Metadata of photos when moving between collections

[Wolfgang Mader]

Hi list,

This mail in concerned with RAW images, but I guess the same would be true for
any other format. Metadata are written to the RAW file, or if this is not
possible to a sidecar file.
What I want to do, is to import those files into a new Digikam installation
using a mysql database and a shared folder on a server.

Server side:
The server exports a folder and hosts a mysql database server. Photos which
will be inserted into a Digikam collection are stored in this shared folder,
and Digikam is configured to use the mysql database also located on the
server.

Client side:
On another computer, a Digikam installation is running. The shared folder is
mounted (via samba) to a fixed path, and this path is added as a Network
Collection to Digikam. Digikam is configured to use the mysql database running
on the server.

Initial import of photos:
I have a bunch of RAW file which have metadata ether written to the file
directly or to a sidecar file. I copied the photos and their respective
sidecares into the shared folder (using tools outside of Digikam). Now they
appear in the client side Digikam's collection, but their metadata not. Hence,
I forced Digikam to re-read the metadata from files and sidecars. Then I
checked via mysql command line that the metadata are stored in the database.
So far so good.

Using the collection and database from an additional Digikam installation:
Now I configured a second client with a Digikam installation also using the
same shared folder and the mysql Database on the server. The photos showed up
immediately, but the metadata again were missing. I had to re-read them from
files and sidecars.
And here is the question: Why do I have to re-read the metadata? It is present
in the database which is configured in Digikam but Digikam does not use this
information.

Thank you for reading this lengthily post.

Best,
Wolfgang
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[Andrew Goodbody-3]

On 18/09/13 19:32, Wolfgang Mader wrote:

> Using the collection and database from an additional Digikam installation:
> Now I configured a second client with a Digikam installation also using the
> same shared folder and the mysql Database on the server. The photos showed up
> immediately, but the metadata again were missing. I had to re-read them from
> files and sidecars.
> And here is the question: Why do I have to re-read the metadata? It is present
> in the database which is configured in Digikam but Digikam does not use this
> information.
>
> Thank you for reading this lengthily post.
>
> Best,
> Wolfgang

Digikam stores the path to the root of the collection in the database.
If this is a local HDD then it can include the UID in this information.
I am not sure quite what happens with a shared drive but I suspect that
your two installations of digikam are seeing different roots to the
collection. Making the path look the same to each system may not be
enough to convince digikam to treat them the same.
To work around issues such as this it is possible to do a database edit
to add multiple roots to the collection but there is no UI to do this at
the moment AFAIK.

For what it's worth, I think that having the root path to the collection
in the database is a mistake. This information should live in the
digikamrc file and make sharing collections between systems easier. It
is a machine dependant configuration not an attribute of the photos.

Andrew
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[Wolfgang Mader]

On Monday 23 September 2013 17:16:02 Andrew Goodbody wrote:

> On 18/09/13 19:32, Wolfgang Mader wrote:
> > Using the collection and database from an additional Digikam installation:
> > Now I configured a second client with a Digikam installation also using
> > the
> > same shared folder and the mysql Database on the server. The photos showed
> > up immediately, but the metadata again were missing. I had to re-read
> > them from files and sidecars.
> > And here is the question: Why do I have to re-read the metadata? It is
> > present in the database which is configured in Digikam but Digikam does
> > not use this information.
> >
> > Thank you for reading this lengthily post.
> >
> > Best,
> > Wolfgang
>
> Digikam stores the path to the root of the collection in the database.
> If this is a local HDD then it can include the UID in this information.
> I am not sure quite what happens with a shared drive but I suspect that
> your two installations of digikam are seeing different roots to the
> collection. Making the path look the same to each system may not be
> enough to convince digikam to treat them the same.
> To work around issues such as this it is possible to do a database edit
> to add multiple roots to the collection but there is no UI to do this at
> the moment AFAIK.
>
> For what it's worth, I think that having the root path to the collection
> in the database is a mistake. This information should live in the
> digikamrc file and make sharing collections between systems easier. It
> is a machine dependant configuration not an attribute of the photos.

Thank you for your explanation. This would imply that at the moment it is not
possible to share the same images among different digikam installations, even
if images and database is network-reachable, right?

Best,
Wolfgang

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[Andrew Goodbody-3]

On 23/09/13 17:25, Wolfgang Mader wrote:
> Thank you for your explanation. This would imply that at the moment it is not
> possible to share the same images among different digikam installations, even
> if images and database is network-reachable, right?
>
> Best,
> Wolfgang

No, that is not what I said.

First of all I am not sure that this is the cause of your problem. You
did not explicitly state the paths that are used on each system and I am
not sure about what is recorded for network shared drives.

Secondly there are people doing this exact thing. Unfortunately there is
no UI in digikam to make it simple to set it up. If you are competent in
SQL you can do it that way or else use something like phpmyadmin,
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php .

See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261277 for details on what you
need to do.

Andrew
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