The latest version of Rapid Photo Downloader is 0.3.1.
It runs on Maverick Meerkat (10.10), Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS), Karmic Koala (9.10), Jaunty Jackalope (9.04), Intrepid Ibex (8.10), and Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS). It also runs just fine on Kubuntu and Xubuntu.
Installation under Ubuntu is an easy two-step process. First, setup the Personal Package Archive (PPA) used by Rapid Photo Downloader. Second, install Rapid Photo Downloader in the usual way — for example, through apt-get or synaptic. Whenever Rapid Photo Downloader is updated, Ubuntu will prompt you to install it.
Rapid Photo Downloader has been packaged for Fedora 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. If the packaged version is not recent, then you can follow the instructions below for Other Linux distributions.
Starting with version 2010.0, Rapid Photo Downloader is an official Mandriva package. As with Fedora, if the packaged version is not recent, then you can follow the instructions below for Other Linux distributions.
Rapid Photo Downloader is easily installable via PCLinuxOS's Synaptic Package Manager. PCLinuxOS does a great job keeping their version of the program up-to-date.
Open a terminal and enter:
The program will eventually have an official portage ebuild. Until then, download an unofficial ebuild to your user-overlay.
Download the latest version of Rapid Photo Downloader.
If necessary, read these installation instructions.
August 13, 2010
New features
- 1Add Chinese (simplified) translation. A big thanks goes out to the Ubuntu Chinese translation team. Partial translations of Bulgarian, Japanese, Occitan (post 1500), Persian, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Turkish have been added. In the past only translations that were largely finished were added, but hopefully adding incomplete translations will speed up their completion. Updated Finnish, French, Hungarian, Russian, Serbian and Spanish translations.
- 2The main window now works more effectively on tiny screens, such as those found on netbooks. If the screen height is less than or equal to 650 pixels, elements in the preview pane are removed, and the spacing is tightened.
- 3The amount of free space available on the filesystem where photos are to be downloaded is now displayed in the status bar. (Note this is only the case on moderately up-to-date Linux distributions that use GVFS, such as Ubuntu 8.10 or higher).
- 1 The major new feature of this release is the generation of previews before a download takes place. You can now select which photos and videos you wish to download.
- 2 You can now assign different Job Codes to photos and videos in the same download. Simply select photos and videos, and from the main window choose a Job Code for them. You can select a new Job Code,or enter a new one (press Enter to apply it).
- 3 The errors and warnings reported have been completely overhauled, and are now more concise.
- 1Updated Swedish translation.
- 2 Fixed bug #590725: don't crash if the theme does not associate an icon with the detected device.
- 3 Bug fix: update example filenames and folders when Job codes are manually modified in the preferences window.
- 1 Bug fix: in systems where exiv2 is not installed, don't crash on startup.
- 2Added Ukrainian translation by Sergiy Gavrylov.
- 1 Bug fix: display sample photo and video names in preferences dialog using first photo and video found on download device, where possible. This used to work but was inadvertently disabled in a recent release.
- 2 Bug fix: prompt for Job code when only video names or video subfolder names use a job code.
- 3 Bug fix: filter out Null bytes from Exif string values. These can occur when the Exif data is corrupted.
- 4 Updated Spanish, Russian and Finnish translations.
- 1 New feature: video download
- 2 New feature: thumbnails for Nikon RAW files, and other manufacturers whose RAW files include multiple thumbnails (requires pyexiv2 >= 0.2.0)
- 1 Fixed bug #483222: sometimes images could not be downloaded to NTFS partitions. This fix was a welcome side effect of using GIO to copy images, instead of relying on the python standard libary.
- 2 Error message headings in the Error Log are now displayed in a red font.
- 3 Program settings and preferences can be reset using a new command line option.
- 4 Program preferences are now more thoroughly checked for validity when the program starts.
- 5 Further work was done to fix bug #505492, to handle cases where the system notification system is not working properly.
- 1 Fixed bug #509348: When both the backup and "Delete images from image device upon download completion" options are selected, the program will only delete an image from the image device if it was both downloaded to the download folder and backed up. Previously it did not check to ensure it was backed up correctly too.
- 2 Fixed bug #505492: The program previously failed to start in environments where the notification system has problems.
- 3 Fixed bug #508304: The user is now prompted to confirm if they really want to remove all of their Job Codes after clicking on "Remove All" in the preferences dialog window.
- 4 Fixed bug #510484: Previously, the program could crash when attempting to download to a read-only folder.
- 5 Fixed bug #510516: The program now checks to see if the download folder exists and is writeable. If automatic detection of image devices is not enabled, it checks to see if the image location path exists.
- 6 Updated Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish translations.
- 1New feature: photographers using RAW + JPEG mode now have the option to synchronize sequence numbers for the matching pair of images. This option is useful if you use the RAW + JPEG feature on your camera and you use sequence numbers or letters in your image renaming. Enabling this option will cause the program to detect matching pairs of RAW and JPEG images, and when they are detected, the same sequence numbers and letters will be applied to both image names. Furthermore, sequences will be updated as if the images were one. See the documentation for more details.
- 2 Increased maximum sequence number length to seven digits by user request.
- 3 Fixed bug #503704: changes in values for downloads today and stored number not updated when changed via program preferences while a download is ready to begin.
- 4 Added Serbian translation by Milos Popovic. Updated Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovak and Spanish translations.
- 1 Added auto delete feature. When enabled, upon the completion of a download, images that were successfully downloaded will be deleted from the image device they were downloaded from. Images that were not downloaded successfully will not be deleted.
- 2 Added keyboard accelerators for Preferences and Help.
- 3 Added Dutch translation by Alian J. Baudrez. Updated Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovak and Spanish translations.
- 1 Added icons to notification messages.
- 2 Updated Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish translations.
- 3 Bug fix: properly handle devices being unmounted, fixing a bug introduced in Version 0.0.9 beta 2.
- 4 Bug fix: When program preferences are changed, image and backup devices are now refreshed only when the preferences dialog window is closed.
- 5 Bug fix: Minutes component of image and folder renaming had the same code as months.
- 1 Fixed bug #484432: error in adding job codes via the preferences dialog.
- 2 Fixed bug #486886: Job code prompt can appear multiple times.
- 3 Updated Hungarian and French translations.
- 1 Added a "Job codes" option. See the documentation for more details.
- 2 Added Czech translation by Tomas Novak.
- 3 French translation by Julien Valroff, Michel Ange, and Cenwen.
- 4 Hungarian translation by Balazs Oveges and Andras Lorincz.
- 5 Slovak translation by Tomas Novak.
- 6 Swedish translation by Ulf Urden and Michal Predotka.
- 7 Added additional hour, minute and second options in image renaming and subfolder creation. Thanks to Art Zemon for the patch.
- 8 Fixed bug #387002: added dependency in Ubuntu packages for librsvg2-common. Thanks go to user hasp for this fix.
- 9 Fixed bug #478620: problem with corrupted image files. Thanks go to user Katrin Krieger for tracking this one down.
- 10 Fixed bug #479424: some camera model names do not have numbers, but it still makes sense to return a shortened name. Thanks go to user Wesley Harp for highlighting this problem.
- 11 Fixed bug #482831: program no longer crashes when auto-download is off, and a device is inserted before another download has completed.
- 1Russian translation updated by Sergei Sedov.
- 2Bug fix #383028: program would crash when using an automatically configured backup device and gvfs.
- 1Italian translation by Marco Solari and Luca Reverberi.
- 2German translation by Martin Egger and Daniel Paessler.
- 3Russian translation by Sergei Sedov.
- 4Finnish translation by Mikko Ruohola.
- 5A Help button has been added to Preferences dialog window. Clicking it takes you to the documentation found online at the program's website. This documentation is now complete.
- 6The Preferences Dialog window is now navigated using a list control, as it was in early versions of the program. This change was necesseary because with some translations, the dialog window was becoming too wide with the normal tab layout. Usability of the Preferences Dialog is improved: it will now resize itself based on its content.
- 1Spanish translation by Jose Luis Navarro and Abel O'Rian.
- 2Bug fixes relating to preferences changes: changes to preferences are applied to downloads which have not yet started, and preference errors are now handled more effectively.
- 1Added command line options for controlling verbosity, displaying which image file types are recognized, and printing the program version.
- 2Polish translation by Michal Predotka. Coming soon: French, German and Spanish translations.
- 3Minor fixes to logic that checks whether the Download button should be disabled or not. This should now be more reliable.
- 4The previous beta would sometimes crash when thumbnails could not be extracted from images. This has been fixed.
- 1Direct download from some cameras. This version adds experimental support for downloading directly from cameras—it may not work with your camera. This is made possible through the use of the new gvfs library, provided by GIO, that exists in recent versions of Linux (a recent version of Linux is a must). The camera must also be supported by libgphoto2 in combination with gvfs. How to test this? If you cannot browse the camera's contents in a file manager (e.g. Nautilus), downloading directly from the camrea will not work until gvfs support is improved. If your camera does not work, trying changing the transfer mode in the camera from Normal to PTP—it is much more likely to work. Cameras not supported in normal mode currently include the Canon 300D and 20D.
- 2The program now starts more quickly and does not become unresponsive when scanning devices with a large number of images. This will hardly be noticeable by users that download from memory cards, but those who download from hard drives with hundreds of GBs of files will notice a big difference.
- 3The "image number" component of image renaming is more robust. Now, only the series of digits at the end of a filename are recognized as the image number (obviously the file's extension is not included as being part of the filename in this case). This allows takes in account files from cameras like the Canon 1D series, which can have filenames like VD1D7574.CR2.
- 1Added Stored and Downloads today sequence numbers
- 2The estimate of time remaining to download images is now much more accurate.
- 3Download speed in MB/s is now displayed in the status bar.
- 4Sequence number/letter selection in preferences is improved.
- 5Only allow one instance of the program to be run, and raise the existing window if it is run again. This is very useful when Rapid Photo Downloader is set to run automatically upon insertion of a memory card.
- 6The "exit at end of successful download" automation feature is added.
- 7When an image's download is skipped, the thumbnail is now lightened.
- 8A missing image icon is displayed if the thumbnail cannot be displayed for some reason. (See bug #369640 for why thumbnail images from certain RAW files are not displayed).
- 9Resize main window when an image device is inserted—it now expands to show each device that is inserted.
- 10A download cannot proceed if there is an error in the image rename or download subfolder preferences. Instead, a download error is indicated.
- 11Version 0.1.1 of pyexiv2 can now be used (an older version of the library code that is used to get information on the images, found in distributions like Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron).
July 10, 2010
New features
Now that you can select photos and videos to download, the "Report an error" option in case of filename conflicts has been removed. If you try to download a photo or video that already exists, an error will be reported. If you backup a photo or video that already exists in the backup location, a warning will be reported (regardless of whether overwriting or skipping of backups with conflicting filenames is chosen).
Likewise, the option of whether to report an error or warning in case of missing backup devices has been removed. If you have chosen to backup your photos and videos, and a backup device or location is not found, the files will be downloaded with warnings.
For each device in the main window, the progress bar is now updated much more smoothly than before. This is useful when downloading and backing up large files such as videos. (Note this is only the case on moderately up-to-date Linux distributions that use GVFS, such as Ubuntu 8.10 or higher).
The minimum version of python-gtk2 (pygtk) required to run the program is now 2.12. This will affect only outdated Linux distributions.
June 23, 2010
Updates
June 6, 2010
Updates
June 5, 2010
Updates
May 30, 2010
Highlights
Video download
Videos can now be downloaded in much the same way photos can.
The package kaa metadata is required to download videos. ffmpegthumbnailer is used to display thumbnail images of certain types of videos as the download occurs.kaa metadata and ffmpegthumbnailer are optional. The program will run without them (it just won't be able to download videos). You can easily install them from your distribution's package repositories.
If a THM file with the same name as the video is present, it will be used to generate a thumbnail for the video. If not, if ffmpegthumbnailer is installed, Rapid Photo Downloader will use it to attempt to extract a thumbnail from the video. THM files are not downloaded.
For now, sequence values are shared between the downloads of videos and photos. There may be an option to have two sets of sequence numbers in a future release.
Due to the number of changes in the code, it is possible that regressions in the photo downloading code may have been introduced.
Other changes and fixes
This is the first release to use version 0.2.x of the pyexiv2 library. The most immediate benefit of this change is that thumbnail images from Nikon and other brand cameras can be displayed. This fixes bugs #369640 and #570378.
Please note pyexiv2 0.2.x requires exiv2 0.1.9 or above.
Rapid Photo Downloader will still work with pyexiv2 0.1.x. However it will not be able to display the thumbnails of some brands of camera.
If Rapid Photo Downloader detects version 0.18.1 or higher of the exiv2 library, it will download Panasonic's RW2 files. If it detects version 0.18.0 or higher of the exiv2 library, it will download Mamiya's MEF files. For Rapid Photo Downloader to be able to detect which version of the exiv2 library your system has, it must either be running pyexiv2 >= 0.2.0, or have exiv2 installed.
Other changes:
January 22, 2010
Updates
January 16, 2010
Updates
January 5, 2009
Updates
December 7, 2009
Fixes and updates
November 22, 2009
Fixes and updates
When detection of portable storage devices is selected, the program will prompt you whether or not to download from each device it automatically detects. You can choose whether the program should remember the choice you make every time it runs. This fixes bug #376020. See the documentation for more details.
Other changes include:
November 14, 2009
Fixes and updates
This code is ready for full release, but given the magnitude of changes, a beta seems like a good idea, simply to catch any undetected bugs.
June 5, 2009
Fixes and updates
June 2, 2009
New features and notable fixes
May 26, 2009
New features and notable fixes
May 25, 2009
New features and notable fixes
May 12, 2009
New features and notable fixes
Diagnostic output
Please note that while every effort has been made to test this new release, significant changes have been made to the program's code, possibly causing regressions or new bugs. If you run the program from the command line, as a beta this version outputs additional diagnostic output which can often be very useful when reporting bugs. Please report any bugs you might encounter.
May 1, 2009
New features
The stored sequence number is remembered each time the program is run. Downloads today tracks how many downloads are made on a given day. The time a day "starts" is set via a new preference value, day start. This is useful if you often photograph something late at night (e.g. concerts) and want a new day to "start" at 3am, for instance.
Known bugs
Please note that there is an known bug which can cause the program to become unresponsive when it is scanning a large hard drive for many images. This can occur on startup, inserting a new device, or changing the preferences. See bug #368098.
If you like this software, please consider making a donation to its developer. Thank you!