Re: [Tracker] Indexing RAW images files

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 14:20 +0000, Erlend Davidson wrote:
> jamie wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 13:55 +0000, Erlend Davidson wrote:
> >   
> > > jamie wrote:
> > >     
> > > > On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 07:36 +0100, Tommaso Schiavinotto wrote:
> > > >   
> > > >       
> > > > > I would like to report to the mailing list a critic enhancement
> > > > > for dealing with RAW images files.
> > > > >
> > > > > I filed a bug about this.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't actually know if it is the indexing or the thumbnail creation,
> > > > > anyway having a lot of RAW images files from digital cameras, I got problems
> > > > > using tracker.
> > > > >
> > > > > Tracker uses a lot of memory and CPU to index (or thumbnail) RAW images.
> > > > >
> > > > > In fact using the 'convert' command by Imagemagick RAW images
> > > > > are indexed (or thumbnailed) through a delegate
> > > > > (/usr/lib/ImageMagick-6.2.4/config/delegates.xml in Gutsy Gibbon) that
> > > > > uses the
> > > > > following command line:
> > > > > dcraw -w -c
> > > > > Now this is useless both for indexing, since metadata should be
> > > > > extracted with:
> > > > > dcraw -i -v
> > > > > it does not need to decode the image and it's much faster.
> > > > > If you instead need a thumbnail using
> > > > > dcraw -e
> > > > > you can use the thumbnail inside the RAW file, with no need for decoding.
> > > > >
> > > > > In both cases it would be very fast and not memory demanding. To do this you
> > > > > should deal with RAW images as special cases and do not let convert deal
> > > > > with
> > > > > them.
> > > > >
> > > > >     
> > > > >         
> > > > thanks we will investigate doing this
> > > >       
> > > It's probably better to use libopenraw these days.  For one it's about 
> > > 100 times faster than dcraw, and it's easier to integrate into things 
> > > (it's a library).
> > >
> > > http://libopenraw.freedesktop.org/wiki/
> > >
> > > It should be possible to just read the metadata directly that way.
> > >     
> >
> >
> > we can only use that if its in gutsy main repo (which I dont think it
> > is)
> Surely it only gets added to the gutsy repo when devs start using it?
>
> I develop thunar-thumbnailers, and I had to make the libopenraw 
> dependency optional because it doesn't support all the formats dcraw 
> does (yet).  That way those of us who're not gnome-ubuntu users 
> benefit... tracker is supposed to be fd.o compliant and libopenraw is an 
> fd.o project.


Im not saying we wont use it - just that if we do it will have to be
optional with imagemagick/dcdraw as default

once it gets ubiquitous then we can make it default - its chicken and
egg Im afraid

jamie