imacken
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« on: October 16, 2009, 07:48:02 AM » |
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Just noticed Flashpipe, so I apologise if this has been asked before.
I use DLP, and my photos automatically get downloaded to a structure that is
e:\photos\year\year_month\year_month_day\imagename throgh the use of arguments (I think!)
Can this be done in Flashpipe?
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admin
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« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2009, 12:18:58 PM » |
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This was covered in the requested features thread, but I'll repeat here...
No, FlashPipe offers a more efficient way to download by date-shot. Since FlashPipe does more than Downloader Pro, like move your raws to a separate "raw" folder, develop your raws and puts them in a "developed" folder, create email/web copies and puts them in a "web" folder, moves videos to a different folder if you like, and so on, it is more efficient to create a folder that shows the date range of the photos/videos on the card.
If you have a card that has photos from 5 days and videos from two days for example, doing it the Downloader Pro way, you'd end up with five different folders, one for each day. In each of those five folders you'd have a "raw" subfolder, a "developed" subfolder, a "web" folder, and potentially a "misc" folder if you move "other" files off the card. That's 20 new folders to store photos/videos from 5 days. In addition, you only shot videos two of the five days so if you chose to move videos to the same location as your photos, you'd have to go search all five folders to find which ones the videos reside in. And if you want all photos of a certain subject that you shot during the course of those 5 days, you'd have to keep backing up and going to different directories to find that subject in each one.
Simply put, this is a mess.
In FlashPipe what you can do is download your photos to a single folder that shows the date range and then auto-rename your photos by date so that they sort by day within that folder. For example, instead of creating five different folders for your 5 day shoot like: 2009-10-01, 2009-10-02, 2009-10-03, 2009-10-04, and 2009-10-05, FlashPipe can create one folder called 2009-10-01..2009-10-05 and you can set the auto-rename so that files automatically sort by day within that folder, or camera first, then day, or basically whatever you want. That way you have a folder that tells you which days are included and you can still sort out a single day or if you like, select all photos of one particular subject across all five days without having to back up and visit different folders. You can keep your main structure of photos\year\year-month if you like: just select that in FlashPipe and change it once a month when necessary.
Mike
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2009, 12:41:07 PM » |
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Mike, I appreciate the usefulness of being able to put videos in separate folders, etc. but I thought you can do that in your interface. I put my videos just in a videos folder as I don't have that many, so I would specify that in Flashpipe. It's photos that I use a lot.
I hear what you are saying, but I don't want my RAWs to be developed, I use Lightroom and PS for that.
I'm afraid I can't agree with you on the 'date range' folder name at all. HDD folders are just a way of storing images initially, as all the indexing work is done by DAM software like LR, so to a large extent where the images are actually stored is irrelevant unless you need to look from outside the DAM environment.
Also, I don't want to rename the images as you suggest, I want the original names to be kept intact.
I'm not on a DLP crusade here, believe me, but the flexibility in the 'argument' preferences is very powerful, but the one drawback is that only one folder can be specified, so all videos, etc. go there, and then they've got to be weeded out as you suggested.
This is why I was attracted to Flashpipe, but if the folder name can't be specified as say 2009/2009_10/2009_10_16 then my whole database structure would fall apart.
I'm not disagreeing with what you said, and it probably would be a better approach for some people, but it would be really good if there were options to specify a different folder structure if that's what the user wanted.
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gonzuller
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Posts: 18
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« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2009, 03:05:44 PM » |
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As one who once wanted Mike to implement the by-day-and-date folder system, I believe that FlashPipe in its current form works quite well with Lightroom given that LR has the option to move files once they are on the hard drive into this kind of system. See my post here: http://ddisoftware.com/tech/flashpipe/now-i-see-the-light!/. Mike, you have already implemented the date-span folder system in the latest upgrade. Might there be a way to add an option to download photos into folders arranged by month, but not specifically by day? - Chris |
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2009, 03:26:57 PM » |
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Thanks for that. Bearing in mind that I haven't actually used FP, it just looked interesting and I don't want to start the trial until I see if it could work for me.
I haven't fully studied your other post, but why not just use DLP which puts the files into a user defined structure.
I just insert my card, DLP pops up and automatically downloads images straight to the year/month/day folder structure that I defined.
Importing into LR is easy and nothing additional needs to be done.
Are you saying that FP will only use a single folder for each download? If that is the case, surely then if you were doing a shoot every day for 3 years say, then it would created almost 1000 folders at the the next level down from your main Photo folder. Is that right? If so, that does not seem like a workable structure.
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Jeff
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« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2009, 04:17:59 PM » |
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Thanks for that. Bearing in mind that I haven't actually used FP, it just looked interesting and I don't want to start the trial until I see if it could work for me.
I haven't fully studied your other post, but why not just use DLP which puts the files into a user defined structure.
I just insert my card, DLP pops up and automatically downloads images straight to the year/month/day folder structure that I defined.
Importing into LR is easy and nothing additional needs to be done.
Are you saying that FP will only use a single folder for each download? If that is the case, surely then if you were doing a shoot every day for 3 years say, then it would created almost 1000 folders at the the next level down from your main Photo folder. Is that right? If so, that does not seem like a workable structure.
Just give FP a trial and work it out for yourself. It is a simple prog and the 7day trial should be long enough. If it proves no good for you, leave it and continue to use DLP. Jeff |
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Grumpy
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2009, 05:55:24 PM » |
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I probably will, but (like many others I've since read in this forum) I feel the lack of flexibility in the download folder structure is going to be a show-stopper.
This is a great shame as the copying to multiple locations is very attractive.
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gonzuller
Newbie
Posts: 18
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« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2009, 09:29:20 PM » |
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I haven't fully studied your other post, but why not just use DLP which puts the files into a user defined structure.
I tried DLP and found it more complicated than I needed. Plus, I could not find out if it also downloaded videos as FP does. Since we do take some video on my wife's cameras, this is a useful and time-saving feature. FP's interface is very easy to use without too much switching between different tabs and menus. Finally, the introductory price for FP is $10.00 cheaper than DLP. As a matter of pure cost, I did not feel that DLP added enough to merit the additional expenditure. - Chris |
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« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2009, 10:05:42 PM » |
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I'm afraid I can't agree with you on the 'date range' folder name at all. HDD folders are just a way of storing images initially, as all the indexing work is done by DAM software like LR, so to a large extent where the images are actually stored is irrelevant unless you need to look from outside the DAM environment.
Also, I don't want to rename the images as you suggest, I want the original names to be kept intact.
IMO, you're not making a very good case for creating so many folders. If your DAM is going to do the work, why would you care that there are three days worth of photos in one folder instead of one folder per day. The one-folder-per-day option is completely arbitrary while the time/date that you download info from your cards is deliberate. Splitting photos by day simply makes no sense. What if you are covering an event that goes past midnight? Do you really want the latter part of the event in a different folder? I honestly think that the only people who are doing this are the people who had been using DL Pro in the past and they did it because DL Pro didn't offer a better way. It just doesn't make sense to arbitrarily create folders in an uncontrollable environment where the data on the card creates new folders without user confirmation/intervention. If you really have a need to split your photos by day, just buy smaller cards and switch cards each day. Or better yet, go to the folder and then decide whether or not you really need to split them by day! If you do, select the ones from a certain date (that can be done by auto-renaming or even by the file date if you don't rename) and move the ones that really need to be in different folders rather than blindly assuming breaks by day. You say you are using a DAM, so if you are that should be easy. If you are not, then you probably won't want your images spread across so many directories anyway. I see no argument for keeping the original file name either! What information do you really get from _MG_1798? If that's really important to you, just rename by date and leave the _IM_1798 at the end of the file name like: 2009-10-16 _IM_1798. Best of both worlds. And if you are worried about having almost 1000 folders off your main folder if you have three years of data, why worry about it? Just select/create a year and let FlashPipe do the rest. Use c:\photos\2009 as your folder and FlashPipe will create a folder each time you download that tells you the dates of the files in that folder. You'll certainly have far fewer folders doing it that way than you will be forcing the software to create a new folder for every day you have images! Mike |
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« Last Edit: October 16, 2009, 10:09:38 PM by Mike Chaney »
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #9 on: October 16, 2009, 11:25:50 PM » |
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I tried DLP and found it more complicated than I needed. Plus, I could not find out if it also downloaded videos as FP does. Since we do take some video on my wife's cameras, this is a useful and time-saving feature. FP's interface is very easy to use without too much switching between different tabs and menus. Finally, the introductory price for FP is $10.00 cheaper than DLP. As a matter of pure cost, I did not feel that DLP added enough to merit the additional expenditure.
- Chris
More complicated!?! DLP requires one and one only 2 minute configuration when you install it, and that is it! I insert my card, all images are downloaded to the structure I specified at first install automatically. Nothing could be simpler! Then I go into LR, import the images, give them keywords and forget about where they are stored. Oh, and yes it does download video files. |
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« Last Edit: October 16, 2009, 11:45:44 PM by imacken »
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #10 on: October 16, 2009, 11:45:01 PM » |
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IMO, you're not making a very good case for creating so many folders. If your DAM is going to do the work, why would you care that there are three days worth of photos in one folder instead of one folder per day. The one-folder-per-day option is completely arbitrary while the time/date that you download info from your cards is deliberate. Splitting photos by day simply makes no sense. What if you are covering an event that goes past midnight? Do you really want the latter part of the event in a different folder? I honestly think that the only people who are doing this are the people who had been using DL Pro in the past and they did it because DL Pro didn't offer a better way. It just doesn't make sense to arbitrarily create folders in an uncontrollable environment where the data on the card creates new folders without user confirmation/intervention. If you really have a need to split your photos by day, just buy smaller cards and switch cards each day. Or better yet, go to the folder and then decide whether or not you really need to split them by day! If you do, select the ones from a certain date (that can be done by auto-renaming or even by the file date if you don't rename) and move the ones that really need to be in different folders rather than blindly assuming breaks by day. You say you are using a DAM, so if you are that should be easy. If you are not, then you probably won't want your images spread across so many directories anyway.
I see no argument for keeping the original file name either! What information do you really get from _MG_1798? If that's really important to you, just rename by date and leave the _IM_1798 at the end of the file name like: 2009-10-16 _IM_1798. Best of both worlds.
And if you are worried about having almost 1000 folders off your main folder if you have three years of data, why worry about it? Just select/create a year and let FlashPipe do the rest. Use c:\photos\2009 as your folder and FlashPipe will create a folder each time you download that tells you the dates of the files in that folder. You'll certainly have far fewer folders doing it that way than you will be forcing the software to create a new folder for every day you have images!
Mike
Sorry, Mike but you have to accept that many people myself included just don't agree with what you are saying, and it's got nothing to do with 'not wanting to change'. You keep banging on about the mess of folders that is created by DLP but I'm afraid I can't see that. You keep saying that FP will create much less folders, but it creates a horribly messy folder structure, and that is the important thing. As I have said, most people will let their DAM do the indexing, so that your examples of what to do at 1.30am at a wedding just doesn't come into it. Type in 'wedding' into LR and get them all without having to do any HD searching at all. Doesn't matter a damn how they are stored. However, where the structure does matter is when you need to look out side the DAM for images. With the year, month, day structure it is neat on the drive and it is easy to find what you are looking for if you know when the event was. For example, in your world, if I say gathered images from a family day out at the beach from several family members cameras over a period of time, the images would be spread out over several unconnected folders from the time they were actually downloaded not the shot time. Now, according to you, you could rename the images and search under that name. But I don't want to rename my images. I would know that I was at the beach at the beginning of August 2009 and look there, and all the photos would be stored in the same place, i.e. on the date they were taken. All this is done by one click in DLP with keywording in DAM. I say again, it's about a manageable folder structure, not the number of folders. Anyway, if you downloaded images every day, DLP would create 365 subfolders, and FP something like 365*3 for RAW, Develops, Video etc. etc. I know you are never going to see what I and others are saying to you as being acceptable, but I can't help feeling that surely you should be listening to your customers - both current (I'm a long term QImage user) and potential - and offer them the option of defining what folder structure they want rather than what the program decided (with limited options). |
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« Reply #11 on: October 17, 2009, 12:31:20 AM » |
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For example, in your world, if I say gathered images from a family day out at the beach from several family members cameras over a period of time, the images would be spread out over several unconnected folders from the time they were actually downloaded not the shot time.
Wrong. FlashPipe will download the images to a folder based on the date range the shots were taken! The difference is, your way, you'll create a sloppy mess of 51 different folders because Uncle Fred left shots on there from that last month and a half, Grandma Lee has photos from two weeks on her camera, Aunt Linda has the date on her camera set to June 2008, and you have photos from only the one day. So you'll get a mess of folders, only one of which you need and one of which matches the day you are looking for. You can't even FIND Aunt Lindas photos because the date is wrong on her camera. And down the road, a year from now, you'll never remember the exact day so off you go searching 10 different folders because you can't remember which day in August that was. I'm not here to convince you one way is better than another; only encouraging you to try something a little different. You don't seem to even know that FlashPipe can download photos to folders based on the date the SHOTS were taken, so I really don't think you've tried it the FlashPipe way. But that's not really my purpose here. My purpose is to show you how FlashPipe is designed, WHY it is designed that way, and you can make up your own mind. If you don't like the way it does it, use another tool. It's really that simple. Mike |
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imacken
Newbie
Posts: 16
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« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2009, 07:38:02 AM » |
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OK Mike, I wasn't aware that FP can download to folders based on the SHOT date. I was under the impression that it could only do it to folders based on the download date. (You only show that on the video.)
So, in our extremely silly beach example, if all the cameras are assumed to be set to the correct date, could I get the images to all download to the same SHOT folder even if they are downloaded on different days?
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imacken
Newbie
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« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2009, 08:29:55 AM » |
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I have now actually tried FP!
What I did was to put 3 images and 2 videos on my card from different dates, downloaded from FP with the SHOT date selected, and very quickly the files were downloaded to 2004-08-30..2009-10-10.
So far so good.
However, I then put 3 more images from within the same date range thinking that FP would be smart enough to recognise the previous range folder, but no, it put them into 2005-06-24..2009-09-02.
In our 'beach' example, that would cause chaos would it not? Would there not be a mess of folders all created individually from each camera with names like 2010-08-01..2010-08-03, 2010-08-01, 2009-08-04..2010-08-03 (if Auntie Jennie still had one from the previous year!), etc. etc.
The worst thing would be that it would be impossible to find these folders in FP structure as they would be mixed up at one level with all the other photo folders taken around that date range. The DLP Y/M/D method puts them all together automatically.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I just don't see how you could identify all the 'beach' images easily from the FP folder structure. At least in the simple year/month/day you can home in within a few days, and with the Explorer tree on the left pane and preview on the right, a couple of clicks would do it. (This is of course all ignoring the existence of DAM.)
There is so much potential in FP, that I think it's a shame that you wouldn't even consider implementing a Y/M/D structure in the options and then keep everyone happy!
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Terry-M
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« Reply #14 on: October 17, 2009, 01:24:58 PM » |
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However, I then put 3 more images from within the same date range thinking that FP would be smart enough to recognise the previous range folder, but no, it put them into 2005-06-24..2009-09-02. In your second example, FlashPipe will tell you the date range folder (when that is set) it is going to create in the sub-folder column of the Output table so it's no surprise. In the case you describe, I would then switch off the sub-folder option in Settings and select the existing folder in the Folder column of the output table. Thus, there is total flexibility in this case and you can choose what to do;  Not everyone would want to do as you suggest automatically.  Terry. |
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