manually recreating an Auto Ingest marker

[braver]

I am in the habit of making an SD card write-protected when ingesting, and might miss the autoingest.  So if I'd like to recreate it manually, I need to figure out what the UUID in it means.  I assume the last file on the card, but where in the sqlite schema is the mapping?

[Kirk Baker]

I am in the habit of making an SD card write-protected when ingesting, and might miss the autoingest.  So if I'd like to recreate it manually, I need to figure out what the UUID in it means.  I assume the last file on the card, but where in the sqlite schema is the mapping?

Ingest creates the file.  It has nothing to do with the last file on the card, nor does it map to any SQLite database.

It could be created manually, but we don't have instructions on how to do this.

When I'm back from vacation, I'll see what I can do to get you some documentation on how to create your own data file.

-Kirk

[braver]

Checking in on this!

[ahoward]

Checking in on this!

Kirk is still out of office for a bit.

[braver]

Happy New Year to Kirk and all of you guys at Camera Bits!  Thanks for all the files!:)

[braver]

I'd still like to be able to manually create the marker for auto ingest.  There are situations where I forgot to check it on a big card and then I have to import from selection.  Or I moved PMP to another machine and it seems to have confused it.

[Kirk Baker]

I'd still like to be able to manually create the marker for auto ingest.  There are situations where I forgot to check it on a big card and then I have to import from selection.  Or I moved PMP to another machine and it seems to have confused it.

Here is how you would do this manually:

1) Generate a GUID.  You can use https://www.guidgenerator.com/ and make sure to tick the Hyphens, {} Braces, and Uppercase check boxes.
  It should look like this: {7F7929C1-E261-432B-91B9-17EC872F9C9E}
  You can even use the above sample for one of your cards.
2) In the Photo Mechanic cache folder, inside the incremental ingest folder, create a text file with GUID as its name (do not add an extension).
  On macOS, the folder is in the Library folder inside your home folder.  The easiest way to get there is to use the "Go to Folder..." command on the "Go" menu and enter:
    ~/Library/Caches/Photo Mechanic/ingest/incremental
  On Windows, the folder is in this location:
    C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\Camera Bits, Inc\Photo Mechanic\ingest\incremental
  If you never have done an Incremental Ingest in the past, then the "ingest" and "incremental" folders may not exist yet.  You can create them, or just do an Incremental Ingest with some other card and the folders will be created.
3) On your camera card, create a text file named .pmingest.dat (it needs to start with a period) on the root (top most) folder of the card.  Paste the GUID on the first line of the text file, and do not add any new lines (don't press return/enter) and save the file.

You now have a card known to Incremental Ingest that has no ingest history.

HTH,

-Kirk

[braver]

Thank you so much Kirk!  I've tried that and found that my card had already have .pmingest.dat.  But it was starting every ingest with the very first image it had.

I thought .pmingest.dat encodes the last file or time that was ingested.  Would doing a touch .pmingest.dat on Mac make the ingest go from the files dating after that?  Or how can I achieve that?  Basically, since I'm forced to select the recent files myself, I want to say, I've ingested everything now, from now on pick up where we left it.

[Kirk Baker]

I thought .pmingest.dat encodes the last file or time that was ingested.  Would doing a touch .pmingest.dat on Mac make the ingest go from the files dating after that?  Or how can I achieve that?  Basically, since I'm forced to select the recent files myself, I want to say, I've ingested everything now, from now on pick up where we left it.

Have a look at the files in the incremental ingest folder.  They contain the list of files, sizes, modification dates for each file that has been ingested.  You would have to create that data.  We don't store the data on the card because it is often the case that the card is completely full and PM would not be able to store the data on the card.

-Kirk

[braver]

Finally!  For Unix/BSD nerds, here's the shell command I used to recreate the content of the status file on Mac:

cd /Volumes/LEICA\ M

➜  LEICA M for f in DCIM/100LEICA/*; do stat -f $'/%N\t%z\t%m' $f; done > ~/Library/Caches/Photo\ Mechanic/ingest/incremental/`cat .pmingest.dat`

Notes: the fields are separated by tabs.  The time is in Unix epoch.  The path starts from the root of the card.

And here's the command to generate a GUID all in lowercase:

uuidgen | tr "[A-Z]" "[a-z]"

Update: looks like PMP writes the image list in a random order.  If you want to review it to see what last file is in there, you should sort it, like this:

cat {filename} | sort