[sirmeili]

Any chance the ability to use a MySQL database could be added (or maybe it's there and I don't know it) like XBMC can do for Videos and Music?

I have multiple installs of XBMC (3 and counting) and I would rather only have one database instead of multiple (since the HTPCs all use SSDs, I prefer to not have all the writes as well).

Anyways, just a thought.

[Xycl]

There is a chance but not in the near future.

What you can do is to create one SQLite DB and then create symlinks (on Windows it's called a junction) from the other PCs to this DB.
You must ensure that there are no parallel write accesses but as far as you only access the DB to look the pictures it should work.

[Xycl]

Further development:
I like to get suggestions for missing/desired features like the mysql support requested by Sirmeili.
From Mhdebokx came the suggestion to save and load filter wizard settings. From my point of the view this is a really good idea.
He also gave me an updated dutch translation and the idea to use MyPicsDB as a screensaver.

Anyone else?

New Versions:
New versions of MyPicsDB can always be found in my repository.
They will have a different name like 'mypicsdb.svn' so you can distinguish them from the official XBMC repo version because they might be unstable.
Occasionally I'll send a pull request to include the new version into the official repo.

[fungify]

• Second that request to save filters. Then rename filters to dynamic collections, and show static and dynamic collections as one item.
  
• More advanced filters (Person = Jim AND John NOT Jack OR Pete)
  
• View tags and other metadata in image list.
  
• When selecting Find on disk - that the path isn't cut off, but instead scroll to view the entire path
  
• If a screensaver is developed - an option to select which images should appear based on a saved filter (and please do include NOT as an option - would be nice to be able to exclude some of the images from a slideshow)
  

Other ideas might pop up. You'll recieve an updated danish translation in a day or so.

FFY

[Robotica]

Feature request:
Use another EXIF-parser (maybe the one within XBMC-core can write EXIF-data?) to write EXIF-data (especially rating and saving orientation are great features if implemented)

[mhdebokx]

Feature request:
Use another EXIF-parser (maybe the one within XBMC-core can write EXIF-data?) to write EXIF-data (especially rating and saving orientation are great features if implemented)

In my point of view MPD add-on is for selecting pictures and not for maintaining pictures. So MPD should-not be able to rewrite the EXIF tags. The are a lot of tooling for Editing EXIF information eg. GeoSetter in conjunction with Exiftool. Exiftool is able to rewrite eg. the rating of pictures

---

• Second that request to save filters. Then rename filters to dynamic collections, and show static and dynamic collections as one item.
  
• More advanced filters (Person = Jim AND John NOT Jack OR Pete)
  
• View tags and other metadata in image list.
  
• When selecting Find on disk - that the path isn't cut off, but instead scroll to view the entire path
  
• If a screensaver is developed - an option to select which images should appear based on a saved filter (and please do include NOT as an option - would be nice to be able to exclude some of the images from a slideshow)
  

Other ideas might pop up. You'll recieve an updated danish translation in a day or so.

FFY

Add +1 to More advanced filters

[Xycl]

• Second that request to save filters. Then rename filters to dynamic collections, and show static and dynamic collections as one item.
  

That doesn't work because you can delete pictures from albums.
Example:
You have a filter which will give you 10 pictures plus a static album with 10 pictures.
Then you delete a picture within the combined album (coming from the filter)
How should this work? Even if you save the deletions later the user can add this picture or worse he can rename it.
What you can do is to "copy" the pictures to the album.
But that wouldn't be dynamic because new pictures matching the filter wouldn't be displayed.

• More advanced filters (Person = Jim AND John NOT Jack OR Pete)
  

Really good idea. How should the filter look like?
I mean it must be usable for someone without knowledge of boolean algebra and it must not take 10 mins. to set a filter to show pictures from you and me

• View tags and other metadata in image list.
  

Where to show them? MyPicsDB uses default XBMC views. The skin is responsible for showing additional information (I think so).

• When selecting Find on disk - that the path isn't cut off, but instead scroll to view the entire path
  

This is a problem of the browse dialog.

• If a screensaver is developed - an option to select which images should appear based on a saved filter (and please do include NOT as an option - would be nice to be able to exclude some of the images from a slideshow)
  

The screensaver is currently out of scope

[mhdebokx]

• More advanced filters (Person = Jim AND John NOT Jack OR Pete)
  

Really good idea. How should the filter look like?
I mean it must be usable for someone without knowledge of boolean algebra and it must not take 10 mins. to set a filter to show pictures from you and me

I think the best way for advanced filters is to stay close to xbmc itself. Perhaps the MPD can be rewritten into core xbmc routines. Thefore something like 'smart playlist' is the only way. See http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Smart_Playlist

type = pictures
field is the same value as MPD TagTypes

Is this the kind of answer you're looking for ?

[Xycl]

Smart playlists don't allow to mix AND / OR and the possibilty to set left/right parenthesis for complex expressions

[mhdebokx]

Smart playlists don't allow to mix AND / OR and the possibilty to set left/right parenthesis for complex expressions

You can manage it usung nested playlists

Another possibity is dynamic sql, so that the playlist contains an query on the mypictures.db resulting the idFile

[Xycl]

You can manage it usung nested playlists

Okay. But then it takes several minutes to set up a filter because you must create several playlists.
I try to avoid this.

Another possibity is dynamic sql, so that the playlist contains an query on the mypictures.db resulting the idFile

Do you want the user to enter a select statement or a part of it?

The question is how to design the filter GUI.

Fungify's NOT isn't a problem.
Instead of having 2 choices for the value column (selected, not selected) I can change it to have 3 choices(selected (green hook), selected but with NOT (red cross), not selected (no icon) )
That's really easy to design and to program.

But mixing AND / OR in a user friendly GUI is the challenge for me/us.
Example:
Showing pictures from (fungify and xycl) or (mhdebokx and Robotica ). Try to draw a simple self explaning GUI that everyone understands w/o reading a 100 pages manual.
Or more complex: ((fungify and xycl) or (mhdebokx and Robotica )) and not mikebzh44
And remember that a normal user doesn't know boolean algebra!

Next problem: Date/Time values
As long as you filter strings from keywords, persons or whatever you enumerate them.
But for dates we need the possibility to select a period.
But the filter wizard has a generic approach. Filter wizard doesn't know about dates. It knows only about tags!
(I know that's my problem)

My suggestion for next version:

• NOT selection for tag values
  
• Load and save of filter preferences
  
• New main menu containing all saved filters. Then you can access them directly without opening the filter wizard and loading the filter.
  

This is simple to develop and (I hope) sufficient for most users.

Suggestion for further versions:

• A new dialog which helps to merge saved filters with AND, OR and NOT to new filters.
  

This would be for power users because then you can save 3 filters (from above example):

1. fungify and xycl
   
2. mhdebokx and Robotica
   
3. not mikebzh44
   

and merge them to:
(1 or 2) and 3.

[Robotica]

Idea:

After opening the filter wizard, you can easily view & add (or change) simple filters. There you can also go to an advanced dialogue for complex filters. Within the advanced dialogue there are options: Include and exclude. In both lists you can select (or deselect) wanted tags. By closing filter dialogue, the statement is saved. The date argument can be a third screen: with begin and end. Only begin = fixed date. and when end date has a value, there is a range.

If you would like to use OR expressions that could be subdialogue from include/exclude.

But I think this is a lot of work and given all improvements made to picture viewing in xbmc, I think it's best to have a team memeber express their plans since it would make sense if core xbmc (smart playlists) could handle this so addons can use those features.

[balance]

Is there anyway to prevent the database refresh running or at least hide it and have it run as a low priority task -- it runs painfully slowly on my machine as it seems to rescan everything on each xbmc restart - odd really this is he only part on xbmc running slower than media center.

[dawson77]

Hi,
I tested this addon yesterday, but it didn´t worked.
Installation: XBMC Eden stable release (11.0) on a Windows7 32 Bit-System with a MySQL-DB on a Synology-NAS.
I got the repo-installer-Addon, installed the xycl-repo and the dialogaddonscan-Addon (although i don´t find it under activ addons?!?).

Is it because of the mysql-DB?
I installed the newest version over the repo, but it didn´t work.
I tested a older version (v0.92), it worked but it doesn´t scan or find any pix.
The link to the pix-source is a NFS-link. Normaly I use SMB.

[Xycl]

Is there anyway to prevent the database refresh running or at least hide it and have it run as a low priority task -- it runs painfully slowly on my machine as it seems to rescan everything on each xbmc restart - odd really this is he only part on xbmc running slower than media center.

You can disable the rescan in the addon settings

---

The link to the pix-source is a NFS-link. Normaly I use SMB.

My first post

Features
- local or remote scanning (need to mount folders in Linux or OSX. In Window you can access net shares if they are accessible without user/password.)

That means that you can only access your pictures if you mount your NFS export.
You can use SMB if your locally logged on user AND password is the same like the one you need for the SMB access AND you're using Windows!

Second:
The current stable version is part of the XBMC.org repository. The SVN version within my repository may be unstable! But that's not the reason for your problem.