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DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:29 pm
by vincenzo
Dear all, Looking for some help troubleshooting this problem. I have a batch of ARW A900 files. They open fine in ARC, Lightroom and Aperture but just a sea of purple ants with DXO. No idea why, any ideas what might be going wrong?

Bests

Vincenzo

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:34 pm
by Old Hydro
vincenzo wrote:Dear all, Looking for some help troubleshooting this problem. I have a batch of ARW A900 files. They open fine in ARC, Lightroom and Aperture but just a sea of purple ants with DXO. No idea why, any ideas what might be going wrong?

Bests

Vincenzo
You can't open images and save them with any other program. Let DXO read the untouched ARW files.

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:39 pm
by vincenzo
Thanks Hydro, but they are ARW files, not been saved into another format. Tried converting ARW to DNG and then re-import to DXO, but that won't work either, doesn't even see them. frustrating and Puzzling!!

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:27 am
by bakubo
vincenzo wrote:Thanks Hydro, but they are ARW files, not been saved into another format. Tried converting ARW to DNG and then re-import to DXO, but that won't work either, doesn't even see them. frustrating and Puzzling!!
Good luck with DxO. I downloaded the trial for DxO 6.0 last month and had serious problems with installation and running -- I started a thread about it here. Then a couple of days ago I thought I would try 6.1.1 but it has other serious problems. I have sent them email with screenshots to their tech support but after 2 days still no response -- it is holiday time though. I wanted to try it especially since they have a special price until 12/31, but it is clearly a very buggy program.

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:44 am
by vincenzo
Shame its so buggy because the results are fantastic...when it works. My Pentax DNG files run through DXO ok, as do D700 raws. But most of my ARW A900 files are not working. I do have batches of A900 ARW files which are ok, but most not. The ones which DXO doesn't like work fine with ALL other programmes...
I've had enough faffing around, I'm writing to DXO now. As you say though its holiday season. So unfortunately my latest work will have to be processed and submitted with Lightoom or Aperture. Most annoying because I know the pictures will not be seen at their best!

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:29 am
by dennismullen
vincenzo wrote:Shame its so buggy because the results are fantastic...when it works. My Pentax DNG files run through DXO ok, as do D700 raws. But most of my ARW A900 files are not working. I do have batches of A900 ARW files which are ok, but most not. The ones which DXO doesn't like work fine with ALL other programmes...
I've had enough faffing around, I'm writing to DXO now. As you say though its holiday season. So unfortunately my latest work will have to be processed and submitted with Lightoom or Aperture. Most annoying because I know the pictures will not be seen at their best!
Do you have the "Elite" version of DxO? Only it supports the A900, not the premium version.

Cheers,

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:01 am
by David Kilpatrick
It probably will not read cRAW - the older versions only read uncompressed Sony raws.

David

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:28 am
by bakubo
David Kilpatrick wrote:It probably will not read cRAW - the older versions only read uncompressed Sony raws.
If that is still the case then all my attempts at installing DxO are for naught since I only shoot cRAW.

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:04 am
by dennismullen
David Kilpatrick wrote:It probably will not read cRAW - the older versions only read uncompressed Sony raws.

David
DxO works fine for me and I shoot cRaw+jpg.
There is a problem with occasional lockups when using the crop and or horizon tool which I hope they resolve soon.
I use it with Win 7.

Cheers.

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:11 am
by David Kilpatrick
I have the latest DxO but have not tested it fully as it's such a tedious program to work with (slow workflow). If it's handling cRAW and RAW correctly, I don't know why it would occasionally have problems with random files. I am hoping that DxO is faster on my soon-to-arrive iMac i7 model and can be used more often.

David

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:09 pm
by Mike-Photos
Unless I'm mistaken, the Sony IDC package writes changes back into the RAW file. If you do this, DxO cannot open them. Could this be the issue?

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:43 pm
by dennismullen
Mike-Photos wrote:Unless I'm mistaken, the Sony IDC package writes changes back into the RAW file. If you do this, DxO cannot open them. Could this be the issue?
On a similar note. If you open the files in ACR you should have the preferences in ACR set to write to sidecars so it doesn't change the original file.
You could also try disabling video hardware support in DxO.
DxO has pretty good support. Go to the DxO forum for more info.

DxO v6.1.1 is a lot faster and feels much more user friendly than DxO v5.
Zoom in and adjust the Luminance NR manually as the default setting can be a little heavy. I use 10-20.
Once over a small learning curve it feels very comfortable.
I assigned the project window open/close shortcut to my mouse scroll wheel click. That's a big improvement!
Go into preferences and check "display tools in window icon bar" where it's more convenient, and then move the tools pallet to the bottom on the pallet window as it's redundant.

I leave Adobe Bridge open to sort and view files. You can either export from DxO as jpgs if you are done, or like me export as DNG for further processing.
I open the DNG file in ACR from Bridge, adjust in ACR if needed, and open in Photoshop to use layers, etc. and then save to jpg.
Sometimes the WB and fill light tools will work better in one program than the other depending on the picture content.

Cheers,

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:40 pm
by vincenzo
Its seems I'm not alone! A thread on the same problem was started by another DXO/A900 user over at DXO forums.
We are both using Elite DXO 5.3.6 and I'm shooting normal RAW not cRAW. I'm using an intel macbook running on Leopard.
I've made a few discoveries, the problem I think, is related to Photo Mechanic which I used to import the images to my HD. I imported 1500 images via Photo mechanic, none will be read by DXO. But if I let DXO import fresh images straight from the card it reads them fine. Problem is the 1500 images I shot are on my HD now not on the cards.
I can develop them in other programmes; aperture, ARC and Lihgtroom all work fine with the images downloaded by Photo Mechanic. Therefore it seems to be a bug between PM and DXO.
I tried converting the ARW to DNG that didn't work. Tried burning to disk and then importing from CD, but non. Seems to be a fix for DXO to work out. Spent ages trying workarounds but can't think of anymore.
To their credit, DXO were quick to respond and I sent them one of my ARW for analysis. If anyone else uses PM with their A900 be aware that you may also be effected. I don't know if this would also effect other RAW files which were imported onto HD's using PM...

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:47 pm
by David Kilpatrick
Elite 5.3.6? I'm using 5.3.5 on Snow Leopard and when I check for updates, it simply says I am using the latest version.

David

Re: DXO Won't read my A900 ARW

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 9:27 pm
by vincenzo
Yes, 5.3.6 I also had the previous version but got the same as you - saying it was up-to-date when there was a newer version available. I ended up manually deleting the older version and downloading the newer version.

I really hope DXO can improve the stability of their programme because I'm getting superb results from it, especially higher ISO A900 shots which are often very useable up to 6400 compared to unusable at same ISO setting with rival programmes