[Digikam-users] Digikam & video playback on OS X: solution

[Gilles Caulier]

2015-05-16 1:10 GMT+02:00 Jens Benecke <jens-digikam at spamfreemail.de>:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I was going to post a question regarding how to get video playback with Digikam going on OS X. I have been playing with it for a couple months and this was one of the loose ends I needed to tie up.
>
> However, during writing of this post I stumbled on the answer by myself:
> just install the „gstreamer1-gst-libav“ and „gstreamer1-gst-plugins-good“ Macports packages in addition to what the macports-install script in Digikam’s Git repository already installs. :-)
>
> I hope it’ll help somebody! Maybe it can even be added as a dependency to Digikam’s Portfile.

Well, it's simple. Open a file in Macports bugzilla about to add the
dependencies.

I can add this dependencies into my macports scripts that i currently
re-write in the way to make a bundle PKG. Please look here :

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/digikam/digikam-software-compilation/repository/revisions/master/entry/README.MACOSX

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/digikam/digikam-software-compilation/repository/revisions/master/show/project/macosx

There are 2 lead sub-dirs :

- 'macports' to install digiKam in standard macport path with all
dependencies. README file explain how to install current digiKam
package from MAcports (4.9.0) or current implementation from
git/master.

- 'bundle' to make a PKG installer with only required dependencies. A
standard Macports install require around 10Gb of compiled
lib/program/data. PKG files will be reduced to 500Mb... but all do not
work perfectly.

Both use common methods to use Macports, and list of digiKam
dependencies to install for digiKam is listed here :

https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/graphics/digikam/digikam-software-compilation/repository/revisions/master/entry/project/macosx/common/common.sh#L67

>
>
> Now I have one excuse less to get Digikam to replace iPhoto with my roughly 45’000 photos and 8000 video clips … ;-)
>

Another VERY important tips :

- Under OSX, open file limit is drop to 256, which is an horse
compared to Linux (typically 65536). If you start digiKam to scan a
huge collection, you will overload quickly this limit, and digiKAm
will be unstable or crash. To fix this problem, all is explained here
:

http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/ops/tuning/open-files-limit/

- Under OSX, all KDE widget style are worse, excepted QtCurve which
work like a charm. You must switch immediately to this king of style
(Setup/Miscs digiKam config dialog), else GUI is unsuitable : Huge
buttons, Fonts size not respected, worng color in GUI, etc.

I will try to fix these problems automatically with PKG installer. I
work on it since 2 weeks now with huge progress, but at usual, the
last percents are hard to fix...

>
> btw: is it possible to take advantage of the Macbook’s Retina resolution displays with Digikam?  If so, how? Digikam does not scale thumbnails or pictures to full Retina resolution here.

You can do it already. Go to Setup/Album View and turn on "Use large
thumbnail size..." option. You will be able to have icon size of 512px
max instead 256. You must rebuild all thumbnails through Maintenance
tool of course.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/digikam/17532145490/

Gilles Caulier