Daminion Standalone & NAS

[rau]

Hi

 

I'm thinking about purchasing Daminion Standalone (ie. Not a Server product) for home use. I have these questions:

 

1) Is the Standalone Vsn now also at release level "5.5" and with the relevant recently announced enhancements included?

2) Will the system work 'happily' if I store my Digital Assets on a NAS (Synology)?

3) Is it possible to access the Digital Assets (using search capability of Daminion) from more than one PC (in the house)?

 

I presume one solution to (3) might be to use a Remote Desktop connection (to connect to the PC on which Daminion is installed) - but is there any other more elegant means (other than deploying Daminion Server)?

 

And finally:

 

(4) If using Daminion Server, is it possible to run a Client on the same PC as the server?

 

Thanks

[SebastianKowalski]

Hi

1. 
    
   
2. yes
   
3. I'm currently doing this and it works fine (on a 1GB network between NAS and PC)
   
4. Well, the standalone client has it's own local file based catalogues. Running two clients means running separate catalogues. There are a number of corner cases where this approach will lead to unexpected results due to the given scenario. I need to admitt, I have not tried it myself, but this is how I would expect this Scenario to play: Only asset related metadata which can be stored with the file (in the file or xmp) can be transferred between the two catalogues, if metadata is saved from one client and read by the other. As soon as the autosync feature is used on both clients, metadata is changed on both sides, metadata can be overwritten by the other. You will not notice until you read the metadata from the files. And then the 'right' Information might be gone. Not an option for me.
   
5. yes
   

I'm using the home server version, to me it's working fine, with one exception: Currently it is not possible to protect assets with means by the server as the home server will allow 1 or 2 concurrent connections (depending on the license you purchase), anonymous, with admin permissions, from any device being able to run the client or a browser. This has been confirmed by Daminion. No Information so far whether Daminion will change this. I think it is worth to know about it as the demo version running nicely as a 10 user team server does not reveal this behavior until a purchased license has been entered. It affects how I use the home server. Unfortunately.

[rau]

I'm using the home server version.

Thanks for the info. Why do you use Server instead of standalone, noting the extra cost?

 

Currently it is not possible to protect assets with means by the server as the home server will allow 1 or 2 concurrent connections (depending on the license you purchase), anonymous, with admin permissions, from any device being able to run the client or a browser.

I thought I read that, with Server, users log on and are given "roles" etc so that some users can be restricted to read only, etc.?

 

If I choose standalone, and initially install the client (and hence the catalogue) on one PC, and later want to move to a different PC, is that move easy to do? What has to be done?

 

Is moving from a standalone configuration to a server configuration easy to do?

 

Many thanks for your information and advice.

[Daria Kotilainen]

Hi Rau

 

I thought I read that, with Server, users log on and are given "roles" etc so that some users can be restricted to read only, etc.?

 

This is only possible in Daminion Team server version. Daminion home server goes with one or two users with predefined admin roles which cannot be changed.

 

If I choose standalone, and initially install the client (and hence the catalogue) on one PC, and later want to move to a different PC, is that move easy to do? What has to be done?

 

Yep, easy like a charm. You will need to deactivate the license on one PC > uninstall the program from the old PC > install it on the new one > activate the license > move or copy your catalog+backup files to the new PC (the catalog is a single .dmc file with several backup files stored in the same folder as the catalog)

 

Is moving from a standalone configuration to a server configuration easy to do?

 

Yep, Daminion standalone will work as client app for Daminion server and you will also be able to import your standalone catalog into the server catalog, so that you won't have to do the double job by retagging your files.

 

Btw, another advise to save yourself from retagging is to write all your tags to files metadata and create a copy of your catalog from time to time :)

 

Kind regards,

Daria

[Paul Barrett]

Daria's point about writing the metadata to the records is well made.

 

One of Daminion's strong points is that while it has an internal catalog for performance purposes, there is very little information in it that is NOT written to the image files. This means that you can construct a new catalog from just the image files by reading the data from file to an empty catalog, or reconstruct a catalog.

 

This is in contrast to many apps that store critical metadata only in their catalog.

 

I have Home Server running on my main PC, referencing a library stored on a Synology NAS and I can fire up a second PC and edit without any issues. Everything is synced. I can even make metadata changes in Synology Photo Station and they will be reflected in Daminion.

 

You might need some help setting it up as there is some horrible techie stuff in the bowels of Windows that needs configuring. Daria and the team were incredibly helpful by doing it for me. It works brilliantly.

 

There's a whole section in the Help system devoted to using Daminion with Synology in a setup where Daminion is the library manager and Synology Photo Station is the web UI through which the library is published.

[lintujuh]

Hi!

 

Me, Wilfried and Uwe have noticed that there have been issues that not all metadata is not correctly synced into the files. I recommend to use my program to verify that the metadata in the Daminion database and in the images are in sync.

 

-Juha