rapid-users team mailing list archive

[Damon Lynch <damonlynch@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I know things have been very quiet for Rapid Photo Downloader for the 
past 12 months or so. I want to let you know that behind the scenes I'm 
working on the next version. I don't know when it will be out, but I 
thought it best to let you all know that progress is happening.

My goals for the next version are to:

 * Make it possible to download from any camera or phone gphoto2
   supports, instead of just some cameras (a very common request)
 * Eliminate program freezes like there were in late 2012 and
   throughout 2013
 * Where possible increase performance,
 * Keep up with changes in the free software world
 * Make it easier to maintain the code

To achieve these goals, I have decided to do the following:

 * Drop the use of Gnome GIO (which has been how Rapid Photo Downloader
   has interfaced with cameras until now), and instead use libgphoto2
   to communicate directly with the camera. This is possible because
   there are now Python bindings for libghoto2.
 * Drop Python multiprocessing, and switch to 0mq <http://zeromq.org/>
   for inter-process communication.
 * Drop PyGTK and switch to PyQt 5
 * Switch from Python 2.6 / 2.7 to Python 3.4.
 * Drop pyexiv2 (which has been abandoned), in favor of Gexiv2
 * For video metadata, drop hachoir-metadata and kaa-metadata (which
   have both been abandoned) in favor of ExifTool

The change to PyQt 5 requires substantial changes to the code.

It's still early days, but currently the next version can scan a device 
and generate thumbnails. On some test data I have (more than 16,000 
photos totalling almost 40GB), the new version was able to complete the 
scan and generate the thumbnails in 2 minutes 19 seconds, vs. 7 minutes 
14 seconds for the current release (0.4.10). The next version will no 
doubt slow as I add more features (it's very primitive at the moment), 
but in terms of performance at least, progress is looking good.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

Best,
Damon

--

http://www.damonlynch.net