Executive summary: my large all-images catalogue is coming up with a significant number of "
Unreadable File Format" images.
Detail: Over the last few days I have been re-creating a master catalogue for all my 650k+ images.
I created the catalogue by scanning the master folders (arranged by year) in the various disks (6, all local) on which the images are held on my computer, limiting the file types scanned to the usual RAW and graphics file formats that I have in my collection. So as not to overstress anything, I scanned the folders one disk at a time, waiting until the previous one had indexed (but not waiting for all the thumbnails to generate or all the metadata to have been written).
When scanning was complete, I found I had 1445 images listed in Browse as
File Type: "Unreadable File Format (
?)" [this should be a row of 4 question marks, but the first three are converted into an emoji]. These images are seemingly randomly scattered across 4 of my 6 hard disks, spread across various folders. The file extensions (which I can see from the red file names under the blank thumbnails) vary, covering a mix of .CR2, .CR3 and .DNG files.
I tried re syncing, Optimize SQL, Reintegrate Forgotten Catalog and Re-index Catalog. None made any difference: there were still all these Unreadable File Format files. I tried to write a keyword such as "unreadable" to them using the Metadata (IPTC) Template, so that I could easily find them in Lightroom, but there was an error message and PM6+ would not write to the files.
I then did several things. Firstly I selected the 1445 files from Browse and removed them from the catalog. Strangely, Browse still showed a "
Unreadable File Format (?)" entry, with zero images (I would have expected the entry to have disappeared if there are no matching images).
Then I ran a full Sync Catalog which re-imported the images, still reported as "
Unreadable File Format (?)": nothing changed.
Having done that, I selected from Browse the same 1445 files and copied them to a new catalogue, which I called "
Unreadable File Format". The files remained unreadable in that new catalogue, even after all 3 Catalog Management tests.
There is, however, nothing wrong with any of the files (I have not checked all of them, but I have checked enough to be sure that this is an accurate statement). They are all fine in Lightroom, and indeed those reported as unreadable include some images which were only taken or processed a few days ago.
As a further check, I produced new catalogues of just some of the year folders that contain "unreadable" files. The images are fine in those separate, smaller catalogues, proving that the files really are readable by PM6+ and that there is nothing wrong with the files.
My PM6+ catalogues, thumbnails and cache are stored on a large internal SSD with plenty of free space. I am running Windows 10, using the latest version (5560) of PM6+. My computer is a fast desktop machine with plenty of RAM: I have been keeping an eye on Task Manager and neither CPU not RAM have been anywhere near being maxed out. My NVIDIA graphics card drivers are fully up to date.
Any idea what is happening, and how I can get my main catalogue to recognise the Unreadable File Format files correctly (I prefer to have one single catalogue for everything, not least for collections to work as I intend)?
I have one theory, that may be totally wrong, but I will include it for what it is worth. Looking at the "unreadable" images in Lightroom, many of them have a colour label in Lightroom. Some of them used to have a colour label (I colour code those I am considering for processing, then remove the colour label if I do not use them), but no longer have one. It seemed to me that there may be a preponderance of presently or previously colour-labelled images amongst the "unreadable" images. There are still many that have no colour label, and for the older ones I simply cannot remember whether or not they might once have had a colour label applied and then removed. Tens of thousands of images with colour labels are, however, correctly imported, so it cannot be the mere existence of a colour label that is the determining factor. This may, of course, be totally irrelevant, since they are correctly scanned into the smaller single year PM6+ catalogues. All of the images have keywords and most have a caption.
Any thoughts welcome. Thank you.
Graham
