Pictures database and library mode; scan EXIF and IPTC metadata tags into a SQL db

(2012-03-12 17:47)LoL Wrote:  which programs do you guys use for tagging?

http://www.geosetter.de/en/

(2012-03-12 16:38)Xycl Wrote:  No, I won't do it because as already told I don't get enough time and fixing the unicode errors was a time-consuming task. Each corrected error produced several successive errors

Fair enough. That was why I suggested perhaps importing the code to github, so we could co-ordinate your changes and I could try and restore the additional code that wasn't in the last stable Dharma version of the add-on. As I said, I'm very interested in helping co-maintain the addon in the future as I'll have to switch to Eden soon, so my Dharma version of the addon will need to be updated.

Hopefully alexsolex can chime and either rejoin the development, or he could declare it orphaned so that the community can pick it up.

Quote:I don't know why alexsolex decided to branch plugin's code without taking care of addons.xml version number and the changelog. Perhaps it was just a mistake. Perhaps because it was just a branch and never meant to go productive?

Although it was technically a "branch" in SVN, it was the only place development took place (trunk wasn't used after the initial import AFAICT).

Quote:But I took the latest available stable (and highest) version from official xbmc dharma plugin repository.
That was my working basis.

Got it, that definitely missed out some major features (which work just fine).

(2012-03-12 17:34)mhdebokx Wrote:  In the Alex version I was able to scan my NAS, but I can not acces the NAS from the this addon. I tried several rootpaths

\\ username : password @ localipnumber\photo\1901 Michel\

smb:\\ username : password @ localipnumber\photo\1901 Michel\

smb:// username : password @ localipnumber /photo/1901 Michel/

In the beginning the Alex addon has the same problem, but is solved. Or is it an Eden bug conserning SMB access ?
Or is this also an difference between the official repo en the 1.80 version on GoogleCode ?

Windows: Assign a drive letter to the share
Linux / Mac: Mount the share into a local directory
Then add the path as a local picture path.

Not sophisticated but works.

I corrected the last Dharma version found in alexsolex google svn branch.
If you use Eden then please install plugin.image.mypicsdb-0.6.0.zip. It's not part of my repository. Therefore it won't automatically update.
I didn't test categories, suplement categories, geolocations & videos. Please test these categories with non latin characters.
If you find a bug please supply an example picture, the tag and the expected string.

Update
plugin.image.mypicsdb-0.6.1.zip should now work.

Great that this plugin is alive again!

I have a question about using a separate profile in xbmc (not master user):

I can't get access to my home picture folder when adding a path to the database.
The only folder I get to scan is the "Picture Add-ons one"
Any idea how to fix this?

I'm using OSX by the way.

//thanks

(2012-03-21 14:36)nozomi Wrote:  I can't get access to my home picture folder when adding a path to the database.
The only folder I get to scan is the "Picture Add-ons one"

I think that you don't even see pictures without using this plugin because you forgot to add picture/video/music sources to the new profile

(2012-03-14 03:04)Xycl Wrote:  I corrected the last Dharma version found in alexsolex google svn branch.
If you use Eden then please install plugin.image.mypicsdb-0.6.0.zip. It's not part of my repository. Therefore it won't automatically update.
I didn't test categories, suplement categories, geolocations & videos. Please test these categories with non latin characters.
If you find a bug please supply an example picture, the tag and the expected string.

Update
plugin.image.mypicsdb-0.6.1.zip should now work.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. By the way, has anybody tried to contact alexsolex directly to see if he's interested in formally handing over this project? If not, I'll try to contact him. I'm willing to migrate the Google code SVN repo, add the new changesdone by Xycl and put this on github.

+1 for a github repo.
Please try to contact alexsolex.

Version 0.6.2 available (now part of my repo). I hope that I've fixed all possible combinations of unicode errors.

Suggestion for further development:

1)
There are two tables e.g. Cities & CitiesInFiles for each supported exif, iptc or xmp tag.
Therefore adding new kinds of tags is quite time consuming.
2 tables, 3 database class methods and the menu handling must be added.

Instead of using a table like Cities (key, content) or Categories (key, content) a meta table (key, tag-type, content) would be better because then adding new tags types is only done in file parser. Selecting the tag types from meta table and adding menu items can be done programmatically.
There would be only one menu item "keyword" or "tag" which opens a sub menu displaying all available tag types from meta table.

2)
There should be a mapping table. Then we can join e.g. iptc keyword tag with exif xpkeyword tag. The user would only see one menu item called keyword.

3)
An advanced filter. Perhaps a wizard.
Select pictures from country abc with keyword xyz containing person def. Needs 1) otherwise it's not maintainable.

Any opinions?

And from a user perspective:

The ability to disable automatic rescanning of all images each time the plugin is started. Maybe even the possibility to scan at specified times (as a service) daily or when called from a script.

Really glad that someone has picked up the development of this plugin.

FFY