Dealing with identically named filmrolls

Software darktable
1

Hi,

The photos in my existing collection are organised into directories named after the location/event I am at. Inside each one, i have a dir for my exported jpegs, and a dir containing the raws, which is always just named “raw”. So my directory structure looks something like this:

└── Photos/
    ├── Some event/
    │   ├── jpeg/
    │   └── raw/
    └── Some other event/
        ├── jpeg/
        └── raw/
            └── DSC_XXXX.NEF, etc

The problem is, that when I import the raws in darktable, the name of the fimroll automatically corresponds to the directory name and there is seemingly no way to change this. This means that in the collections module, I have a huge list of identically named fimrolls all called “raw”.

I tried selecting the parent dir when importing, using recursive search, and ignoring non-raw images to prevent importing existing exported jpegs, but it still creates a film roll for the deeper “raw” dir.

Is there another approach I should be using to import images to prevent this problem?

2

I name my file structure YYMMDD event/event raw. then /event processed jpg and /event video. It helps with more than just dt.

2 Likes
3

I too include the date and location data in my folder structure which gives me unique filmrolls. I personally keep all my export files in the same folder. I then find I can sort the raws only or the exported file by filtering for the file extension. This system easily allows me to locate both the edited and the exported file as they appear side by side in DT’s lighttable or the filmstrip.

image
image471×220 11.3 KB

image
image
image2225×547 192 KB

2 Likes
4

On the filmroll collection module you can select the depth of folder names to show. In your case, setting it to 2 would show the filmroll name as

You could also use directory view on the module instead of the filmroll view, although I think it can’t be set by default.

3 Likes
5

Yes this is a good idea. Will keep this in mind and implement it eventually.

Thanks! this solves my problem perfectly!

1 Like