Windows > JRiver Media Center 32 for Windows

NEW: Reverse GeoCoding

(1/4) > >>

Yaobing:
Description:

Reverse GeoCoding is a process of obtaining geographical information, i.e. Country, State, City, etc. from an Internet server, using known GPS coordinates.

This feature is now available in Media Center 32.0.46 for images.

Instructions:


* Optional but recommended.  Go to site https://geocode.maps.co/ and create a free account by clicking the (red) button "Free API Key".  You can choose to upgrade to a paid account later if you so desired, but you probably don't need to.  If you do not create an account, free or otherwise, you will be sharing the same key with other Media Center users.

* In Standard View, using any image view, select a few image files (not too many, see below) that have data in Latitude and Longitude fields, and right click and choose "Reverse GeoCode".  Note that if the "Reverse GeoCode" menu item does not appear when you right-click, it is because your selection does not contain any files that have [Latitude] and [Longitude] fields filled.  If that is the case, you may try "Update library (from tags)" in case previous importing did not get the fields right.  The bottom-line is, you must have the GPS coordinates in order to use this feature.

* After you select "Reverse GeoCode" from the menu, Media Center may ask you whether you want to run "Update library (from tags)" because it found deficiencies in your selection.  There are two reasons this can happen, some selected files just don't have [Latitude] and [Longitude] data, or some files have [Latitude] and [Longitude] data that are not precise (they have only integer values for second of angle, for example, 20°13'3"N instead of 20°13'2.78"N).  After clicking the "Yes, update..." button, you should wait for the update to finish, and then try right-click > Reverse GeoCode again.  The update may or may not fix all the deficiencies.  So you may get the prompt again the second time around.  This time you should click "No, don't update..." button.
* When the process is complete, you should notice that [Country], [State/Province], [City], and [Sublocation] fields are filled, for the files that have valid [Latitude] and [Longitude] data and the server has data for the location.  Some locations will have no results because the server simply does not have any data.  An example would be an image taken on a cruise ship sailing on an ocean in the middle of nowhere.


We obtained an API KEY for Media Center, a free one.  There is a severe restriction on a free key.  They limit requests to ONE PER SECOND.  So, if multiple MC users use the feature at the same time, there is definitely going to be congestion.  If we make too many requests in a short time, the server may reject our requests altogether.   Therefore we recommend you signing up for your own key.

To mitigate this issue, Media Center pauses for 1 second between each requests.  Also, we determine if multiple images have coordinates that are close enough to each other, within a 20 meter x 20 meter box, if so, we do not hit the server again during the same session.

So, here are a couple of things that users can do, to make the process easier:


* Do not select too many files at one time.

* DO select images that were taken at the same location into a single batch.  This way we get the data for all of these images with one server request.  So it is very helpful if you sort your list of files by [Latitude] and by [Longitude] before you make your selection.

Additional comments:

Data quality from the server ranges from decent to great, depending on locations.  For example, an image taken somewhere in China may have the City field wrong.  Instead of the correct city name, the server sends a city subdistrict name as city.

Do let MC run "Update Library (from tags)" when prompted, because previously imported images might have latitude and longitude values rounded to the nearest number of seconds of angle, without the fractional part.

Make sure that [Latitude] and [Longitude] tags are not empty and that values are not rounded to nearest number of seconds.

Limit the number of files to 100 or less at a time.  See above for reason.

marko:
Tried a few of these this morning... It worked well...

You do know though, don't you, that virtually nobody will acquaint themselves with the information provided above :D

Will be interesting to see how that pans out...

and, Yaobing, thank you very much for your time on this. Photo stuff is very important, the more that get on board with it, the better :)

I'll go wholesale at some point in the coming week and see how that fares.
For the first time in decades, I might need to rethink my workflow. Currently, all my places tags are kept in a nested "Locations" branch of [Keywords], so, I don't use the [Places] field at all...

This reverse geocode stuff is so simple though, it's brilliant  8)

zybex:
Yaobing, maybe it's worth it to cache the query results locally with a large expiry time, or a manual "clear cache" option? The coordinates for London tend to stay the same over time.

Edit: Maybe it's already done, or is this only for the current batch?
7. Changed: During Reverse GeoCoding, if the GPS coordinates match (or are close enough) to an already processed image, we use the known data, instead of hitting the server again.

One other option is to allow the user to add its own API key for the service. This would reduce congestion, and some users may want to get a paid key.

lello:
I selected a photo, right mouse but the Reverse GeoCoding item does not appear in the list: where am I wrong? ?

Obviously first I started Update library (from tags)

zybex:
Check if the photo has info in the [Latitude] and [Longitude] tags.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page