Author Topic: Burning main folders with sub-folders  (Read 4930 times)

Offline BillyDix

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Burning main folders with sub-folders
« on: May 03, 2006, 11:28:35 AM »
Kirk, How do you burn to DVD a whole folder. Example I have a folder that has
multiple sub folders. I want to burn the main folder with all the sub folders included and keep the main folder/sub-folder setup to cd/dvd.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Burning main folders with sub-folders
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2006, 02:06:34 PM »
Kirk, How do you burn to DVD a whole folder. Example I have a folder that has
multiple sub folders. I want to burn the main folder with all the sub folders included and keep the main folder/sub-folder setup to cd/dvd.

You need to open multiple folders into a single contact sheet, then select all
and then burn to disc.

To open multiple folders into a single contact sheet, first open the main folder
by double-clicking on it in the Navigator.  Then for each additional folder,
right click on them one at a time, and from the "Photo Mechanic" submenu choose
"Open in Current Contact Sheet".  You will now have two folders in the same
contact sheet.  Repeat as necessary.  NOTE: you can "remember" this set of
contact sheets by using the "Remember folders..." command on the File menu.  You
get to name your multi-folder favorite, which will be added to the Favorites
pane.

Now that you have all of your folders open, select all and then burn to disc.

HTH,

-Kirk

Offline heywood

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Re: Burning main folders with sub-folders
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2007, 10:14:01 AM »
This is very useful functionality, but with all due respect the UI here is a bit of a mess. My specific suggestions/requests:


1) As implemented and described here, "Open in Current Contact Sheet"  adds images from a folder to the current sheet. But the Pref settings under the Launching tab use equivalent language ("Frontmost" instead of "Current") to refer to replacing the contents of the topmost sheet with those of the selected folder. This is logically inconsistent. (Also, I prefer "Current" to "Frontmost", but that's semantics. However the terminology should be consistent throughout the app unless there is a technical distinction between the two.)

A better design would be to have three "Open" options in the Navigator's context menu: Open in new Contact Sheet, Open in current Contact Sheet, and Add to current Contact Sheet. The first one would behave as-is; the second would replace the contents of the current sheet (to be consistent with the Launching prefs); and the third one would do what the second one does right now.


2) I think I understand how it is supposed to work, but the "Parent folder hierarchy" in the "Burn Photos to Disc" dialog can yield awkward results if there are more than two nested levels of folders. In my case, an abbreviated version of the folder layout is as follows (folders denoted by trailing slashes):

Project Title/
    Date+Location1/
        Sub-event1
            image_1.jpg
            image_2.jpg
        image_3.jpg
        image_4.jpg
    Date+Location2/
        image_5.jpg
        image_6.jpg

... but if I try to burn the entire contents of the project to disk, I am limited to two levels of hierarchy, so the result is:

Date+Location1/
    Sub-event1
        image_1.jpg
        image_2.jpg
Project Title/
    Date+Location1/
        image_3.jpg
        image_4.jpg
    Date+Location2/
        image_5.jpg
        image_6.jpg

The problem here is that stuff like Date+Location1 gets split up, resulting in a hierarchy on the CD that is fundamentally different from the one on the hard drive. I'm not sure if there are formal human interface design guidelines to address these types of questions, but it just feels wrong to me. Is there any reason why one of the options in the Burn dialog can't be "Preserve existing folder hierarchy"? Or, as an alternative, that there be a user-specified root level (which effectively defines how many levels of hierarchy are needed to cover all selected images), such that all (selected) images at or below that level are written to disc with parent folders preserved?

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Burning main folders with sub-folders
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2007, 11:05:23 AM »
As implemented and described here, "Open in Current Contact Sheet"  adds images from a folder to the current sheet. But the Pref settings under the Launching tab use equivalent language ("Frontmost" instead of "Current") to refer to replacing the contents of the topmost sheet with those of the selected folder. This is logically inconsistent. (Also, I prefer "Current" to "Frontmost", but that's semantics. However the terminology should be consistent throughout the app unless there is a technical distinction between the two.)

There is no particular reason other than human error/inconsistency.

Quote from: heywood
A better design would be to have three "Open" options in the Navigator's context menu: Open in new Contact Sheet, Open in current Contact Sheet, and Add to current Contact Sheet. The first one would behave as-is; the second would replace the contents of the current sheet (to be consistent with the Launching prefs); and the third one would do what the second one does right now.

I don't agree.  Your "Open in current Contact Sheet" does not convey to me that it will replace anything.  I could see:

Open in new Contact Sheet
Add to current Contact Sheet
Replace current Contact Sheet

...but I don't even like the wording of the third option, but at least it says what it would do.  Suggestion?

-Kirk

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Burning main folders with sub-folders
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2007, 11:08:55 AM »
I think I understand how it is supposed to work, but the "Parent folder hierarchy" in the "Burn Photos to Disc" dialog can yield awkward results if there are more than two nested levels of folders. In my case, an abbreviated version of the folder layout is as follows (folders denoted by trailing slashes):

Project Title/
    Date+Location1/
        Sub-event1
            image_1.jpg
            image_2.jpg
        image_3.jpg
        image_4.jpg
    Date+Location2/
        image_5.jpg
        image_6.jpg

... but if I try to burn the entire contents of the project to disk, I am limited to two levels of hierarchy, so the result is:

Date+Location1/
    Sub-event1
        image_1.jpg
        image_2.jpg
Project Title/
    Date+Location1/
        image_3.jpg
        image_4.jpg
    Date+Location2/
        image_5.jpg
        image_6.jpg

The problem here is that stuff like Date+Location1 gets split up, resulting in a hierarchy on the CD that is fundamentally different from the one on the hard drive. I'm not sure if there are formal human interface design guidelines to address these types of questions, but it just feels wrong to me. Is there any reason why one of the options in the Burn dialog can't be "Preserve existing folder hierarchy"? Or, as an alternative, that there be a user-specified root level (which effectively defines how many levels of hierarchy are needed to cover all selected images), such that all (selected) images at or below that level are written to disc with parent folders preserved?

There are limits in various burnable disc formats in path depth, path length, etc.  We wanted to make a feature that burned discs that were reliable and useful every time.  Burning high-tech coasters is not fun...

We could probably let it burn 3, 4 or even 5 levels deep and it would work for most people/OSes but it might not work all of the time.

-Kirk

Offline heywood

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Re: Burning main folders with sub-folders
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2007, 06:20:18 PM »
Quote
Open in new Contact Sheet
Add to current Contact Sheet
Replace current Contact Sheet

...but I don't even like the wording of the third option, but at least it says what it would do.  Suggestion?
That proposed wording and functionality would be perfect, as far as I'm concerned. If the wording of the third item still feels not-quite-right, how about "Replace contents of current Contact Sheet"?


Quote
We could probably let it burn 3, 4 or even 5 levels deep and it would work for most people/OSes but it might not work all of the time.
That would work fine. I'm hard-pressed to imagine many more levels of nesting than that, though I can (and do) see it being useful to have more than 2.

As for the limitations, I don't know the details for all the platforms PM supports, but I'd guess they should be well defined for each.

  • I've never run into a limitation on filename length or nesting depth on OS X (I think the BSD subsystem has very generous limits on this, as is the case with most Unixes).
  • On Windows, I'm not aware of a limit on the number nested folders, but there very definitely is a limit on the number of characters in the full filename path: for example, see this or this. Note that there is a big difference between Windows and *nix in this respect: in *nix, the limitation applies to each file or folder name individually, while in Windows it applies to the full path. As a result, it's quite possible to create a file and then be unable to access it within Windows Explorer. What's more, Windows offers no useful information whatsoever when you hit this limit -- it just puts up a cryptic "file inaccessible" popup, and that's it.

HTH,

/H
« Last Edit: December 05, 2007, 06:31:27 PM by heywood »