Capture One 8.3.2 Catalog Going off the rails

[lhodaniel]

I've been happily using C1P for the last year or so and liked its color rendition and tool set enough that I considered it my number 1 converter, demoting LR to number 2. That has been reversed now after having discovered instability in its catalog structure and actually incurring more collateral damage trying to rectify the original problem. C1P's database structure is showing itself to be much more brittle than Lightroom's.

I noticed when visiting some older little-visited folders that C1P was listing 2 thumbnails for each image on NEF files and double the count of actual files in the folders. This was fairly extensive in terms of number of affected images. Regenerating previews, synchronizing folders, and removing and re-importing the folders did not help. Restoring from older backups showed that this problem existed at least back to April (Win 8.1). Then, random and increasing number of thumbnails became corrupt, showing wild orange colors (post-Win 10). Regeneration, re-importation, restoration from backups, and creation of a new catalog have not helped. Lightroom, Bridge, and several other programs are not showing either problem. The NEFs themselves are not duplicated and are rendered correctly.

I have run verification on the newer versions of the catalog files: they fail, repair works, then they fail again. No effect on the issues.

There is an ongoing support case and hopefully Phase One will fix this, and give me a recovery method. They have not offered a reason for the initial thumbnail duplication, but are blaming my Windows 10 update for the corruption. I realize that C1P is not officially supported on Win 10 yet. I posted this to warn that updating to Win 10 with C1P really might not be a good idea right now, and to ask if any of you have had similar issues.

Lloyd

[Doug Peterson]

We definitely do not recommend running Capture One on an operating system which has not been specifically stated to be approved by Phase One, ever. Even when officially supported I'd suggest waiting a few months on systems you intend to do professional or important work on.

[lhodaniel]

Doug,

Yes, I get that. But, remember that the original problem with the database failing verification and duplicating previews occurred 4 months BEFORE the Windows 10 upgrade. The latest reply from your tech support was to say that they have nothing to offer with no support for Win 10. There has never been any explanation of what happened originally under 8.1 or how to fix it. I expected better.

Phase One does not seem to have been particularly proactive in getting C1P ready for Win 10, as other companies already have. No problem...back to Lightroom.

Lloyd

[lhodaniel]

Doug,

Not your tech support, but Phase One's. I missed that you are a PO dealer.

Lloyd

[lhodaniel]

Well, I rolled my PC back to Windows 8.1 from a Reflect image. At the same time, I replaced the files with archive versions that had never seen Windows 10 or Capture 1, for that matter. These are not important files, except for sentimental reasons. And, I want to make sure that the problem won't spread.

At the rollback, I had duplicate thumbnails for every nef. In every case, one member of the pair displayed normally and the other with the orange psychedelic rendition. I should have deleted the bad ones, but instead I selected all and regenerated previews. C1P then rendered the good previews badly. I then deleted the folder from the catalog and reimported it. The duplicates were removed, but the previews are bad. (The bad color rendition does continue to output.)

I then went to LR and created a separate folder of dngs in a different directory. Capture One Pro displayed and adjusted the dngs normally! This suggests it isn't the files. Nor is it apparently Windows 10. I noticed that all but one problematic image was taken under tungsten light with daylight wb. Images taken after I switched wb have not had the problem. That shouldn't matter, but it's curious.

I have an open case now, and hopefully will get some input from Phase One. In the meantime, I thought that some of you might have some ideas. I got a procedure to completely erase C1P with the idea of a clean re-install and rebuild of the catalog. Short of that, how would I purge just the nef previews and adjustments and rebuild those?

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Lloyd

[LDJ]

Lloyd

I can't really offer any help with the issues you are currently experiencing, but I will say that your problems do not surprise me: I have tested C1 Pro as a cataloging program on many occasions over the last few years and, after experiencing serious issues every time, would never trust it to look after my files and the edits to those raw files; I actually believe that the database suffers from some fundamental implementation errors. For this reason, I (like I'm sure many others who appreciate C1 Pro for its image quality also do) use C1 for important image conversions and Lightroom for cataloging. For non-important images e.g. family snaps, I can't even be bothered to use C1 for the conversions and just use Lightroom for both the editing and cataloging. I've always found the Lightroom database to be reliable and stable and important image management features, such as key-wording, time taken to render layered TIF files, etc. are far better than those currently offered in C1 Pro. It is a shame, but I don't think I'll ever trust C1 Pro as a cataloging program.

Anyway, sorry to not be more help with your specific issues, I just wanted to give a few warnings regarding the use of C1 Pro as a cataloging program from personal experience

Best

Liam

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I actually believe that the database suffers from some fundamental implementation errors.

Rendering of previews has nothing to do with database structure. Hardware/driver conflicts are more likely to be at play here. Whatever causes that, may also corrupt other processes, but the root cause is probably not the database.

Cheers,
Bart

[LDJ]

I didn't suggest that the database structure had anything to do with TIF rendering, I just highlighted that time taken to render layered TIF files, as an important image management feature, is far better in Lightroom than C1 Pro: I have always found the time C1 Pro takes to render layered TIF files (I'm not sure it can even render TIF files containing alpha channels) unacceptably slow.

Thank you in any case for the clarification, if my original post was unclear.

By the way, I forgot to state that I use OS X, rather than Windows, so there may be some differences in user experience.

Best

Liam

[lhodaniel]

LDJ, I agree completely about the "brittleness" of the C1P catalog system. It's inferior to Lightroom's, which I have used since v 1.0. For important work, I will only use sessions or use it without importing at all. Just the fact that it can't handle suspected dupe imports is troubling. Thanks for your reply...very informative.

Bart, the only thing I can say is that the hardware has not changed and that C1P wasn't behaving this way in the beginning. I suppose a video driver update could have caused it. I think the problem exists somewhere in the adjustment data inside the C1P file structure. Someone (I think Doug) pointed out that C1P will only save edit data in its database and does not write that to xmp as Lightroom can.

I could not find in C1P's manual or help where all this is stored. I also couldn't find the approved way to restore from a catalog backup. Does one simply drag and drop the .codbcatalog file and adjustments folder from the backup to the active catalog location? Apparently the "Import" feature merges the import catalog with the active, i.e. something one would do on a subset catalog to merge into a main one. With no way to handle duplicates, I sure wouldn't want to do that to a backup.

It's possible that I caused the duping problem not shown in the image by using "synchronize" in the manner I do in LR. IOW, I may have synchronized or re-imported instead of locate to find missing folders, for example. I often use sync of a parent folder in LR to find subfolders that I import via explorer in LR. This won't work in C1P. Or, in my attempt to fix the preview duplication, I might have paired the wrong adjustments folder to a .codbcatalog file version.

If I can find out where all this stuff is located, I can try replacing just that from backups or deleting and rebuilding only the affected folders. Otherwise, I guess I'll do a clean uninstall and reinstall of C1P and lose my edits for all files.

Thanks again for your input,

Lloyd

[lhodaniel]

Just to update the forum, Phase One Support came through and appears to have solved the mystery. The files that are hoking up are ones that had been edited in Capture NX2. (Thanks, Nikon. If you are going to create a converter that hoses files for others, you could at least continue to support it. I wish I could switch to Canon. $$$).

I had created a separate copy of images that had been edited by CNX2, but apparently back in the day was not consistent in protecting the main copies. I tried Reverting to Original and saving in NX2 (installed it for this purpose). Unfortunately, that doesn't fix the problem. At least I can use DNG's of these files as a workaround. And, I need not worry about the problem propagating to new files.

Do any of you guys know of a utility that will remove NX2's fingerprints from NEF's?

Lloyd

[Jimmy D Uptain]

Just replying, hoping that there is a fix.
I have a few "NX files" that need re-rendering.
Also very disgusted with Nikon on this one point. I mean, really, just leave it open source and make your money off of lenses and cameras.

[Cartagenaphoto]

Hi.

I have the exact opposite problem right now.
It's CO 8 thats stable and LR CC that are making troubles.

Every time I import photos LR forget it so next time I open LR the photos are gone. But in reality they are on the harddrive (internal).

I write this just to mention that LR is not without it faults and annoying errors.

David

[The View]

I have never worked with Nikon digital, but just a thought:

If it's the Nikon RAW converter edits that blemish the RAW files, could you go back into the Nikon converter, select all the images, and do the reset on them (removing all adjustments)?

[The View]

In regards to catalog trouble:

I have had plenty of it in CO 7, but - knock knock on wood - none in CO 8.


But I still keep a full copy of each catalog on an external hard drive. A full copy, not just the backup files. Which means I drag the complete catalog onto another drive and have another very large file.

Should the catalog get corrupted, I simply delete the corrupted catalog, and pull the complete backup copy across.

(Somehow I don't trust the backups CO does - I don't even know where they go).

[mgrayson]

Every time C1 does a backup, it tells you where it put it.

Mine are in ~/Library/Application Support/Capture One/Backups/

--Matt

[lhodaniel]

View,

I tried that. Hitting reset doesn't remove the metadata. It just adds a "reset" instruction to it. I contacted Nikon Support as well and they requested example files. They eventually said that they had no utility or procedure to erase the NX2 edit metadata. I plan to look on the web for a general metadata editor that might look into the nef wrapper. But, other projects have taken priority at present. Thankfully, converting to dng gets around the issue.