Importing from a card or a folder
Importing is how photographs get into a library: the Review this import sheet copies every new file in, both halves of a RAW+JPEG pair, and checks each copy. The same sheet runs for a new library, straight after the wizard, and for a card you add later. This page follows the sheet; How an import ends reads its last panel.
Review this import
The sheet opens on the scan's result, headed Review this import, with its promise: Vixlo copies and independently verifies every new file before it can ever call the card safe to erase. Originals stay untouched on the source the whole time.
Four counts sit across the top: FILES FOUND, NEW, ALREADY IMPORTED and DUPLICATES HELD. They count files, not frames, so a RAW+JPEG pair counts as two. A file counts as already imported when the library holds an unchanged copy in its Originals folder, whatever either file is called (Importing the same card again).
Under the counts, one line says how Vixlo will organise the shoot, with Applied once the import finishes beneath it. When nothing stands out it reads No preset stood out clearly enough — organised by Date → Session. A row can follow it, Part of the card could not be read, when the Mac could not list a folder or read a file (what that means), or Frames that do not match this card (what that means).
When the scan does find a pattern, the line names an example library, for instance Organised as Family card · Feb–Aug because date span > 7 days; active days > 3. The name is one of three fixed examples, not yours, and the line is more than information: Continue to culling applies it. When it differs from what the library already uses, a message reads Family card · Feb–Aug workspace loaded, and the pass starts again at the first frame in Single, with the filter cleared and the frames grouped by camera, then session. In a library you were already working in, that moves you. Decisions, ratings and files are not touched.
Then the two destinations:
- Working library shows, as a path, the folder the photographs are copied into. It starts as the library's own
Originalsfolder. - Backup — a separate drive reads Not chosen until you press Choose…. It is optional; the sheet says what leaving it out costs: Without a backup you can still import and start culling — but the card will never read as safe to erase. A second destination chosen in the wizard is already here.
Two things keep Start import dimmed, and the sheet says why in red. One is both folders on the same drive: These two folders are on the same drive — they can never count as independent copies. Choose a backup location on a different disk. The other is a folder on the card you are importing, because a copy there goes with the card when you format it: This backup folder is on the card being imported — formatting the card would erase it, so it can never be the second copy. Choose a folder on another drive. The working library folder gets the same refusal in its own words. On a camera card that means anywhere on it. Choose another folder with Choose…; if the new library's own folder is the one on the card, press Cancel instead, which forgets the library, and make it again elsewhere.
Start import carries the number of files it will work through, as in Start import (1736). With a backup chosen the number also counts the files the library already holds, because the import copies each of them to the backup; without one it does not, and when there is nothing to do it reads Start import (0) and stays dimmed.
Copying and verifying
The sheet turns into a progress panel, Copying and verifying…. It shows FILES PROTECTED, bytes COPIED and files FAILED, names the file in flight, Streaming, hashing and verifying, and has a bar for the whole run.
Each file is streamed from the source to the library while a checksum is computed; what landed on disk is then read back and compared, and only a match counts as verified. A file the library already holds is not copied in again: the run checks the library's copy, and with a backup chosen copies it there. Cancel import stops the run before its next file and keeps every copy already verified.
FILES PROTECTED, COPIED and the bar count a file only once it has two verified copies on two volumes. With no backup chosen, the default, they stay at 0/1736, zero bytes and an empty bar for the whole run, however well the copy goes; only the file name moves. Wait for the last panel: its COPIED & VERIFIED count is the real one.
When the run reaches the end, the panel becomes Import complete or Import stopped. How an import ends reads each ending.
If an import stops
After Cancel import, the sheet ends on Import stopped, not Import complete, and says what was copied and what was left out: 3 of 10 files were copied and checksum-verified. 7 files were left out of the library — the card is not safe to format. Scan the card again to import them.
The files left out are on the card alone. Press Continue to culling to add the copied ones, then scan the card again: the review counts those as ALREADY IMPORTED and offers exactly the others as NEW. Until they are in, the card is not safe to format. A cancel while files the library already holds are being copied to the backup also ends on Import stopped: 100 of the 640 files already in the library were copied to the backup before the import stopped — the card is not safe to format. Import the card again with the backup to finish.
Continue to culling, and Close
Continue to culling puts the photographs into the library and opens it on them. It adds only the frames whose copies verified, each the library's own copy. A frame the library already has is not added twice: its entry is pointed at the new copy, with its decisions kept (A copy that was deleted or replaced). A run that copied nothing, or only made backup copies, adds nothing. Added to a library that is open, Continue to culling then just closes the sheet; for a new library it still opens the library, which is empty.
Close shuts the sheet without that: the copies stay in Originals but are not in the catalog. Close the library, and Rebuild the index… on its row reads them in (Rebuilding the index). Esc is the same exit.
After Continue to culling has added frames, a dialog opens over the cull page, headed Source scan complete, repeating the four counts of the whole scan, even when a stopped import added only some of them. Review options closes it and changes nothing; Group from metadata closes it and groups the frames by camera, then session, from their capture times.