Monitoring a folder

[simonmason]

Is it possible to have Photo Supreme monitor a root folder and all folders underneath? I have several people uploading images into my NAS so I don't always know when there are new pictures so I would like to setup Photo Supreme to automatically add new pictures as they become available. Is this possible? Thanks.

[Hert]

You can only do that manually. Right click on a folder and select " Verify Folder"

[rau]

If the user does not know which folders have new photos, he might have to select all folders. Perhaps only 10 new photos have arrived into a 50,000 photo collection. Is "Verifying" the entire collection viable in such scenario or should the user be adopting work steps to avoid that?

[Preston B]

I agree with Rau. Verifying all the folders under the root folder would take a very, very long time for a large collection.

My suggestion to Simon would be to have a folder named, for example, "New-Images". The folks who store images on the NAS would upload to that folder, only, and then once every few days, Simon would 'Verify folder' as Hert mentioned. That way, the verification would be more efficient.
--P

[sgbotsford]

Consider the following scenario:

I add a new keyword to an image.

PSu writes the new keyword to the image, and flags that entry for writing out to sidecar files and to the image itself.

Power failure.

On start up, PSu looks at the flags, sees that for this file action was to be taken, but wasn't marked as compelted. So PSu does a verify, finds that the sidecar was done, but that the main file was not.

Ok. No problem Updates the main file, and puts a tickmark 'done' on that task.

***

Scenario 2.

There's a file system error and PSu detects an inconsistency in the database. PSu makes profuse apologies to the user, says that the database is readonly right now while a full verification goes on. PSu first of all takes care of any updates, then reads all the sidecar files to rebuild the database.

Fair enough. Worst case you might lose a few changes depending on whether PSu uses some form of journaled entry system.

***

Scenario 3.

PSu sends a file for editing to ImageMangler. It comes back stripped of most meta data. PSu has been told that ImageMangler doesn't respect metadata, so PSu is ready for this, and uses the sidecar file from the version sent to reconstruct the meta data when IM finishes.

Scenario 4

I've moved to Brittain, and now it's colour instead of color, and 1,111 other changes and rather than tie up PSu to make the changes, I write a script that uses find and perl and exif2 and corrects the keywords in the sidecar files.

Now there has been a massive change, and the sidecar files are newer than the last changed fields in the database. Is PSu smart enough to figure out that the sidecars have been changed by an external program, and update it's database with the new contents?

[wesstl]

I agree with Rau. Verifying all the folders under the root folder would take a very, very long time for a large collection.

My suggestion to Simon would be to have a folder named, for example, "New-Images". The folks who store images on the NAS would upload to that folder, only, and then once every few days, Simon would 'Verify folder' as Hert mentioned. That way, the verification would be more efficient.
--P

You don't want all new images stored in a single folder while previous images are filed in a user desire structure. Eventually those "new" images have to be filed in the appropriate subfolders which means verifying those folders anyway. I have the same issue and would love a feature that automatically verifies selected folders at specified intervals.

[jstartin]

You don't want all new images stored in a single folder while previous images are filed in a user desire structure. Eventually those "new" images have to be filed in the appropriate subfolders which means verifying those folders anyway. I have the same issue and would love a feature that automatically verifies selected folders at specified intervals.

If you use PSu to move image files to a different folder then it knows what you have done and updates the catalog entry with the new location. No folder verification is needed. Verification should only be needed if files are added, moved or altered with other applications.

[sgbotsford]

Get FSWatch (unix derived systems. Probably equivalent in windows.)

FSWatch -recursive {top level folder} > watch.log

This will at least give you a list of files that change

There may be other programs that can tell you what sort of file system event occurred -- move, rename, creation, deletion.

[wesstl]

You don't want all new images stored in a single folder while previous images are filed in a user desire structure. Eventually those "new" images have to be filed in the appropriate subfolders which means verifying those folders anyway. I have the same issue and would love a feature that automatically verifies selected folders at specified intervals.

If you use PSu to move image files to a different folder then it knows what you have done and updates the catalog entry with the new location. No folder verification is needed. Verification should only be needed if files are added, moved or altered with other applications.

I did not know that. Thanks for the info.