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[michel]

I would like to try MC as a photo album but, of course, I would import also all associated custom data added in my current photo album (description, people, location,...) as I have more than 10000 photos annotated (but not inside the files, only in my current db).

My current photo album is able to export these data to CSV file (including a field with photo filename), not to XML file. How to import it into MC ?

BTW, I think it would be difficult to convince users to switch to MC if MC doesn't provide methods to import legacy associated data.

[FrankL]

Which photo album do you use?
You are right MC isn't good enough yet to be a photo album.

[michel]

Which photo album do you use?

Ulead Photo Album.

You are right MC isn't good enough yet to be a photo album.

I am not saying that at all ! I am only saying that many users have already hundred or thousand of photos with custom data in their current photo album so they need an import tool (for csv files tipically).

[10sne1]

I currently use either ACDSee 5.0 or Jasc After Shot.  I am trying to use Media Center but usually end up going to one or the other image programs for ease of use and additional features (slideshow flexibility, editing and renaming).  I look forward to using Media Center more often but right now it's still not as good as the others.

[JimH]

You are right MC isn't good enough yet to be a photo album.

Hi Frank,
What features do you most miss?

[JaredH]

just my two cents.....i would like to see a preview pane like in ACDSee and Thumbs Plus

[Matt]

just my two cents.....i would like to see a preview pane like in ACDSee and Thumbs Plus

I think the 'Image' file properties pane works perfect this.  What do you want that it doesn't do?

[michel]

I started this thread to talk about a very specific problem and it is becoming a more general discussion where nobody answers to my question  

Matt, have you an answer (or may be my bad english made my question incomprehensible) ?

[Matt]

My current photo album is able to export these data to CSV file (including a field with photo filename), not to XML file. How to import it into MC ?

Building an MPL playlist (XML) is sort of your best bet for now.  Can Excel or similar save to XML?

Sorry we don't have a better answer. (yet)

[michel]

It is an answer at least. I found a free utility called csv2xml (they are dozen of them called this way !) which seems very powerful. I will try as soon as possible and I let you know about it.

http://popin.natur.cuni.cz/html/about/adda.html

[sdgrizdan]

When I add a view scheme for images for sorting by filename, Media Center does not display all the subfolders in my parent image folder.

I have all my images sorted by directories/folders and would like to use MC as a album sorted according to these folders. It displays a few subfolders, but not all of them.
Media Center Registered 9.0.118

[JimH]

Can you pin down what works and what doesn't?  And give examples?

Also include details on your view scheme.

Try using My Computer.  It does more or less what you're looking for and it's already there in the tree.

[FrankL]

WA-HOO!!!
EXIF is here
Thanks

I haven't tried it out yet, but i'm assuming it works.
A program called Photothumb has the coolest feature for organizing photo albums.  In that program you can rename files with the date and time from the EXIF data.  But unfortunately you can't do much else.  That's why I really been waiting for Media Center to add EXIF viewing support, and now support to rename files with the date and time from the EXIF data.

If you want to check out PhotoThumb it is right here:
http://photothumb.com/
once installed go to Tools>rename series to see what I'm talking about.

[michel]

Building an MPL playlist (XML) is sort of your best bet for now.  Can Excel or similar save to XML?

Finally I used XMLSpy (professional edition, evaluation version) to convert CSV -> XML. Now I can run an intensive evaluation of MC as an album manager with a copy of my 9000+ photos...

[michel]

Hi Frank,
What features do you most miss?

For example:

- import of tiff (scanned photo, I don't want loss quality converting them into jpeg)

- there is no way to know the date in thumbnail mode except if I fill "name" field with "date created". Why not but unfortunately "copy field" function doesn't apply to "date created" so...

- ability to search/filter by date
[date created] > 10/02/2002 and [date created] < 2003
(> < operators apply only to "year")


More to follow...

[Phydeaux]

I am going to be getting a digital camera within the next two weeks (hooray!) and while I might be wrong, I don't think that MC does any interfacing with digital cameras (?). It should have TWAIN interface and download from cameras as a minimum set of features to make it a worthy image library.

Second: Media specific fields. MC is very obviously audio biassed and quite frankly, not many of my photographs and pictures have a BPM, a replay gain, a composer, a bitrate or even a duration that I particularly care about. The ability to hide fields that don't make sense so we can see the wood for the trees would be a good second step.

Third: Features like creating thumbnail webpages, index cards, format conversions (batch, of course!), some basic image tools (cropping, rotating (not just lossless jpeg), resizing) and some basic effects (perhaps build this on a plug-in architecture so that more effects etc. can be added) such as b/w, sepia, negative (? these are all found on some digital cameras which is why I mention them), sharpening, etc.

There is more, but those are probably the main differences between MC and something like ACDSee.

P.