iPhoto Library Import Error

[thewoj]

Hey there, I have finally decided to completely transition my sizable (~55,000 photos/videos) iPhoto (9.6.1) library over to Lightroom (15.7), but the iPhoto importer is returning a rather specific error when I attempt to use it. After selecting the library and it's destination, and clicking import, I am instantly returned a popup error stating:

An internal error has occured.

?:0 attempt to index a nil value

After clearing that error, the importer progress dialogue remains up, but does not transfer anything and stays at 0%.

Upon inspecting the log in my documents folder, I find the following error message in the log:

2017-01-30 20:28:39 +0000, INFO

Failed to obtain album info from iPhoto library with error Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/Applications/Adobe Lightroom/Adobe Lightroom.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py", line 149, in <module>

    readAlbumInfo( unicode( sys.argv[ 1 ], 'utf-8' ), unicode( sys.argv[ 2 ], 'utf-8' ) )

  File "/Applications/Adobe Lightroom/Adobe Lightroom.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py", line 132, in readAlbumInfo

    xmlAlbums = readAlbumDataXml( unicode( sys.argv[ 1 ], 'utf-8' ) )

  File "/Applications/Adobe Lightroom/Adobe Lightroom.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py", line 65, in readAlbumDataXml

    plist = plistlib.readPlist( xmlPath )

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py", line 78, in readPlist

    rootObject = p.parse(pathOrFile)

  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py", line 406, in parse

    parser.ParseFile(fileobj)

ExpatError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 96950, column 15

After researching the ExpatError, it seems to be an issue with XML databases including non-UTF characters — has anyone else encountered this error? I tried searching for "not well formed invalid token" but the only other result didn't really seem to have an answer.

I have tried unchecking all of the boxes inside the importer dialogue to no avail, as well as removing a majority of albums from iPhoto and renaming all albums that had special characters. I did find that I have a few ampersands in photo notes, as well as a filename containing an ampersand — I have since changed all of them to the word "and" and removed the photos with the ampersand in their names, and emptied the trash (the only change was the line number above changed to 96944).

Is there anyway to figure out what line 96950 is? I tried bringing the XML into excel and going to the line number 96950, but I could not find anything out of the ordinary around that area of the XML.

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi thewoj,

Please refer to the posts below and let us know if it helps: -

https://www.lightroomforums.net/threads/re-0-attempt-to-index-a-nil-value.7998/

Lightroom: An internal error has occurred: ?:0: attempt to index field, "?" (a nil value) | Photosho...

Recovery “?:0: attempt to index field ‘folder’ (a nil value)” error on Lightroom | Marco Borzacconi ...

Regards,

Sahil

[thewoj]

Hey Sahil, thanks for the follow up. Unfortunately, it seems that the error is a widely used generic database error, and I could not find any sort of significant advice in the links you provided. BUT, it did reignite a fire under my ass to get my photos ported over.

It is currently functioning, and here is what changed. From a COPY of my database, I deleted all my photos after 2014. I then used the iPhoto import plugin and everything was working just fine.

I then overwrote that copy of the database with another copy of the full database. At the same time, I downloaded Aperture 3.6 from a link in the description of a YouTube video (since it is end of life there doesn't seem to be any other way to get a copy). I opened up the iPhoto library in Aperture and looked around for a few minutes. I then opened Lightroom and used the Aperture import plugin — rather than the iPhoto import plugin — and everything is now working fine. It's going on 12 hours and it's ~75% of the way through the import.

So, overall I am not sure what caused it to work. If I were to guess, I would say it was likely using the Aperture import plugin rather than iPhoto, or perhaps it was opening the database in Aperture (though that didn't seem to change the database at all. Regardless, it is currently working as intended.

Thanks,

Greg