My Pictures -- how to add new ones quickly?

[Spartan]

I currently have about 3 years of family still pictures on my disk and access them through "My Pictures". (I have roughly 4500 pictures to date)

My question is how to quickly add new ones.

Once I take the pics off of my camera and upload them to my server, I need to know how I can quickly get the database updated to reflect my latest ones.

If I enter the config app and tell my pictures to scan, it starts at the very beginning and takes the better part of an hour to complete the scanning.

Is there a way to tell the plugin to only scan new folders, or new files, or something similar?

[spyder40]

I believe it updates automatically when you invoke the plugin. The directories I just added didn't show up on first invocation after uploading so I exited, re-entered and they were there. I expect it takes some time depending upon how many you've added. The upload I just did was around 100 pictures and put into 3 directories, I was probably confused for 30 seconds before exiting/reinvoking and they were there. I've probably got 2-3 gig worth of pictures total.

[Spartan]

The Ideal setup for a GBPVR machine is not one massive HD or array.

I agree -- that I why I have 6 hard drives -- 2 in RAID 1, 2 in RAID 0, and 2 random IDE drives I had laying around. (See my sig)

However the best thing to do is to have the OS installed on a high speed drive of sufficient size to handle all your software, about 80GB 7200 IDE would suffice. Then have a raid array dedicated to your music and videos. The most optimum would be to even separate your music and video/TV recording, as the music is 90%reading (store that on a 250 GB 7200rpm IDE) where as TV is 75% writing, recording, editing, deleting Best left for that massive 800gb SATA RAID.

If you look at my sig, the drives that house the OS & GBPVR & My Pictures are 2 18GB SCSI 15,000 RPM Drives in RAID 1 (if I lose my pics, my wife will literally kill me). Also, my SCSI Raid card is in a 64bit/66MHz PCI slot and has a 128MB cache (with battery backup). There is no way that disk I/O is a problem here.

The drives in my RAID 0 array are 10,000 RPM, but again this should be plenty fast enough.

In your current setup the Raid-0 IS your problem of fragmentation, but because it is a RAID but because it is also the drive your OS and software and the ehome shell are using. Remember, each GBPVR opens a remote desktop connection to your computer. Page file is utilized, not just RAM.

Ok, one thing here -- the RAID-1 array houses the pictures -- not the RAID-0 array. Having said that, I just checked and the RAID-1 array is heavily fragmented. I'm taking care of that now.

The Reason the GBPVR's disconnect if because of the lag trying to read the files. Of course your pc doesn't shut off or anything, but it essentially "freezes" to the GBPVR because it doesn't respond quickly enough.

I never said mine disconnected.

I believe it updates automatically when you invoke the plugin. The directories I just added didn't show up on first invocation after uploading so I exited, re-entered and they were there. I expect it takes some time depending upon how many you've added. The upload I just did was around 100 pictures and put into 3 directories, I was probably confused for 30 seconds before exiting/reinvoking and they were there. I've probably got 2-3 gig worth of pictures total.

Hmm -- there could be some confusion on my part with how to use the plug-in then. I thought that any time you added pictures, you had to manually rescan. I'll take a look at just calling it up via MVP and see what happens.

[reven]

if you only have one item in the virtual root, things will be more difficult (as that folder doesnt get updated every time you enter my pictures, well form memory it doesnt, so if you add a folder to it, it wont see the new folder until gbpvr is restarted).

if you have multiple items, just add the files to one of those places and just manually browse around, if it comes across a image it doesnt have a stored thumbnail for, it will automatically create one and add it to the database. scanning should only take place the first time you config my pictures, as it has to search every folder in the virtual root for image files, build a list, then go through that list and create an thumbnail and upload it to the database.

so the first time you enter the new directory, or come across the new images, it will be slower (not that much thou , well unless the pictures are a few megabytes) the next time you come across the pictures it should be much quicker.

[reven]

tipstir how large are the images that dont generate a thumbnail ? the only ones of mine that couldnt generate thumbs were around 10 megs (ie wasnt allowing me to save images to any format other than bmp, it does that sometimes...)

[spyder40]

Reven,

I added 3 directories and pictures which it found after starting the plugin, exiting the plugin, and restarting the plugin. I didn't have to restart GBPVR (unless it did it on it's own for some reason). Maybe I found a good bug

[reven]

thats a lot of image, well just browse around they;ll be added to the database we needed.