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

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by 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.

Craig,

Thanks very much - hope it's not a big hassle, especially for something you don't even use anymore!

Rod

[cncb]

Rod,

It looks like the default STV did change such that there's a bad reference in the import. In any case, you can get around this by editing a text file.

Close Sage and open the SageClient.Properties file in Notepad ("c:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\" in Win XP). Find the "pse/catalogfile" line and add the path to your PSE catalog like in the following example (use your specific path, of course, and note the necessary extra backslashes in there):

pse/catalogfile=C\:\\My Files\\My Catalog.psa

Save the file and reopen Sage. It should open your catalog and import your photos. If you're using extenders you will have to do this for each .Properties file. Hopefully you can get this working - I can fix the import but would rather not do it at the moment.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Thanks very much for putting together a workaround.

I'm not off to a good start. Under SageTV/SageTV there a many files but not anything to do with Sage.Client There is a remoteclients.properties.defaults though.

We are using two extenders, but have only set one up with the latest Sage install. You mention the extenders properties file - is that remoteclients.properties?

Craig, you sound quite busy right now and I don't want to use up a bunch of your time troubleshooting this procedure- if you think it could take quite a bit. Especially if you plan on fixing the import at some future time. We are enthused about getting our catalog on the TV's but can sure wait awhile longer. We very much appreciate all you have done to help out Sage users!

Thanks A lot,
Rod

[cncb]

No problem at all. It's not a big deal fixing the import - I was just being lazy. If you're using 2 extenders it is not reasonable to have to edit the files manually. I will post a fix to the import soon.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

No problem at all. It's not a big deal fixing the import - I was just being lazy. If you're using 2 extenders it is not reasonable to have to edit the files manually. I will post a fix to the import soon.

Thanks very much Craig - really appreciate it!

Rod

[cncb]

Ok, Rod. Download the import package again and extract it to the "SageTV\SageTV" directory again overwriting all the existing files. When you restart Sage it should ask you if you want to rebuild the STV since the PSEViewer.stvi file has changed. If not, go into the manage STVs dialog and do a manual rebuild. You should now be able to select your catalog file in the Sage UI. Let me know how it goes.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Ok, Rod. Download the import package again and extract it to the "SageTV\SageTV" directory again overwriting all the existing files. When you restart Sage it should ask you if you want to rebuild the STV since the PSEViewer.stvi file has changed. If not, go into the manage STVs dialog and do a manual rebuild. You should now be able to select your catalog file in the Sage UI. Let me know how it goes.

Hi Craig,
Unfortunately it's still acting the same way. I downloaded the new import and unzipped as previously. When I started Sage it did not ask If I want to rebuild, so I went to the Manage Plugins and did it. I tried this 2 or 3 times with the same results.

Here are the files I have of yours:

SAgeTV/SageTV/Jars cncb.sage.pse 44kb 3/8/2009 & gkusnick.sagetv 527 Kb 3/8/2009

Sagetv/sagetv/stvs PSEViewr.stvi 102 kb 3/8/2009 & PSEViewer_sagemc 118 kb 3/8/2009

Hate to give you this bad news Craig.

Thanks Very Much,
Rod

[cncb]

Rod, I just tried downloading the updated package and it is working for me. Did you overwrite the existing .stvi file when you unzipped it (if it didn't prompt you to rebuild then you may not have and the file should have today's date, 3/10)? Try unzipping it again or just extract the .stvi to somewhere else. Then, go in and remove the existing .stvi and add it again making sure you select the new one.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Rod, I just tried downloading the updated package and it is working for me. Did you overwrite the existing .stvi file when you unzipped it (if it didn't prompt you to rebuild then you may not have and the file should have today's date, 3/10)? Try unzipping it again or just extract the .stvi to somewhere else. Then, go in and remove the existing .stvi and add it again making sure you select the new one.

Success!!! Somehow I must not have been replacing the old .stvi file. This time I extracted to a different folder, deleted the original in Sage, and copy and pasted the new one to Sage. This time when I started Sage it asked for the rebuild and now when I open the viewer it asks me to load the catalog and lists all the drives available.

Now my complication is that the catalog and all the photos are on my wifes computer on the network and I don't see any way from Sage to select something on the network - it only lists the local drives on my machine.

I looked at some earlier forum posts on page one about networks, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

This doesn't need to be a problem as I can copy everything from her machine to a local drive. That's good for backup, but I wont always have the most current photos on my machine.

If there is an easy answer to this I'd appreciate it Craig, otherwise I have taken enough of your time.

Thanks so much,
Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

If there is an easy answer to this I'd appreciate it Craig, otherwise I have taken enough of your time.

It's not necessarily easy . You will have to share the directory on your wife's PC that contains the .psa file on the network such that you can map that network drive on your server. Once you map the network drive to 'P:', for example, you can then navigate that in Sage and select the catalog file.

But you will also need to share the directories that contain all the photos in the catalog so that both PSE (wife's PC) and Sage (server) can resolve/find them. The easiest way to do this would be to use full network paths when you import the photos into PSE (e.g. "\\WIFESPC\Pictures\"). Then, the server should also be able to find all the photos (although I am not 100% sure that Sage can use network paths, though).

An alternative way I did it before was to issue the subst command on the PC containing all the photos (e.g. subst P: c:\Photos). Then, store all your photos and import them into PSE from P:. Then you map the network drive on your server to be P: and everything can be found (you must run the subst command on your wife's PC at every startup).

You will need to fix your existing catalog if you haven't been doing it this way all along (you can do it manually if you have a copy of Access). I told you it wasn't easy...

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Success at last!!! I decided to forgo the networking for now and just put a full copy of the catalog on my computer. (This has the added benefit of being an extra backup.) It's all working great!

Can't thank you enough for writing this import and all the support you have given.

Best Regards,
Rod

[cncb]

Rod, You're welcome. I'm glad you got it working.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Sure enjoying having our photos viewable on our TVs. There is one area that seems strange though. The only Tags that show are Favorites, People, Events & Other, with their sub tags. A new Adobe Catalog has Favorites, Hidden, People, Places, Events & Other. So Places is missing. Actually these are called Categories in Adobe, with the exceptions of Favorites and Hidden which they call Tags. To further complicate matters we have added some more upper level Categories.

The other difficulty for us is that Sandra has Starred all her favorites as "Favorites" rather than using one of the five stars. It doesn't pick up anything under just Favorites - only those that are starred.

So unfortunately we are missing many of our photos. Is it behaving the way you designed it, or should it be picking up all our Tags/Categories?

Thanks,
Rod

[cncb]

Rod, "Places" is one of the defaults - I'm not sure why it is missing for you. In any case, you can have any custom top level tags show up by adding them to the Sage .properties file(s). This is described on the download page for the .STVi under "Advanced Properties". You will have to do this for each .Properties file in the "clients" subdirectory for your extenders as well as the SageClient.Properties file. You had trouble locating this before - are you using Vista?

Also, to select the "Favorites" top-level tag issue the "Info" command when "Favorites" is highlighted and it will give you the option to select it and all child tags.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Rod, "Places" is one of the defaults - I'm not sure why it is missing for you. In any case, you can have any custom top level tags show up by adding them to the Sage .properties file(s). This is described on the download page for the .STVi under "Advanced Properties". You will have to do this for each .Properties file in the "clients" subdirectory for your extenders as well as the SageClient.Properties file. You had trouble locating this before - are you using Vista?

Also, to select the "Favorites" top-level tag issue the "Info" command when "Favorites" is highlighted and it will give you the option to select it and all child tags.

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the help again. Unfortunately I can't find the SageClient.properties file. Even did a 'Search' in the Sage folder.

I'm using XP Pro SP3.

Also for the extender clients, I found what I think are the right ones under SageTV/SageTV/Clients. There are two properties files and two backup file with the same numbers as the client files. The client files are 1. 001d6a4bff97 and 2. 001e40b5588c. Here's the contents of the first (The second one is very similar).

#Sage Preferences
#Sun Mar 15 21:30:02 PDT 2009
advanced_aspect_ratio_extra_modes=
autohide_osd=true
default_advanced_aspect_ratio=
extender_resolution_extra_modes=
media_player_plugin_class/psd=
miniclient/conservative_transcode_mode=SVCD
miniclient/disabled_audio_codecs=
miniclient/push_dump_debug_file=
miniplayer/last_volume=0.19999984
native_output_resolution_switching=false
osd_rendering_height_ntsc=540
osd_rendering_width=720
photo_lib/folder_font_size=18
photo_lib/folder_style=xCombined
photo_lib/last_folder/remember=true
photo_lib/num_folder_cols=3
photo_lib/num_folder_rows=3
photo_lib/num_folder_thumbs=4
photo_lib/sort_ascending=true
photo_lib/sort_style=xFilename
photo_view/show_tip=true
pse/defaultsort=newestfirst
pse/lastfilter=11,16,15,14,13,12||newestfirst||any||All;;
random_video_playback=false
rc5_disable=false
screen_saver_wait_time=1200000
slideshow_autoadvance=true
slideshow_duration=4000
slideshow_enlarge_pics=false
slideshow_transition_time=1000
slideshow_transition_type=x3DFade
slideshow_when_finished_do=xGoToLib
ui/accelerated_rendering=false
ui/animation/background_surface_name=BG
ui/animation/preferred_scrolling_surface=Foreground
ui/channel/auto_accept=false
ui/force_full_ui_rendering=false
ui/playlist_change_display_osd/music=true
ui/playlist_change_display_osd/video=true
ui/scaling_insets_base_height=480
ui/scaling_insets_base_width=720
ui/show_OSD_detailed_info=true
ui/thumbnail_transitions/enable=true
ui/thumbnail_transitions/skip=false
ui/thumbs_overlap_text=true
version/STV_file_set=2009020201
video_lib/repeat_playback=false
videoframe/always_call_fileplaybackfinished=false
videoframe/ff_time=10000
videoframe/time_behind_live_to_disable_skip_forward=4000
zzz=true


I don't see anything in there related to the Tag Names. I thought I should see the tags that already show and would just add the new ones to the list. Have I misunderstood?

Hopefully this doesn't get too complicated for you, but I greatly appreciate you help Craig.

Rod

[cncb]

Hi Rod, It sounds like you may be running your Sage server in "standard mode" (not using the Sage service). If this is the case, I think you will only have the "Sage.properties" file and this is the file you will have to edit.

For the extenders, turn on the extender and navigate to the PSE screen. Make sure you open the correct catalog successfully and then choose the "Tags >" button so that the root tags are displayed. Turn off the extender and repeat the same steps for the other extender. Now open each .properties file and you should see the "pse/roottags" line that you can edit.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Final success, finally!

Yes we do run Sage in Standard mode. I followed your steps in the last post and was able to edit your top level tags/categories to match ours.

We just finished watching a slide show of our 4 year old Cockapoo dog. Drilled down through our tagging structure and selected Tag for "Buddy" and the slide show then oldest first. Watched him chronologically from about 10 days old to the present - Really neat!

Craig, you put a lot of thought and effort into this plug in and we really appreciate it. It's a real shame about the database change that Adobe made so that this doesn't work on the newer versions. But it's worth sticking with our old version 4 just to have this wonderful capability that you provided.

Thanks again,
Rod & Sandra

[wacole]

I'm using Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0.1. I'm using SageTV 6.5.9.204 and SageMC 6.3.8a and have successfully installed Photoshop Elements Catalog Viewer (PECV).

My pictures and catalog live on a different computer. To try the PECV I copied the catalog and one subdirectory of pictures onto the computer that SageTV is running on. On the SageTV machine, I recreated the directory structure for the pictures that is used on the network machine.

I did a catalog load from the SageTV machine and did Save & Reload. I can see the tags "People", "Places", "Events" and "Other" and their tag subcategories. I cannot see two other tag categories which I added to the original tag structure.

I can see no pictures even though I select "All".

Is this a problem with the age of the Photoshop Album catalog that I'm using, or some other problem, please?

Thanks very much,

Bill Cole

[cncb]

Originally Posted by wacole

Is this a problem with the age of the Photoshop Album catalog that I'm using, or some other problem, please?

Look at the docs on the download page and the previous several posts (discussion with nwboater) which will tell you how to add custom "root tags" so that they are visible in Sage.

[wacole]

Thanks much for the pointer.

Looked at my Sage subdirectory and find a number of files with the .properties extension:

gkusnick.util.Log.properties
log4j.properties
Sage.properties (there are 8 "pse" lines in this file)
weathercache.properties
000dfe5232de.properties (there are 2 "pse" lines in this file)
OriginalV2_i18n.properties (and three language variants)
SageTV3_i18n.properties (and four language variants)
OnlineVideoLinks.properties
theme.properties (actually 8 versions of this all with the same name - related to display resolution)

I'm assuming that the one I want is the Sage.properties file as that has the pse lines in it, but I wanted to double check with you before mucking about with it.

Cheers,

Bill Cole