Attention! Planned database-breaking change!

Greetings all you Filmulator users out there!

::crickets::

If you use Filmulator and are concerned about keeping your old parameters around, leave a note in this thread so I know you’re out there…

###Background

So in the near future (2016 summer sometime) I’m going to begin implementing new organization and database features, but the changes are too great (and the existing information recorded too little) to make an automated database upgrade possible.

The changes will be necessary for things like backup management (knowing what photos are on your device and what photos are on connected/disconnected externals, moving them around, and syncing processing parameters between them), tagging, and albums.

###What would happen

Currently, each photo has its absolute path stored, and there’s no information about whether it was ever backed up or not. This will change to splitting the absolute path into a root destination directory and a relative path within that.

I’m planning on having you, the user, identify and save destination directories as “Raw Repositories” or something like that, marking one of them as the primary one (presumably the one on your computer itself) and having others as secondary backup locations. Each would have its own little backup database stored on it.

On booting up the new version, you’d identify your current destination directory as your primary Raw Repository, and then “Import from Backup.” It would basically scan all the files in the directory, check for matching checksums against your old database (or raw repository database if present), and simply copy the processing parameters from the old database into the new one. You would also do the same with your actual backup directories.

This would hopefully go much faster than standard importing, because it wouldn’t have to regenerate thumbnails.

###TL;DR

In the near future, you’ll have to reimport your photos because of a database change. You won’t lose any data, but it will be an inconvenience. I hope that this is the last time it’ll have to happen.

That’s all, I just want to notify people that this might be coming within a month or two.

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