Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Okay, perhaps not as dramatic as the heading and certainly not a religious experience.  However, I was one of those who acknowledged the benefits of FlashPipe but could not see how it fit with my preference for a folder structure that included folders arranged by day.  I was one of those who wanted Mike to include this feature in FP.  I also was not sure how to integrate FlashPipe with my workflow in Lightroom.  Yesterday, I decided the purchase FP (given the reasonable price) and can now report that it works very well with a workflow that includes Lightroom.  I cannot attest for other programs.

My preferred directory structure is as follows:
Year
     Month
          Day

Thus...
2009
     10-Oct
          2009-10-08

Lightroom will download files in this manner.  Flashpipe will not.  However, Lightroom cannot download files from multiple cards at the same time; FP can.  Also, while it does have a custom file naming feature, the choices in Lightroom do not include the camera.  The camera name can be entered in the "customized text" section; FP can insert the camera name into the name for each file from every memory card from which it reads.  Lightroom will not download video files; FP will to the folder that I select.

So, until yesterday, in Lightroom I would go to the "Import from Device" selection and be able to choose one card.  I would write in the name of the camera in the "customized text" section and then import.  Then, go back to "Import from Device" and select the other card and enter the name of that camera in the "customized text" section.  With FP these settings are already part of the downloading of photos from all cards.  I also discovered last night, as someone else has mentioned in this forum, if you decide to rename your files in Lightroom after downloading them, there is a bug that interrupts the process on a regular basis.

So now with FP I select the "10-Oct" folder as the "To Folder" into which all files from all cards will be downloaded.  I can select another destination for videos if I want.  My settings already tell it to include the camera name in the file names from all cards.  I leave the "Subfolder" section blank because I do not need to know what date I downloaded the files.  I hit "Go" and FP downloads all the files into the "10-Oct" faster than Lightroom does with a single card.

I then open Lightroom and choose "Import from Disk" and select the "Move and Import Files" option.  I hit go and the files are moved into date-specific folders in the manner that I like and I can add the IPTC data at this stage if I want.

The overall result is a net reduction in the amount of time that it takes me to download my files and still get them into a folder structure that I prefer with names that prefer.  As I wrote earlier in this post, this works for me and Lightroom.  I cannot attest to whether or not this process will work with other DAM programs.

Thanks Mike, I'm a convert!

- Chris

P.S. - Is there a way to enter a customized folder name in the "Subfolder" section rather than the download date?

I turn off the auto insert date in subfolder in Settings, and type in what I want.


Fred

Thanks,
Chris

I leave the auto date folder set and then type in a brief description after the date.  8)
Terry.

It certainly does.
Today I did my first big download of over a 1000 images from a card. I did this for a friend who'd had it done at a shop but the CD's were duff.
The friend has been to China for a month so she needed a set of folders to make it easier to review the images by date and therefore by implication, the location where they were taken.
Using FP, I renamed files to date and camera number into a date-descriptor named folder.

It was then very easy to separate the images by date, in Qimage, using their file names, and at the same time move them to their new sub folders that had a name based on a date range.
I ended up with 8 sub-folders, each with about 120 images in each. This took me about 30 minutes, which wasn't bad bearing in mind I'd never seen the images before.
See attachment below for final folder structure.

Hopefully, by sharing this information, it will help others to see how FP can be used and that it is not difficult to post sort images if the renaming feature is used to help the process.
Terry.