Download only new pictures (remember what was already downloaded)

Bug #511582 reported by Nestor_013
30
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Rapid Photo Downloader
Status tracked in Pyqt
Pyqt
Fix Released
Wishlist
Damon Lynch

Bug Description

Nice tools, but what is annoying is that each time I want to make a transfer, all the older pictures are re-transfered again.
When I'm abroad, I'm transferring daily my shots on my laptop each. I know this is probably not a good idea, but I keep all the pictures on my card until I transfer everything for backup when back at home.
I know that it probably means that a hash should be computed for each picture and stored somewhere.

Thx,

Daniel

Tags: wishlist

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Revision history for this message
Damon Lynch (dlynch3) wrote :

This is not a bug. This is how the program works. I'm going to mark this as a wishlist feature, but I also have to make the observation that your workflow could be improved. A better workflow would be to backup your images to another source as you download them. It could be a small portable hard drive, or even a different memory card. The peace of mind this provides is very worthwhile, especially if you travelling, because you can stow the backup solution in a totally different place compared to your laptop & camera.

See also this wishlist feature: #509633

Changed in rapid:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
tags: added: wishlist
Revision history for this message
Jere Kupari (jere-kupari) wrote :

I think the safest workflow might be leaving the photos on the card for a while. As we now have the corrupted image bug also...

Wishlist #509633 would be good, but not very automatic.

For me it would be sufficient if Rapid could remember the latest file it transferred and could go on from there.

Or if the file and folder names started with something uniquely determining the file (original filename or date-time) Rapid could check only the beginning of the filename, and not copy any duplicates. For example folder/file name
 D90-2010-01-25_Trip to North Pole/20.50.27-2_smiling polar bear
would not be copied if the new file would be named D90-2010-01-25/20.50.27-2
(Currently, if the filenames are made like this, Rapid will not recopy them. But if the user changes the filenames, or uses a different project name, then everything gets copied again.)

Revision history for this message
Damon Lynch (dlynch3) wrote :

A better workflow is to backup the images as you download them. You can manually delete them off the card once you've verified they've downloaded ok.

Downloading from the camera is an experimental feature for now. There are bugs some in the GVFS / gPhoto library, which I did not write. Users can help by reporting bugs to those projects. If you download from a card reader, then there is no problem.

Please remember that the concept of a "latest" image is considerably more complex when a user owns more than one camera, or downloads from multiple devices in parallel, as well as when changing time zones, etc. The program must take into account all such things.

Revision history for this message
subeditor (subeditor) wrote :

I'd like extend this request. "Download new pictures" would be useful, but "custom download" would solve many kind of requests. By "custom" I mean that user can select pictures from card index (yes, here we need thumb index), as it done in Canon Zoom Browser.
For example, there is my issue, my typical cases:
1. I shoot few sessions one day, I download photos with RPD (best combination of simplicity and efficiency I seen for Linux apps), so all pictures are placed in folders named by date (cause there is no possibility to give them different text name or job codes). What we have now? We have few DIFFERENT sessions in one folder. Not that painful, but could be better.
2. I download photos once for several days. So I can't give different text names or job codes for each shoot session. Sure, I can rename them manually afterwards... Therefore one more idea - images should be tagged via index before download, and tags will be used for folders/files names.

Anyway thanks foe great job!

Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
Changed in rapid:
status: New → Confirmed
Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
summary: - Download only new pictures
+ Download only new pictures (remember what was already downloaded)
Revision history for this message
Russell Harrison (rharrison10) wrote :

I'd also like to add a request for this feature.
I keep all my pictures on the cards until I can confirm that I have three valid copies of the files. My working copy, a backup, and an off site backup. This means I'm waiting for images to upload to my off site backup before removing them from the card. Also, when working an event with multiple photographers its common to swing by the lead photographers machine from time to time to transfer the pictures off their cards be that for simple backup or say for the reception slide show. Those photographers are going to want to keep their pictures to download themselves so erasing them from the card isn't possible.
Currently we just allow the download to fail with the destination file already exists error for previously copied files but that just doesn't proper and doesn't exactly instill confidence that all of the files have been properly transferred.

Revision history for this message
Damon Lynch (dlynch3) wrote :

It would be a nice feature to have. The problem is finding the time to program it!

Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
Changed in rapid:
status: Confirmed → In Progress
assignee: nobody → Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
Damon Lynch (dlynch3)
Changed in rapid:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
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