Out of Memeor error during catalog convert

I did a search for "out of memory" but did not get any results.

Just installed PE3 and when I go to Organizer it wants to convert my PA2 catalog. I click OK and the conversion progresses to 87% and then I get a Memory Error window saying "Out of Memory". Rebooted, same thing. Removed all resident programs (virus, firewall, etc), same thing. Started with Editor and went to Organizer from there, same thing.

I have a P4 2.8 with 1 gig of memory and 30 gig free on the HD running XP Home SP1.

Any ideas?

Henry

PS: I have been using PE2 and Album2 without any problems.

Suggest that you

- post the size of the catalog from PSA 2 that would be converted and if it has the default name and location.

- post the size of virtual memory defined and used if you noticed

- check if a copy had been made of your existing catalog by PSE 3.

This additional info might provide some clues.

Thoughts from others ????????

BarbO

Thanks for the response BarbO.

My PSA 2 catalog uses the default name "My Catalog" and includes about 4,000 images. The PSA 2 catalog is located in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Album 2.0\Shared_Assets\Database\obdc and has the following names:

My Catalog.psa (292 KB)
My Catalog-pju.psa (344 kb)
My Catalog.DataSourceName (1 KB)
My Catalog-pju.DataSourceName (1 KB)
All of the above files are dated 12-16-2003.

These same filenames are duplicated in the Photoshop Elements 3.0 folder and are dated 10-4-2004. I don't see a My Catalog-1.psa that I have read about on this forum. The size of My Catalog.psa in the PE 3 folder is 316 KB but when double clicked the PE 3 Organizer opens empty.

Windows virtual memory was 1.5 gig and I increased it to 2 gig and the conversion stopped at the same place (87%).

After I got the above info I realized that the file size and dates did not look right and did a little digging and found a My Catalog.psa dated 10-28-2004 in the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Album\Catalogs.

This catalog is 14,388 KB in size. There is a second file named My Catalog.tmp.psa that is 14,412 KB and a subfolder named My Catalog.tmp. In side this subfolder is two files, Tagstatus.dat and tn.4.cache.

Henry

Henry,

As you realized your initial list did not include the actual PSA 2 catalog containing your data and you found it in the Photoshop Album\Catalogs folder under All Users. Good. Now we know approximately what size. Now that you know where it is, I suggest making an additional backup of this catalogfile - just to somewhere under My Documents perhaps.

Next, there is a suggestion that Alexander made in another thread that is relevant here.

in PSA 2, do a File > Catalog > Recover
this is general catalog cleanup and I believe it also compacts unused space. Your My Catalog.tmp.psa worries me some: maybe you did not have a clean PSA 2 catalog and that is causing the conversion program problems. Post again with the results of this Recover and check the files in the Photoshop Album\Catalogs folder.

In the meantime, I will think about how you can pass the newly recovered PSA 2 catalog to the PSE 3 conversion routine.

BarbO

Henry,

Adding to my previous post, please look in this folder and post what files are present. For any My Catalog files, post the size so that we can differentiate between empty catalogs and your data.

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalogs

BarbO

My best guess would be to go to "File > Catalog > Recover" in PSA 2, then try to import the catalog in PSE 3 again ...

Alexander.

Barb, Alexander,

As you suggested, I tried the recover procedure in PSA 2 and then tried to convert again with the same results, Out of Memory at 87%.

Barb, the files I found in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalogs are:

My Catalog.psa (14,388 kb)
My Catalog.tmp.psa (14,412 kb)
Sub Folder - My Catalog.tmp
Tagstatus.dat (1 kb)
tn.4.cache (46,690 kb)

Henry

Henry,

Saw your latest post.

This problem may be beyond what we can effectively solve on the User Forum. I suggest that you contact Adobe Tech Support and ask about free install support for PS Elements 3.

BarbO

Out of Memory update:

Contacted tech support today and it appears that my case is the first one of its kind and after several hours on the phone the results were not good (I didn’t find this out until tech support was off line). They had me split the database and convert it in two steps. This appeared to work at first, but later I found a lot of problems. I then decided to try the conversion o n e m o r e t i m e, and lo & behold, it worked. The only thing that may have helped is that I removed (in PSA 2) about 10-15% of the images from the catalog before trying the conversion.

I don’t remember all of the steps associated with the two-step conversion, but I don’t recommend it due to the problems it creates.

Henry

Henry

Thanks for posting your results back to the forum.

I am curious - is there any common characteristic of the photos that you removed from the PSA 2 catalog?

BarbO

Barb,

is there any common characteristic of the photos that you removed from
the PSA 2 catalog?




I removed several folders from within the folder view and all the images were graphics, gif and jpg's. I picked those because they would be easy to re-import and identify since there were no captions/notes and all had the same single tag. I feel very lucky that's all I have to do compared to what could have been.

I want to thank you and Alexander for your help.

Henry

You are Welcome. Glad that you are now able to use PSE 3.

I was hoping that your results might offer a clue for other people - but if the clue is there, I don't see it.

BarbO

Henry, this is great news! Good to hear you're sorted now!

Alexander.

Barb,

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your concern about a “clue” to the cause of my problem. The clue appears to have been a file unacceptable to EL3. After trying the split database approach with tech support, and not liking the results, I proceeded as follows.

Thinking that my problem was memory related (Tech Support thought this as well), I deleted approximately 15% of my images from the database in PSA2. The 15% was based on the fact that the conversion always stopped at 87%, so removing 15% would reduce the database to 85% of its original size. The first time I tried the conversion after the reduction, it still did not work. After rebooted the computer, and restarted EL3, the conversion worked.

I then attempted to import the folders deleted in PSA2 and EL3 would freeze at a specific point each time I tried. Now thinking the problem may be associated with a bad file, and not memory related, I used Windows Explorer to move the file following the last one imported before EL3 would freeze. After that the import went smoothly.

The end result was a file that was OK in Album2, but EL3 could not import. The file is a graphic vertical line 1x4000 pixels used for web pages. It can be viewed in the Windows Picture Viewer and in the EL3 Editor, but EL3 Organizer will not import it. EL3 Organizer will either freeze or produce an error message.

It was just luck that the offending file was in the batch I decided to delete in PSA2.

If anyone is interested, I have uploaded related files to Pbase as shown below:

Original Conversion error message:

<http://www.pbase.com/whiz/image/35701495>

Error message in EL3 Organizer:

<http://www.pbase.com/whiz/image/35956246>

The offending image:

<http://www.pbase.com/whiz/image/35956258>

Henry