Hi Mike,
Also, the goal of making incremental download fast is laudable, but should not be the primary goal. Ensuring that all new files -- only ONLY new files -- are downloaded should be the goal. I have a feeling that if you expressed that doing so may take longer to perform the initial scan, people would be more understanding about it.
Many of the features in Photo Mechanic were implemented based on requests by users with specific needs. If I recall correctly, Incremental Ingest came about due to requests from users with the following workflow:
- Snap some photos on a card
- Ingest the photos
- Snap some more photos on the same card
- Quickly ingest only the new photos on the card since last time
Of course, I am only one user, so take what I suggest with a grain of salt. But this broken implementation that relies on file properties that are easily changed both by the user and by PM itself seems to be incorrect. Either that, or I have a different idea of what this feature is supposed to do, which may also be the case.
Photo Mechanic remembers the attributes of the original file on the card when it was ingested. So it won't matter if the local copy of the file is modified.
Incremental Ingest keeps a database of filenames and their attributes previously ingested from a given card, and skips any files presently on the card having an exact match in the database.
If the card is erased or reformatted, then we forget about the database pertaining to that card and start over.
We've tried to design Incremental Ingest to be fast and reliable, but it does treat every card separately.
Regards,
Bill