Re: Version handling?

[Dougie Nisbet <dougie highmoor co uk>]

On 15/06/2011 14:25, David Morrison wrote:
> Yes, that is exactly what I do ... I can definitely see the
> export/re-import process as being much faster! I would also love to
> rename the files from the cumbersome version names fspot applies.  I've
> never played with scripts, is doing what you said a difficult one to do?
>
> Thanks for the inspiration!

It felt 'wrong' when I first started doing this but now it's quite 
streamlined. The scripting isn't too difficult but mine is a complete 
shambles so probably wouldn't be much use to you. Although I could tidy 
it up a bit for wider human consumption. Basically what I do is use the 
tags as my new filename. I separate the tags with double-hyphens. If the 
photo has a photo-taken datestamp I append that to the end.

So for example, to extract the dates from the jpeg I use a snippet such as:

    jpegcreated=`exiftool -d %c -CreateDate "${fname}" | sed 's/\//-/g' 
| sed 's/^.*: //' | sed 's/:/-/g'`
    echo "Created: ${jpegcreated}"
    if [[ -z ${jpegcreated} ]] ; then
        echo "Create date not found. Using original"
        jpegcreated=`exiftool -d %c -DateTimeOriginal "${fname}" | sed 
's/^.*: //' | sed 's/:/-/g'`
        echo "Original: ${jpegcreated}"
    fi

and then to extract the rest of the tags I use the line:

    jpegtags=`exiftool -Subject "${fname}" | sed 's/^.*: //' | sed 
's/,/ --/g'`

I then create the new filename based on the date and tags.

It was all based on trial and error by playing with exiftool and looking 
at its output.

My script is a bit scruffy and it's specific to my setup but I could 
have a look at tidying it up if you wanted to try it yourself.

If you browse through some of the photos on my gallery website ( 
fellandforest.co.uk), you'll see that I've configured zenfolio (the 
hosting site) to use the filename as the photo title.

One drawback is that I've no idea how f-spot stores the tags, so the 
order of the filename tags is as they are reported by exiftool.

A couple of gotchas; You need to tell f-spot to write metadata to file 
(as explained here: http://www.bluecedar.org.uk/?p=76 ), and also, it's 
always worth running f-spot with debug on so that you can monitor 
progress. If you are writing a load of tags to image files it can take 
f-spot quite a while to catch-up.

Dougie