"offline" catalog

[Sulawesi_Girl]

I am planning to archive some of my older photos to another hard-drive, because I am running out of disc space on my computer. So I was wondering whether Daminion needs access to the actual photos? Or could I keep a catalog of the pictures on my computer to search through? That would help me know where to find them on the other hard-drive, instead of blindly searching through multiple zipped folders :P

[Murat]

This feature requires some polishing.

 

1. The present Daminion version replaces the thumbnails of the offline files with blank images. That is wrong and we'll fix it soon.

 

2. Another issue: we store drive letter for external drives. And if the drive letter will change Daminion will be unable to locate the imported files. If we'll store drive ID instead of the drive letter it should works

 

3. It's highly desirable to more the files to a new location within the Daminion UI, to preserve the links to moved files. This feature also is not implemented yet.

 

Bottom-line: support for offline archive is not completely implemented yet.

 

And even if we'll implement all the above features - after moving part of your files to an external drive you'll lose catalog's portability. For example if Daminion catalog and indexing files are located on the same drive, then thanks to support for relative links you can copy the root folder to a new computer and all will works fine.

 

So I have 2 offers here:

1. Splitting the media library to 2 archives: for old files and new files. Each one along with Daminion catalogs (newfiles.dmc and oldfiles.dmc) will be stored on different drives. Although this approach limits search capabilities and I recommend splitting media content of different "genres", for ex: private and portfolio libraries.

 

2. Buying high-capacity hard drive (2 TB) and leave all the photos on the same drive. This might be the better choice.

[franky68]

I also think that offline images are a very desirable feature.

 

Having relative links (as you said yourself) makes only a point if the image and catalog are stored on the same drive. Now in a setting like Sulawesi_Girl's the catalog would not be on the removable drive. So I see 3 possible approaches to this problem:

 

1. Store images on the same drive as the catalog with the relative path - images on a different drive with an absolute path

2. Let the user choose if he wants relative paths at all

3. In the server version you cant move the catalog anyway so allow absolute paths (and so offline images) for the server version. This would give another nice "pro" feature as well ;)

[Sulawesi_Girl]

Thanks. For now, I'll go with the separate catalogs for the offline pictures option. If I were to archive the pictures w/ 7Zip, would Daminion still be able to read them? Probably not, eh?

 

I should look into a larger HD though...my photo collection seems to grow exponentially with each passing year :/

[Murat]

Thanks. For now, I'll go with the separate catalogs for the offline pictures option. If I were to archive the pictures w/ 7Zip, would Daminion still be able to read them? Probably not, eh?

 

I should look into a larger HD though...my photo collection seems to grow exponentially with each passing year :/

 

No. Daminion only imports files with known extensions (7Zip is not supported at the moment).

 

I guess you should take into account that 7Zip will helps you to reduce file size for only uncompressed images like TIFFs, BMPs (without RLE compression). Most of the image formats are compressed (JPEG, Camera RAW)

[Murat]

Having relative links (as you said yourself) makes only a point if the image and catalog are stored on the same drive.

 

 

Yes, you are right. Daminion imports the files with absolute paths if Catalog and Files are located on the different drives. If they are located the on the same drive the relative paths are used.

[franky68]

So cataloging offline images will be possible?

[Murat]

It will be possible soon. As I listed above the #1 issue is disappearing thumbnails for offline files.

This is the "must-have" feature to implement support for offline archives. Once we'll implement this you can use Daminion to manage offline archives.

 

There are other desirable features like:

1. Linking to drive id rather to drive letter, and prompt to enter a removable disk or DVD with specified ID once requested to high-res image

2. Storing medium-size previews...

[exterminador]

Yes, you are right. Daminion imports the files with absolute paths if Catalog and Files are located on the different drives. If they are located the on the same drive the relative paths are used.

 

Hi Murat,

 

That's a great feature I was not aware of, however, I found me in a situation where it didn't help me. I cataloged some files on a virtual hard drive with bitlocker encryption, Daminion's catalog is in the same drive, but cataloging takes a really long time (a lot of hours). I want to test if it is the bitlocker encryption which is delaying access to the Daminion's catalog and tried moving the catalog file out from the encrypted drive, but my surprise was all files are using relative links, so moving the catalog file away from the file's drive make it unusable. Would it be possible to make the use of relative/absolute paths a user preference?

 

Thanks