STV Import: PSE Photos & Videos (Adobe Photoshop Elements Catalog Viewer)

[Brent]

Originally Posted by cncb

Brent,

There is only a long delay when first loading the catalog but the spinning wait icon should be shown the whole time as the files are imported. Once the main menu is displayed everything is loaded. What version of PSE are you using? I was only able to test it with version 5 so it may not be loading a catalog from an earlier version properly.

It's version 5.0
I didn't get the spinning wait icon so I must have done something wrong. I'll probably try to start over with this and re-trace my steps just to be sure I didn't miss something. Thanks,

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

After an absence from the forum of a few months I have returned to find that you wrote this. Great! Thank you. A couple of questions:

1. I believe you use the HD-100 Extender. I have been planning to buy one but am wondering if it works okay with it?

2. Think I read that the Extender wont display TIFF's. With your plug in I imagine it still wont. We are taking more and more of our photos as TIFF's and this would be a real drawback. Curious how others deal with this, short of duplicating all photos as JPEG's in their catalog?

Thanks,
Rod

[cncb]

Hi Rod,

1) Yes it works great on the extender - no different than on the server itself.

2) I only have a few "unintentional" TIFFS so this doesn't really affect me at all. It is something that they will have to add support for in the Sage core program itself.

[cncb]

I just wanted to let anyone using this import or considering using it know that I most likely will not be updating it for PSE v6. Since they have totally changed the database structure and still charge a lot for upgrades I have started to use JRMC to manage my photos and videos (I have been using it for my music already). Sorry if anyone was hoping for this but it probably won't happen.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by cncb

I just wanted to let anyone using this import or considering using it know that I most likely will not be updating it for PSE v6. Since they have totally changed the database structure and still charge a lot for upgrades I have started to use JRMC to manage my photos and videos (I have been using it for my music already). Sorry if anyone was hoping for this but it probably won't happen.

That's OK. The work you did on this was excellent.

Gerry

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the quick response!

I can totally understand your not wanting to rewrite for Elements 6.0 and not wanting to have to pay so much for upgrades. We are still happily running with 4.0 but thought at some point we may want to upgrade.

Have heard a lot of good things about JRMC but wondering how it's photo organizer compares to Elements? We have found Elements works wonderfully managing our 7,000 photos. With multi layer tagging, Collections, and Timelines it's very simple to find the photos we are looking for. I'd be interested in hearing if you do all your organizing in JRMC or some combination of the two?

I had already considered using JRMC for our audio files since I've read that for some reason it's output is better in a high end audio system. We presently use Media Monkey and save our files as FLAC's.

Since you have also generously provided the JRMC plug in for Sage TV it is starting to look more & more appealing to do everything through Sage. Even more so when we get the Extender.

Thanks again for all of your efforts and assistance, Craig.

Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by gplasky

That's OK. The work you did on this was excellent.

Thanks.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

Have heard a lot of good things about JRMC but wondering how it's photo organizer compares to Elements? We have found Elements works wonderfully managing our 7,000 photos. With multi layer tagging, Collections, and Timelines it's very simple to find the photos we are looking for. I'd be interested in hearing if you do all your organizing in JRMC or some combination of the two?

There's no doubt that PSE is easier to use at first since it is tailored to handling photos but JRMC is very flexible and has added enough recently to cause me to use it exclusively for organizing. In particular they have added nested keywords (same as multi-layer/level tagging) and stacks. They have always had playlists (same as collections) and smartlists which are dynamic playlists (similar to Smart Albums that PSE just added in v6). The JRMC photo editor is pretty basic so I still use the PSE editor as well as the PSE photo downloader to get images from my camera. There is some learning curve for JRMC but it is very powerful.

[nwboater]

Thanks again Craig. Think I'll download a trial copy and do some playing. The price is certainly right besides!

My very non techie wife has gotten to love Elements, since as you say it has a very easy learning curve. So JRMC may be a challenge here. But if she ends up having access to all her photos on the TV it hopefully she (we) will struggle through it!

Rod

[boognish]

Hello, Thanks for making this plugin! I which I finally did, but soon realized that i need to get my photo collection organized before this would be useful for me. What Im looking to do is completely get rid of this from sagemc until i do so. It has added alot of psd files to my videos section and basically I just have way to many misc files that need to be gone through.

Can you tell me how to "uninstal" this from sagemc? thanks in advance
mike

[cncb]

Originally Posted by boognish

Can you tell me how to "uninstal" this from sagemc? thanks in advance

The plugin can be "uninstalled" by just loading the original STV file (before the import). However, I suppose you want to remove all the PSD files from your Sage library and I don't think there is any way to do that other than to start over with a fresh library. That is, rename wiz.bin and start over, however, this will remove all of your favorites and other TV stuff.

The plugin uses the API to import the files into Sage from the PSE database and apparently the API just imports the file without checking if it can support the file type (PSD in this case). Normally to get rid of imported files you need to remove the associated media import directory in Sage setup but that doesn't work in this case since the files were imported via the API without an import directory. There also doesn't appear to be a way to delete a specific file from the Sage library via the API. Sorry about that.

[boognish]

thanks for the quick response!
So I got rid of everything but the psd files in my videos section. What exactly do I have to do to get rid of them? Ive located the Wiz.bin file. Should I delete this?
thanks for your help
mike

Edit::
Ok Im pretty sure ive solved the problem. I deleted the .psa file that the plugin was linked to and rescanned my library. now the video section is back to normal! I will report back if I notice anything strange. Maybe this will help someone else in the same situation.

[nwboater]

Hi Dave,

I am trying to install this Plug In into Standard Sage, the latest version. Where you say to go to "Detailed Setup, Advanced page and select Import Sage TV Application Package (.STVi File)" I don't find this. On the advanced Page the options I have (that might be related) are: Manage "STVI Plugins", or "SageTV Application Package (.stv or .xml file)". Neither of these seem to have sub options that seem appropriate. In fact I tried a couple of approaches and ended up with a blank Sage screen on the PC. Had to reinstall a backup of the Sage.Properties file to get it back.

Perhaps they have changed the menus since you wrote this.

Any help would sure be appreciated.

Thanks very much,
Rod

[gplasky]

Go into the Manage STVI plugins. Now add a new STIV plugin and scroll down to choose the PSEViewer.stvi. Now close and let it rebuild the STVIs.

Gerry

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Go into the Manage STVI plugins. Now add a new STIV plugin and scroll down to choose the PSEViewer.stvi. Now close and let it rebuild the STVIs.

Gerry

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for the prompt response. Still have a problem though. When I select Add a new STVI Plugin in file I get the selection of: "Online Videos", "Themes" and "Wethericons". None of those contain the PSEViewer.stvi or anything resembling it.

I did extract the zip files per instructions. Ended up with 4 files as follows:
1. In SageTV/SageTV/STVs/Jars I have cncb.sagePSE & gkusnick.sagetv.

2. In SageTV/SageTV/STVs/STVs I have PSEviewer.stvi & PSEViewer_SageMC

Should these files possibly need to be in SageTV/SageTV/Jars and SageTV/SageTV/STVs instead?

Any other thoughts?

Thanks again,
Rod

[cncb]

Rod,

You need to unzip to the "SageTV\SageTV" directory. It looks like you may have unzipped one level too deep to the "STVs" sub-directory.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Rod,

You need to unzip to the "SageTV\SageTV" directory. It looks like you may have unzipped one level too deep to the "STVs" sub-directory.

Hi Dave,

Some progress - I now get the PSE Photos & Videos selection in the main menu. When I click on it and then click on 'Load Catalog: Select' It mostly obliterates the "4Thumbnail Columns" button and freezes the system. Cancel wont get me out of it - I can only close out Sage. And I have waited quite awhile in case it's searching for something.

My file structure is now:

Sagetv/sagetv/jars cncb.sagepse & gkusnick.sagetv

Sagetv/sagetv/stvs pseviewer.stvi & pseviewer_sagemc

I notice that there are several other files under the first folder structure above, but none under the second. The individual files are in various subfolders.

In re-reading your post Dave it sounds like perhaps I should have unzipped all four to just the sagetv/sagetv directory, not the way I showed above.

Sure appreciate any assistance.

Thanks,
Rod

[cncb]

I'm not sure who Dave is but I will try to help anyways .

It sounds like you have unzipped it properly (files should be in the separate directories as you state they are). It is possible that something has changed in the Default STV that has broken the import - I haven't tried it in quite a while. You are using the Default STV and importing the .STVi file, right? And not trying to import the sagemc .xml file accidentally?

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

I'm not sure who Dave is but I will try to help anyways .

It sounds like you have unzipped it properly (files should be in the separate directories as you state they are). It is possible that something has changed in the Default STV that has broken the import - I haven't tried it in quite a while. You are using the Default STV and importing the .STVi file, right? And not trying to import the sagemc .xml file accidentally?

Hi Craig,

Don't know how I got Dave from Craig - sorry about that!

When you say the default STV I assume you mean the regular version of SageTV? Yes I am. Yesterday when I first tried it I was running the latest BETA version. Thinking that may have been the cause, today I totally eliminated Sage from my system (Uninstalled and deleted all remaining in the Sage folder). I then installed the latest regular version from Sage and installed PSE Viewer per your help above.

When I do the import in "Manage Plugins" I only get one choice of PSE Viewer. Perhaps I should try to reinstall the Viewer again, but before doing, delete the sage mc file so there is no way it could pick it up. Is there a way I can uninstall this without having to reinstall Sage again? Or any other suggestions?

Really hope we can work this out. We have decided to just stick with our old version 4 of PSE to be able to do this. It will be much simpler than JRMC and I will always be working from the latest catalog my wife has.

Thanks very much Craig,
Rod

[cncb]

Rod,

It sounds like you are doing everything right so there must be something broken in the import. I will try to take a look soon and post an update if necessary.