure what the backup/restore method is
With that method, you make a backup of your PSE 5 catalog using the PSE 5 command File > Backup, and then in PSE 7 you use File > Restore to restore the backup, implicitly converting the catalog at the same time. In addition to creating a new PSE 7 catalog, it will also make 2 copies of all your photos (one copy is the backup, the second copy is where you restore your photos to).

Some people for hom File > Catalog > Convert doesn't work properly have reported that the backup/restore method does work.

If you want to keep troubleshooting this, the backup/restore method is a good next thing to try. If you do, be sure to use the New Location / Restore Original Folder Structure options when you do the restore so you don't overwrite your original photos.

[larrymcg]

OK, I used backup/restore. Essentially the same result except that two more slide shows were correct. However, I can't image dealing with the new catalog. It exists in a parallel folder structure but with slightly different content. For example, folders in the new structure don't include everything that the corresponding folder has in the original structure. That's because not all files (including some photos) are in the original catalog. I certainly wouldn't want to keep both folder structures - 13GB of duplicated photos. I certainly would not want to get rid of the original folder structure because it has files that are not in the parallel structure. So my only choice would be to trash the new parallel structure. Hence, no gain.

Unless I could move the additional slide shows that are correct in the new catalog. Can't see how to do that. And those slide shows are pretty small and can be recreated or fixed up easily.

I'm thinking that the backup/restore exercise was interesting but not useful.

--Larry