LR/Transporter error

[cassidy_nemick]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic version 12.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi all, I work for a historical institution and am working on a large digitization project. We purchased a license for LR/Transporter to help us streamline our metadata work. I am often imbedding 100s of images at a time. Every now and then I keep getting this specific error code when running the Transporter and I can't figure out why it is giving me this error when all of my csv files are formatted the same.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[clee01l]

I’ll wait for the LR/Transporter author to comment. But my guess is that an array setup to accommodate the image files is not large enough for all of the selected images The array counter is set to count down from the number of elements in the array. If the number of elements exceeds the limit imposed by the program it reaches a point where the counter value is undefined and this nil value throws this message.


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[Gnits]

I have run Lr / Transporter on a catalog with 800,000 images and it completed (ahem, it took 36 hours or so), so I suspect it is not related to the actual number of images involved.

I would double check the syntax used and try to remove fields (one by one) until it works, to try and identify which field might be the cause because of a null code or similar in one of the image records.

Of course, the author may have a much better idea on how to resolve the error.

I am enclosing a screen grab of the settings I use.

 

[johnrellis]

Did you contact the developer? Lots of people have reported over the past several years that he no longer responds to support requests, but it's worth a try.

 

[cassidy_nemick]

I have run Lr / Transporter on a catalog with 800,000 images and it completed (ahem, it took 36 hours or so), so I suspect it is not related to the actual number of images involved.

I would double check the syntax used and try to remove fields (one by one) until it works, to try and identify which field might be the cause because of a null code or similar in one of the image records.

Of course, the author may have a much better idea on how to resolve the error.

I am enclosing a screen grab of the settings I use.

It occasionally works with batches of 700-800 images at a time with no issue. But for some reason certain images won't accept a batch import and it repeatedly gives me this error code. I end up just having to manually input the metadata.

I use a simple .csv with only four different fields in it, all formatted the same. So I'm really confused where the issue occasionally lies.

 

[cassidy_nemick]

Here are some screenshots of the spreadsheet I'm using to create the .csv and the import settings I have.

 

[Gnits]

I only use the plug-in to export data from Lr. Also, I have stopped using keywords a few years ago, so not very familiar with syntax required to import keywords.

My guess is that the keywords may contain some combination of characters that the plug-in does not like, resulting in fields internally not filled correctly, causing a syntax error. A common example is words which contain ‘ or “” , which may signal the end of a text string, when in fact it is an integral part of the text eg “today’s weather”.

I also try to avoid comma separated files and use xl or tabbed delimited files, for the same reason.
I had a quick look at the keywords column on your import data. The keywords appear to have lots of non alpha numeric chars such as brackets, dashes, etc… which might give rise to confusion over correct boundaries of various fields.

 

[cassidy_nemick]

I only use the plug-in to export data from Lr. Also, I have stopped using keywords a few years ago, so not very familiar with syntax required to import keywords.

My guess is that the keywords may contain some combination of characters that the plug-in does not like, resulting in fields internally not filled correctly, causing a syntax error. A common example is words which contain ‘ or “” , which may signal the end of a text string, when in fact it is an integral part of the text eg “today’s weather”.

I also try to avoid comma separated files and use xl or tabbed delimited files, for the same reason.
I had a quick look at the keywords column on your import data. The keywords appear to have lots of non alpha numeric chars such as brackets, dashes, etc… which might give rise to confusion over correct boundaries of various fields.

Oh interesting. We use primarily LOC subject headings for our archive files since we're a history institution. The keywords are mostly used for our database, I'll see what happens if I remove that field entirely and try the import.

 

[Gnits]

I referred to the Keywords field because a) they had a combination of alphanumeric and non alphanumeric chars, which might contain special chars and b) Kewords may require a sub structure of their own.

So, they keyword column may be the most likely source, but any column may contain text combinations which the plug-in or Lr may be unhappy with.

 

[Gnits]

I wrote a lot of applications in the early days of computing, when data processing was done in batch mode (Ie without interactive screens). The first step when batch processing data (which you are effectively doing) is to apply a validation step. Maybe some one in your team might devise a script which validates the input data prior to uploading with the plug-in.

 

[cassidy_nemick]

I wrote a lot of applications in the early days of computing, when data processing was done in batch mode (Ie without interactive screens). The first step when batch processing data (which you are effectively doing) is to apply a validation step. Maybe some one in your team might devise a script which validates the input data prior to uploading with the plug-in.

Hi Gnits, sorry for the delay. It seems like removing the keywords field has fixed the problem with the import. Thank you so much for your help!

 

[Gnits]

Super.