Moose's mention of PIE reminded me that he had mentioned it before. I
had downloaded it, started configuring it but never finished, never used
it and the forgot about it. Fortunately, I decided to download the
latest version and try again.
It was while trying to figure out the configuration for the PIE
downloader (which is very similar to Breeze System's Downloader Pro)
that I suddenly noticed that the the last 5 files displayed had really
odd file names. Rather than P followed by digits it was PA followed by
digits. I didn't understand that so went back to the E-M5 manual to
review file naming conventions... something to which I had never paid
much attention. That's when I discovered that the default file naming
conventions (dumb as far as I'm concerned) use a single character month
code in the second position and a two digit month code in positions 3
and 4. It's sort of like hexadecimal numbers... A is the code for
October, the 10th month. The reason I think this is dumb is that it has
the effect of making sorts by file name and by date almost exactly the
same thing unless the year is different. Since I bought the camera in
January all my photos have been taken in 2013. I had never noticed the
A in the file names since I took only 5 (throwaway) photos in the month
of October (long story) and none in November until after the episode
with the dead battery.
As it turns out there are no missing files or files without dates. What
happened is that after the battery ran down on the E-M5 and the correct
date and time were lost the camera assigned a default date of
2012-01-01. I didn't know that because (how weird is this?) the camera
does *not* display that date. Any other date will show up on the image
review screen but 2012-01-01 doesn't display at all... as though it's
blank. It was when I was looking at the PIE display that I noticed the
A in a few file names. Although the camera doesn't display 2012-01-01,
Windows and the downloaders are fully aware of it and treat it normally.
And, although the camera doesn't display its made-up date it does use
it in the file name. So, the first missing image that I was looking for
with last 4 digits 1336 had been named P1011336 and I had been looking
for it following PA051335. Although it was one of the last images taken
in a list of 300+ images and was sorted by file name it was sorted at
the top of the list. Of course, I had also sorted that list by file
date when I couldn't find it which, of course, sorted it to the top of
the list again since 2012-01-01 was lower than any other date.
Argggh!!! Sorry for the wild goose chase. I've learned a lesson and
hope you gained something too.
As to PIE, I like it now that I've figured out how to make it do the
same things that Downloader Pro was doing for me. My download
convention is to create folders with a date and subject such as:
"2013-11-01 - Silver dishes" PIE can do exactly that (and much more)
but is better than Downloader Pro. Both pick up the photo dates to
create unique folders for each date. But Downloader Pro only prompts
once for a title and applies the same title to all dates encountered in
the download. PIE prompts for a new title every time the date changes
and also shows you a thumbnail of the first image to serve as a reminder
about the subject. One minor downside is that you have to monitor the
download if you have more than one date. But, overall, you can't beat
it because it's free and also does lots of other stuff.
Chuck Norcutt
On 11/3/2013 9:12 PM, DZDub wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 12:22 AM, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Picture Information Extractor is a free app for viewing EXIF data and
>> other stuff. I don't particularly like it for,
>> and thus don't use it for, that. But it has a terrific download function
>> that beats anything else I could find. If they
>> would separate it from the rest of the thing, I'd pay a few $ for it.
>
>
> What do you use it to download? If it beats everything else, what is it
> beating it at? Thanks.
>
> Joel W.
>
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