On Fri, 30 Dec 2016 15:07:29 +0100, Romano Giannetti wrote: > On 30/12/16 12:55, Stéphane Gourichon wrote: > > > > This can happen not only because of accessing photo collection from > > different computers. > > > > Another reason: a photo collection on an external drive. Even on the > > same computer, the mount point is not always the same. Reasons are > > varied: USB device name changing depending on what was plugged since > > boot, duplicate disks labels, USB device stuck then unplugged/replugged. > > > I agree with Stepháne, here. > > I normally use DT on my photo collection, which is shared between my three > computers (replicated, really). I have the "XMP first" option set up, and > given that I went quite a lot of hoops to have the same paths, it > sort-of-work. > > I see the option#3 below really interesting. Having the libraries > per-collection, in the root directory, sounds great. > > Thanks and all of you, have a nice 2017 start --- double the nice for the > developers, they deserve it!
I'd like a setting -- not simply a command line option -- to skip the database altogether and just use sidecar files. I didn't find any such setting in the current git master. My workflow is to import all files from my camera into a fixed location (/images/<camera>/dcim/...) mirroring the storage on the camera. I manage my collection (something over 150K frames, 200K including RAW/JPEG/processed RAW) with kphotoalbum ("kpa"). I essentially treat this (currently about 1.8 TB) tree as write-once, mirror it on my server, and keep multiple backups. I use kpa to select which frames from a set I want, and export symlinks to them into a scratch directory (~/NoBackup/<whatever>, where <whatever> is usually a short, vaguely descriptive name that often gets reused because I delete the directory after I'm done processing). After I've processed all the images (which I name img_xxxx_c1.jpg, _c2, etc) I copy the processed images and sidecars back into my kpa tree adjacent to the master copy of the images. The img_xxxx numbers will wrap around after 10K frames. I've never shot 10K frames in a shoot, but 2500 (JPEG only!) when shooting a basketball game isn't unusual (of which I select maybe 200). So if there's a hidden database somewhere using pathnames, I'll eventually get duplicate frame numbers in ~/NoBackup/bball (which is what I usually name the directory where I'm processing those files, unless I have multiple games in one day in which case I use bball, bball1, etc). That will yield...surprising results. As for tags and that kind of metadata, that's what I use kpa for. I use darktable to process images, not manage them. >> Way 3: best of both worlds by fixing broken assumptions >> >> Compatible with moving between computers and mount points, allow big >> collections (tags, etc) that need quick query capabilities. >> >> That reference problem is not specific to darktable. Music library >> managers, git, git-annex, virtualbox, vmware, docker and the like >> solved it by storing all information related to a >> collection/VM/container *at the root* of the collection, with a unique >> ID, independent on host system, mount point and other factors. >> >> In darktable context that would mean store per-photo information not >> in user home dir but in a per-collection database at the root of the >> collection, storing only relative paths in the database. >> >> That requires the user once to point at a folder and tell darktable >> "there is a collection that has this folder as root". >> >> You can then open your collections on any machine with any mount >> point, no more duplication, no skulls, no lost work. >> >> Yet the potentially huge collection has its per-photo library. You >> still can query your photos for tags, etc, very quickly. >> >> >> What do you think? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint -- http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ____________________________________________________________________________ darktable user mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org