What’s wrong with using a file manager to copy everything from the SD card? Or, you could have a look at digikam, which can import video files, and has more DAM features (darktable can read digikam’s sidecars, btw).
Darktable is basically an image editor with some limited DAM capacity. If you need more, you’ll have to look for another program (for now, and probably for a long time yet)
It is a manual process so it is prone to mistakes.
What do you do about duplicates, if you don’t want a workflow where you reformat your card each time you copy?
What do you skip? A lot of cameras make directories with metadata that is largely irrelevant.
Where do you copy? Always the same directory where you pile up a gazillion files?
None of these make the process impossible. Users have been copying files manually since the dawn of the PC for various purposes, but most of those have been replaced by other tools: source_cpp_dec11backup_works.cpp with git, cp -R with incremental, encrypted backups, etc.
I’d imagine a shell script that uses exiftool could do this. This is how I import images, but I don’t shoot video
Hello,
Why bother DT with tasks other software do best ?
The excellent Rapid Photo Downloader, for instance.
I will would also welcome dt to include importing and managing videos within it’s not so limited DAM capabilities. But I suspect the time needed to implement this might be better invested elsewhere.
I use digikam for downloading media from the SD card and then pull those into dt via the adding function.
if you want darktable to import movies and become a multi purpose dam tool, the don’t reason, if it could make sense, but bite the bullet, fork and start coding and the do a pull request.
Currently the answer of the Question is: there no ‚we‘ that finds it that useful to spend effort on coding it. 
I understand and appreciate that. However, I still see the benefits of it but lack the coding skills to contribute to the project. Would the issue be as simple as adding a few more file extension codes for DT to copy or is it more complex than that? I certainly don’t expect DT to edit videos, but I would like the idea that all my images including video are handled by DT’s great import feature.
I think you asked this question in the past. It is not that simple. What you want dt to do in the lighttable with those videos? play them? trim? show a frame? show metadata? save a trimed version?
Depending on your answers, there could be more challenges with decoding the not foss video codecs.
That’s an awesome question!
At least my answer to that is to a) recognise that there are video files there, and b) import them at the same time as my images.
As an added bonus, in the file layout, show a blank movie roll image, that allows me to double click to open in an app outside of darktable, allowing windows to work out what it should use.
This might seem like heresy to some, but I don’t import full card at a time into one directory. It can sometimes be a number of trips out with the camera before I get the time to do the whole sticking it to the computer thing - so when I’m doing the import, I select what should go into the first directory, and start the import (keeping the copy and import dialogue open) and then rinse and repeat. In each cycle of that, it would be super helpful for the block select to pick both the photos and videos / movies when I’m selecting by capture time.
I absolutely am not looking for darktable to be a video editor - just a helping hand with the workflow of importing multiple events / jobs / whatever from a card into their respective locations, so I don’t need to do a second flow, or a separate script. 
Cheers!
Seriously … rapid photo downloader is the tool you want.
I’m old-school, and import images and video from an SD card.
From my perspective, it does not make sense to use dt to import or organize video files. Darktable is a photo editor, not a video editor, and as much as we all love dt (which is wonderful), I personally think it would be best to manage videos files another way. There are many options. I am able to manage video import and editing outside of dt, and I am just a beginner. Let’s focus on asking the dt developers to improve darktable as a photo editor. (Although, to be honest, I do not see a great need for improvement.)
Thanks, all.
Agree - because of its renaming and path preference abilities in addition to being faster than the file manager.
Possibly, but AFAIK the (single) developer has a health issue and is not working on it any more. Unless someone takes over, it will become abandonware.
I agree. I even dislike the idea of Darktable having a centralized database and insisting on “importing” an image. (I know you can use it with --library :memory:, but my understanding is that then you get no presets etc). I would much prefer to just have a filmroll = directory equivalence.
Well, if you like being able to find images by any kind of metadata, a centralised database is necessary, if only to know which files to search…
At least you need all images in known locations, locations which will have to be stored somewhere, like in a database. And SQL databases aren’t the only kind; a directory tree plus the ‘find’ command can be considered a database system as well, although less efficient.
Furthermore, you’re not obliged to move files around to get them in darktable’s database (see “import” → “add to database”).
As I understand it, presets and styles are in a different database, the “library” only concerns the images. Perhaps you were thinking of ‘–configdir’?
And that is what you get in most cases. While I don’t use it often, the option to save a search result as a filmroll does come in handy every now and then.
Or you can use “folder” instead of “filmroll” to select the group of images to work on…
Not necessarily: if the metadata can be quickly located (eg in a sidecar file) or retrieved (eg by not having to read a whole raw file, just a specific part), modern hardware (SSDs) allow searching gigabytes of data in a blink of an eye. Eg ag can grep 3 Gb of source code for me in less than 0.05s:
tamas@tamas-laptop ~/src/julia-git % du -sh .
3.4G .
tamas@tamas-laptop ~/src/julia-git % time ag IOContext | wc -l
295
ag IOContext 0.03s user 0.10s system 521% cpu 0.025 total
wc -l 0.00s user 0.00s system 19% cpu 0.024 total
Yes, I understand why DT had a database 16 years ago. But now it could be just constructed on the fly.
Do read the rest of that paragraph you (once again) quoted just a part of…
You do not want to search your complete hard disk(s) every time you do a metadata search…
Of course not. Just a subdirectory that I told Darktable about
Again, reading and parsing all the sidecar files would take an imperceptible fraction of a second. The directory could be then watched with inotify while Darktable is running, in case other files are copied over.
Databases are a great technology, but they are not needed everywhere. Especially as they come with their own problems.
(However, this is all speculative, as Darktable does have a database. Just pointing out an alternative design.)
I only want then to be imported and placed in the relevant folders. I expect DT to nothing with them but importing from the SD card. I am not really trying to force any developer to do it. I am just saying if they did, I for one would find it beneficial. So @g-man says it is not as simple as adding some file extensions to what gets imported and I accept that, but I don’t want another program on my computer so I will just have to copy and paste via Windows file explorer. But yes if DT could do it for me I would be happier. I love the way DT copy and imports my still images.
Lets follow your logic: copy/paste videos but dont show anything in the ligthtable or in dt at all. This can be trivial to do and will make you happy. But you have no feedback if all videos were copied or that the large file transfer was successful. You wont even know that there are videos in our HD folder. One day you expect to find a video and cant find it. You will complain to the developer, dt deleted/corrupted my video. Then you are no longer happy in forcing a developer to add a feature you want.
You also claim not wanting another program in your computer. So you just move the videos and not watch them? No trimming if too long? No adding music or transitions? You will always need another program(shotcut, kdenlive). Why should there be a limit of programs in your PC?
I think this request is more complex than a simple copy / paste. If we did this, we need a feedback loop of successful transfer. I think we should at least show a thumbnail view of the video with a video icon. In other words, do it right or not at all.
Lastly, I want to address the idea that developers go thru forums or GitHub Feature Request and say: “oh! I want to make Johnny happy. I’m going to spend time and effort into something. I might never use it or want to maintain it, but it will make him happy. He will then go into forum saying how happy he is with dt.” This is not normally the case. Some works on feature they think they will use or find valuable for the effort.
I don’t think that was the idea of this post. Rather I think Terry was gaging interest and if he found he was the only one that he’d drop the idea. I am pretty sure Terry understands how things work, as he has never given me a reason to believe otherwise, and there is nothing wrong with discussing a potential feature to gage interest and flush out the idea. God forbid we go to github with a fully formed request!
/devilsadvocate