[Digikam-users] database troubles

[Jean-François Rabasse]

Just my personal comment/opinion

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Anders Lund wrote:

> Since it became possible, I have digikam configured to add all data to the
> image, either embedded or (for RAW files) in "sidecar" files.
> 
> However, moving from pc to pc over the years have worked fine. I unpack a
> backup of the digikam image directory on the new device, and add that to the
> digikam collections. Job done.

I totaly agree with Anders.
All my metadata are into the images, XMP section, for several reasons :

1. In the past I happened to loose metadata through database losses via
    Digikam versions changes. I said ito myself « never more »
2. As Anders does, I can restore all on a different machine just by
    rescanning folders from a backup and rereading metadata from images.
    Job done, yes :-)
3. Cf. another discussion thread at the moment, « remote digikam acces to
    server » the problem of collections recognized or not by DK, because
    the UUID of a drive has changed is solved per se.
    New collection ? ('cause of new UUID), Ok, go on, scan and read data
    from images.
4. I don't want to rely on such or such application program, Digikam or
    other, because metadata requires work and I want to keep this work
    as long as I keep the images. (10 years, 20 years, more ?)
5. I use other programs that access images metadata, that can handle
    XMP sections, but are not aware of DK database schemas.
    (Probably, an important use is when building web albums from images.
    To be able to index pages, one need to add meta keywords in HTML
    headers and, to do this, some standard fields as Xmp.DC.subject are
    required, not a Digikam DB.)

The inconvenients with storing matedata into images ?
Yes, it's true that DK has more information that can be stored in images 
metadata.
My personal choice was to forget that, because the 5 above reasons are
really more important and being able to restore metadata from an images 
directories tree sounds a major issue to me.


Regards,
Jean-François