I have just been emptying my SD cards in preparation for a overseas vacation next week. I have found darktable really useful at organizing my still images into folders based on date, but any movies I shot with my cameras were ignored. I appreciate that darktable is not for video editing, but I wonder if others would like the copy and import feature to copy videos as well as still images or is it just me?
1 Like
rapid photo downloader.
9 Likes
I guess I am trying to limit the number of programs on my computer. Over the years my computers get overloaded with programs. Currently I will stick to the copy and paste function for videos from my SD card, but I thought it might be a improvement on darktableās DAM capabilities if it could copy the video files as so many digital cameras are now used for both still and video. But I donāt want to detract from darktableās main function of editing raw files and I donāt understand the coding implications.
2 Likes
I also like to limit the apps on my machines, but in general I stick to the old unix principle:
āDo one thing and do it well.ā
Darktable is not an image ingester, although some think otherwise because somehow that ācopy & importā button exists. In my opinion it should be removed.
But the real question is:
Darktable does not edit videos, so why should it ever copy them around?
4 Likes
I find it a great button. Originally I only looked at darktable as a raw editor, but then the DAM capabilities improved and I went hey yes this is great. There is no value in removing it as we can just ignore it if we donāt like it. The question I am asking is if it can be made more useful with little effort. Thanks for your feedback.
1 Like
It can not.
Sorry, for the bluntness but there is no other way to say it.
Darktable does not import, display or edit movies.
So that button would simply lie to the user.
Do you want darktable to lie to you?
3 Likes
If you want a program with DAM functions for images and videos, try Digikam. While I donāt like its image editor, I prefer it over darktable for metadata handling. It allows import of videos, modification of (some) video metadata and it can play at least the common formats.
3 Likes
Bluntness is fine. I just asked people for honest opinions. All good.
2 Likes
Yes I did try digikam and it just feels like just another program to clutter my computer. Copy and paste works fine for me if that is what I must do. I was just throwing it out there for open discussion if the ability to copy and import movie files was regarded as a good thing for darktable. I take no offence if I am alone on this thought. As I previously said I never looked at darktable for its DAM capabilities, but it has either improved or I have become more aware of darktableās DAM capabilities. Also most cameras do still and movie images so maybe not that a big a stretch. Thanks for reading and responding.
1 Like
Hello Terry,
RPD takes few room on your computer and does very well what it has been created for : transfer + backup photos and videos. A very powerful lightweight. Try it, and you cannot leave it anymore. 
3 Likes
Thanks for your reply. I have setup darktable to copy and import my photos from SD cards into dated folders. It works really nice for my needs. It was not this feature that attracted me to darktable, but since the DAM capability is there I will use it and appreciate it. It was one of the functions I had previously used Adobeās Lightroom for and so it was a pleasant surprise when I discovered something similar in darktable. Lightroom would import movie images as well despite not being able to edit them. Since digital cameras shot both still and movies I would like to also place my holiday videos in the same dated folders. For now the copy and paste function will have to do for me.
1 Like
Hello Terry,
Sorry, I missed your reply. 
I see why I didnāt get notified : I forgot to switch to Watching.
OK, so if you need to import videos together with photos, then RPD is definately what you need.
I donāt use the videos import but it is there and works the same ways as the photos import.
You can select the naming scheme or build one, if files will be backed up to another media while being transfered, etc.
The file manager (whatever OS you use) is always there. I donāt even get the point over RPD, but then I import new files every few weeks, so probably Iād appreciate the automation if I needed to do that more often (though, as I see it, itād probably put together some silly script). As it stands, I just use the file manager, and have a tiny script to rename files based on EXIF data:
exiv2 -r'%F_%H-%M-%S_:basename:' *
And if I forget to do that, and start processing them in darktable, I have another that renames the sidecars as well (Iām not even sure any more if it handles multiple sidecars, as I rarely use it):
for i in *NEF *RW2 *JPG *jpg ; do echo $i `exiv2 -g Exif.Photo.DateTimeDigitized $i 2>/dev/null` ; done | grep DateTimeDigitized |gawk '{print "mv", $1, $5 "-" $6 "_" $1, "; mv", $1 ".xmp", $5 "-" $6 "_" $1 ".xmp"}'|sed 's/:/-/g'|bash
Thanks for the replies. I can still see value to me if DT could import the video files. I will just have to copy and paste at this stage. I guess I should at least look at RPD and see if it suits my needs.
1 Like
I use copy and import and would like to import video files also from my card via darktable. Right now I import raw files in darktable and then need to open the file manager and find the video files there.
2 Likes
@Terry @Peter same use case here.
Import and basic DAM in DT meets most of my needs. An option to include copying videos files on import would make it even betterā¦
Yes other programs can do and probably even better, just prefer the DT only approach.
1 Like
@Camino1970 welcome to the forum. I may make a feature request and see if any of the developers are interested in this improvement to the DAM capabilities of DT.
1 Like
Heya Terry and everyone!
Sorry to resurrect this - but I didnāt want to generate a whole new thread if this ended up just being a ānoā reply. 
I was wondering if this ended up going anywhere? The ability to import movies in the same workflow as my images would be excellent. I have been doing that in lightroom for ages already, and itās something I really value.
Being able to, in one shot, bring in the images, and the videos that are interleaved amongst each other is ace; stick my card in, clicky click in the things I want based on the thumb, then click go and they all land in the right spot. No extra scripts, no extra time, no extra workflows.
Now - I appreciate that for the darktable devs, there is real work in doing that - needing to be able to both recognise and generate a thumb from all the many different movie/video types is no small ask (and being able to play them as well, like lightroom) - but having looked through both the reddit and this forum, it looks like a thing that a number of folks have asked for over time - so thought Iād throw it out there again.
I nearly lost some video just yesterday, as I asked DT to import a whole card of stuff, and without remembering that it doesnāt do video, nearly killed the card before grabbing the vids separately!
Anyways - for any consideration - from you or any of the devs - thanks.
Cheers!
2 Likes
For my purposes, it would be sufficient to have a simple command line tool that does the following:
- I configure it with various sources, which are mount points for SD cards, and a target, which is a directory.
- When I start it, it checks all the mount points, and mounts them if something is available.
- It copies everything (jpeg, raw, video, etc) from each SD card into a subdirectory (see below) in target.
- The subdirectory is named using a pattern
date-source, eg2025-01-GX9. I can set up rules when to create a new subdirectory, each day, each month, or if a given amount of time passed since the last import, or a new one for each import, etc. - It never overwrites data in
target. If I already imported something, it is noted, but otherwise skipped. - If this process fails, it screams. Loudly.
- Otherwise, it requires no input from me. I donāt want previews, selection, or whatever. I just want the images copied to my disk.
- Gives me a terse summary if what it did.
Then later on I manually import each directory into Darktable etc.
I thought of writing it in Bash, but I hate Bash. I am waiting for Julia to get executable binaries
Ditto. But now I use DT and I have a mirrorless camera that does excellent videos and stills I would love the excellent DT copy and import function to also do videos. I donāt want another program for importing. Isnāt it a simple matter of just including some more file formats? Maybe notā¦I am willing to be corrected.