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Author Topic: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience  (Read 2804 times)

rjm

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ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« on: April 06, 2009, 11:11:48 pm »

This is a summary of my experience moving Cerious Software's ThumbsPlus (T+) meta-data to JRiver's Media Center (MC). Some background discussion can be found here http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51370.0.

I began as a T+ user in March 2002. I chose T+ because I felt it had the most powerful image management features on the market. I have been a happy and strong advocate of T+ over the years.

My collection contains 15,300 family images (9000 digital camera images, 4800 scans of slides and prints, and 1500 video clips). Every image is accurately tagged with:
- Date (image was taken)
- Artist (who took the image)
- Quality (1-4)
- Keywords (max 15 keywords assigned to one image)
- Description (arbitrary text)

In addition, I have about 45 Galleries (aka Playlists) that I use for collections that are not amenable to a query and/or that need a manually specified sort order. Lastly, I have about 10 FoundFiles (aka Smartlists).

About a year ago I started thinking about moving my data from T+ to MC. My motivations were:
- T+ development had become dormant and I was concerned about marooning my data
- very high satisfaction with MC features and confidence that my data would be secure in MC
- desire to fully integrate all of my media (music, video, images, documents, audiobooks, dvds, etc.) under one roof

I explored many options for transferring the data. The best (and only feasible) approach was to export the data from T+'s underlying Access database into MPL (XML) format for import into MC. My Access programming skills are not strong enough to do this myself so I waited hoping for a new option. Recently a kind member on this forum offered to do the conversion for me.

In preparation, I opened the T+ database with Access and deleted all tables, fields, and queries except the image filename and my own data. This resulted in a dramatic size reduction from 125MB to 4.5MB. The final database consisted of one table with path, filename, date, artist, quality, description; a second table for keywords; and a third table for playlists. I emailed this to my helper and he emailed me back one MPL file (containing the meta-data) plus 45 M3U files (one for each of my Playlists). I do not know how the conversion was accomplished but I suspect one tricky bit was figuring out how to convert the relational keywords into a flat list of delimited keywords.

I then finalized the mapping between T+ fields and MC fields and did a find and replace on the MPL to adjust the field names before importing into MC. The import worked flawlessly the first time and was very quick.

I then did some spot checks on the data and found a few minor problems, presumably caused by some max string length being exceed in the conversion process. These were easy to correct.

I then imported each of the 45 M3U's and manually created Playlist Groups to re-establish the original Gallery hierarchy.

Next, I manually created Smartlists to mimic my T+ FoundFiles.

Finally, I designed a new view scheme to take advantage of the meta-data, and using this view I methodically checked every Artist and every Keyword to ensure my MC library was accurately synchronized with my T+ database. It was, perfectly.

I am VERY pleased with the final results. MC is superb for navigating, searching, and manipulating meta-data. My image collection feels like it has new vitality because it is so easy and quick to find and view things.

In addition, I love having all of my media fully integrated under one roof. For example, I create A/V presentations for family and friends from time to time. These presentations include music, still images, and video. I can now find and sequence these assets using MC before exporting the files for dvd production in another tool. When done I can import the dvd into MC as well as my project design documents. All of the assets plus the final dvd and documents can be nicely organized under one MC playlist group.

For anyone contemplating a switch to MC for their image collection, I heartily recommend it. You will be very pleased with the results.
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dcwebman

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2009, 07:56:05 am »

Glad you were able to successfully convert your image data. Guess I need to now try to do my Photoshop Elements data. It would certainly be a lot easier if the Tag function worked for all IPTC and XMP fields. I might have to find some tool to export these outside of MC and create an MPL file.
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Jeff

cncb

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2009, 09:50:33 am »

Glad you were able to successfully convert your image data. Guess I need to now try to do my Photoshop Elements data. It would certainly be a lot easier if the Tag function worked for all IPTC and XMP fields. I might have to find some tool to export these outside of MC and create an MPL file.

What version of PSE?  I wrote a converter tool (Tags and Collections) a while ago to move from PSE v5 to MC.
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raldo

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2009, 09:57:37 am »

How do you guys deal with people when you tag your photos?
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marko

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2009, 10:48:35 am »

How do you guys deal with people when you tag your photos?
I tell them all to leave me alone when I'm tagging photos as distractions just make me irritable!!


I used to use the stock [People] field, but for some time now, I've been putting everything in the [Keywords] field using nesting. It's not ideal as there are small portability issues (mostly ugly keywords in other apps that don't support the nesting method), but it works quite well for me so far.

-marko.

rjm

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2009, 11:20:51 am »

How do you guys deal with people when you tag your photos?

I agree with Marko. Within reason, it is best to minimize the number of fields used for tagging. So rather than using a separate field for people, location, type, and event, I collapse them all into the single field Keyword and use the following keyword naming convention to keep things tidy:

events
  E: Vacation
  E: Hiking & Camping
  E: Birthday

locations
  L: My Home
  L: Inlaw's Home
  L: Hawaii

people
  P: Joe
  P: Mark
  P: Bill

type
  T: Portrait
  T: Nature
  T: Class or Team

I also try to avoid creating keywords that will be rarely used. So family members that are in a lot of photos get their own keyword. Others are assigned the keyword "P: Family" and I enter their name in the Description field. By filtering on photos with "P: Family" and/or searching the Description I can easily find photos of rare people.
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Daydream

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2009, 04:27:54 pm »

Congrats rjm for transferring your collection!

I'm thinking to do the same (T+ to MC) but my collection has quite a different profile. I'm in EXIF+IPTC hell for over 40000 pics (not shot by me; obsessive-compulsive collector here). I mean how would one brake down a Caption that lists everything in one field:

Louise Redknapp
Elle Style Awards
Westway Sports Centre
London
February 12, 2008

Whoever tagged these pics must've been nuts. I could fill in some fields gathering data from other segments (file/folder structure, other EXIF/IPTC fields) but I don't see how all these all-together fields can be parsed in any logical way ("caption" is just an example, it's not just one problem field across collection). Opened to suggestions - export / brake down / sql / regular expressions / redefine quantum mechanics / anything.

Note: the point is mute now but there'll be a T+ 8, moving away from Access to SQL :).

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rjm

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2009, 06:42:10 pm »

Congrats rjm for transferring your collection!

I'm thinking to do the same (T+ to MC) but my collection has quite a different profile. I'm in EXIF+IPTC hell for over 40000 pics (not shot by me; obsessive-compulsive collector here). I mean how would one brake down a Caption that lists everything in one field:

Louise Redknapp
Elle Style Awards
Westway Sports Centre
London
February 12, 2008

Whoever tagged these pics must've been nuts. I could fill in some fields gathering data from other segments (file/folder structure, other EXIF/IPTC fields) but I don't see how all these all-together fields can be parsed in any logical way ("caption" is just an example, it's not just one problem field across collection). Opened to suggestions - export / brake down / sql / regular expressions / redefine quantum mechanics / anything.

Note: the point is mute now but there'll be a T+ 8, moving away from Access to SQL :).


If the captions have any kind of regular structure (such as 1st line is name, 4th line is location, 5th line is date) then you should be able to parse out the data into separate fields using Access tools, or maybe MC tools.

If the captions have random structure then you are out of luck and will have to import all into a text string. If you have to resort to this the data will still be useful because MC's search is very fast and friendly on arbitrary text.

I am aware that T+ is working on a new version, although they have been promising it for a long time. I think it may have some useful new features for export such as EXIF filling from tags, and file renaming from EXIF.
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dcwebman

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Re: ThumbsPlus to JRiver - my experience
« Reply #8 on: April 09, 2009, 07:46:20 am »

What version of PSE?  I wrote a converter tool (Tags and Collections) a while ago to move from PSE v5 to MC.
Version 6. I remember you tool way back and I guess I should have taken the plunge then. I'd be happy if they just got the Tag function working completely.
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Jeff
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