Content Catalog - Windows/macOS (Commercial) - Out now

Cybersox

barbult said:

Cybersox said:

davidwski_16294691f0 said:

How long does this Content Catalog app take to scan say '1000' zip files for display in the output? That would be my main concern. I would think a large folder could easily take multiple hours to scan.

...

That said, I can think of one add-on that would make this an even more powerful product... automatic formatting to DIM ready files or a similar automatic installing system, though that's probably a pipe-dream.    

DoctorJellybean already has another product in the Daz Store to do that. It is Content Package Assist. It's several years old, but still works great. 

Content Package Assist won't do a batch process of a folder full of files, and one has to manually feed the skus into tabs*, that's why I suggested a mash-up.  And yes, I bought Content Pakage Assist back when it first came out and, after fiddling with it for a bit and seeing how long it took to format each one, looked at all of the the products I've bought from the other stores... currently over Renderosity alone, which at the time was probably over 10,000 products given that it's been ten years and my Rendo count is now over 17,000 products, then looked at all of the other products I had from the other stores, plus the huge piles of freebie items from variously places and said "oh, the heck with this, I'll wait to see if they make an update that doesn't keep me chained to the keyboard for six months doing data entry."  With this coming out, it seemed like the time to mention that possibility.    

* or, at least that's the way I remember it from ten years ago. I had more hair on my head, less coming out of my nose, and more brain cells devoted to memory storage back then.   

Dieter

barbult said:

Dieter said:

Hello,

I had been looking for a product like this for a long time, which is why I bought it.
Now, here is my question:
Out of the 60,000 IM zip files, only 10,692 are listed in the catalog!
What am I doing wrong?

Does the folder you scanned contain all 60,000 DIM zip files, or were some possibly moved, or deleted, or downloaded to a different folder? 

All files are located in a folder on the NAS!

tsroemi

Thanks for the really quick answer to my first question, and I'm sorry to join the hubbub with another one or two - but I keep my zips on external drives like others here and am wondering:

- Is the Windows app version portable, can I install it on an external drive alongside the zips?

- If it's locally installed, and I run it and have forgotten to plug in my DAZ zip drive, will it still know the results of the last scan it did? I'm generally guessing yes, since it's creating its own directory and thumbs and these will be stored, but I'm sort of worried that when it finds the actual drive not in place, it will just give out some error and overwrite the previous scan or something like that.

Thanks again for taking care of all the questions here!

DoctorJellybean

tsroemi said:

Thanks for the really quick answer to my first question, and I'm sorry to join the hubbub with another one or two - but I keep my zips on external drives like others here and am wondering:

- Is the Windows app version portable, can I install it on an external drive alongside the zips?

- If it's locally installed, and I run it and have forgotten to plug in my DAZ zip drive, will it still know the results of the last scan it did? I'm generally guessing yes, since it's creating its own directory and thumbs and these will be stored, but I'm sort of worried that when it finds the actual drive not in place, it will just give out some error and overwrite the previous scan or something like that.

Thanks again for taking care of all the questions here!

If you can run Windows applications on an external drive, then yes. Just make sure that you copy the folder Content Catalog Windows under C:\Program Files\Doctor Jellybean\ with all the files and folder inside it.

It will still show the scan results if you forget to plug in the DAZ zip drive. Just don't run a scan with it unplugged.

DoctorJellybean

Dieter said:

barbult said:

Dieter said:

Hello,

I had been looking for a product like this for a long time, which is why I bought it.
Now, here is my question:
Out of the 60,000 IM zip files, only 10,692 are listed in the catalog!
What am I doing wrong?

Does the folder you scanned contain all 60,000 DIM zip files, or were some possibly moved, or deleted, or downloaded to a different folder? 

All files are located in a folder on the NAS!

Are they all zip files? No rar or any other archive file format? 

horse1412000

Is there a way/can there be a way to combine products/entries? There's an HDRI I own and it was split into 12 separate products in the catalog even though it's only one.

DoctorJellybean

horse1412000 said:

Is there a way/can there be a way to combine products/entries? There's an HDRI I own and it was split into 12 separate products in the catalog even though it's only one.

That happens when a product is split into x number of files. I'll be looking at that. 

Richard Haseltine

barbult said:

I think we should suggest that a forum mod move these Content Catalog discussions to the official PA thread. (Richard Haseltine is really skilled at doing that, although it can be a lot of work!) That is really where people would normally go to find questions and answers that have been posted here.

Done (I think)

barbult

Richard Haseltine said:

barbult said:

I think we should suggest that a forum mod move these Content Catalog discussions to the official PA thread. (Richard Haseltine is really skilled at doing that, although it can be a lot of work!) That is really where people would normally go to find questions and answers that have been posted here.

Done (I think)

Thank you, Richard. I haven't gone back to check, but I bet whatever you did was a help to clean things up and consilidate.  

DoctorJellybean

@joanna I have found a solution for your usage. I'll provide more details once it has been tested.

DoctorJellybean

Cybersox said:

barbult said:

Cybersox said:

davidwski_16294691f0 said:

How long does this Content Catalog app take to scan say '1000' zip files for display in the output? That would be my main concern. I would think a large folder could easily take multiple hours to scan.

...

That said, I can think of one add-on that would make this an even more powerful product... automatic formatting to DIM ready files or a similar automatic installing system, though that's probably a pipe-dream.    

DoctorJellybean already has another product in the Daz Store to do that. It is Content Package Assist. It's several years old, but still works great. 

Content Package Assist won't do a batch process of a folder full of files, and one has to manually feed the skus into tabs*, that's why I suggested a mash-up.  And yes, I bought Content Pakage Assist back when it first came out and, after fiddling with it for a bit and seeing how long it took to format each one, looked at all of the the products I've bought from the other stores... currently over Renderosity alone, which at the time was probably over 10,000 products given that it's been ten years and my Rendo count is now over 17,000 products, then looked at all of the other products I had from the other stores, plus the huge piles of freebie items from variously places and said "oh, the heck with this, I'll wait to see if they make an update that doesn't keep me chained to the keyboard for six months doing data entry."  With this coming out, it seemed like the time to mention that possibility.    

* or, at least that's the way I remember it from ten years ago. I had more hair on my head, less coming out of my nose, and more brain cells devoted to memory storage back then.   

One immediate problem that I can think of with that are images. Unless you are not bothered with adding an image to each zip.

bnstone_stone

Hello,

I just purchased and installed this.

So if I understand this right, all this program does is scan .zip files, and not the actual installed database?

barbult

bnstone_stone said:

Hello,

I just purchased and installed this.

So if I understand this right, all this program does is scan .zip files, and not the actual installed database?

That is correct. Scanning the installed database would only discover the products you currently have INSTALLED. The purpose of Scanning all of your downloaded zip files is to capture everything you own, whether it is currently installed or not. Lots of us own older products or very large products that we don't keep continuously installed, but we still own them and want to be able to see them in the organized Content Catalog, in case they would fill a current need for a scene idea. If you don't download all of the products you buy, Content Catalog would not find the owned products you didn't ever download to your computer. They wouldn't be on your computer to scan. If you delete zip files after installing, Content Catalog won't be able to find those products either, because those zip files are no longer on your computer. You can resolve those two issues by just downloading the zip files again. You don't have to reinstall them. DIM can handle downloading Daz products again pretty easily.

donniekeidic

@DoctorJellyBean - a couple little hiccups I'm finding:

Any product from RDNA doesn't show the images properly and CC won't grab them either using the "Fetch thumbnail from DAZ" button. I actually have to manually select those thumbnail from the DIM thumbnail directory using the "Replace thumbnail" button for every single one by going to the thumbnails stored here: C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\Thumbnails

Also, a lot of DAZ IM images that are shown seem to be "lower quality" images, not sure how else to put it. So that if I click on the "Fetch thumbnail from Daz" button, the image quality will actually get a slightly better image, sometimes the image is just sharpened slightly, other times its a completely different rendered thumbnail. I can only guess that by default the thumbnails are pulled from the DIM server, but when you pull images using the Fetch button, it seems to get thumbnails from a different Daz server with better newer thumbnail images. So why are the thumbnails differrent though? It seems to make no sense other than lack of server upgrades or maintenance I guess. And is there a way to make sure CC automatically pulls images from the better Daz server so we that dont have to update thousands of images manually? Or at least have it as a batch process. 

barbult

donniekeidic said:

@DoctorJellyBean - a couple little hiccups I'm finding:

Any product from RDNA doesn't show the images properly and CC won't grab them either using the "Fetch thumbnail from DAZ" button. I actually have to manually select those thumbnail from the DIM thumbnail directory using the "Replace thumbnail" button for every single one by going to the thumbnails stored here: C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\Thumbnails

Also, a lot of DAZ IM images that are shown seem to be "lower quality" images, not sure how else to put it. So that if I click on the "Fetch thumbnail from Daz" button, the image quality will actually get a slightly better image, sometimes the image is just sharpened slightly, other times its a completely different rendered thumbnail. I can only guess that by default the thumbnails are pulled from the DIM server, but when you pull images using the Fetch button, it seems to get thumbnails from a different Daz server with better newer thumbnail images. So why are the thumbnails differrent though? It seems to make no sense other than lack of server upgrades or maintenance I guess. And is there a way to make sure CC automatically pulls images from the better Daz server so we that dont have to update thousands of images manually? Or at least have it as a batch process. 

I think the default product thumbnails in Content Catalog come directly from the Zip file contents, not from a Daz server. I've seen really crappy thumbnails for some old Poser products, sometimes not even representing what the product contains. I too fetch a lot of thumbnails from Daz. It is kind of satisfying to see a bad thumbnail replaced by a much better one. I guess I am easily thrilled by small things. I haven't gone through my 10000+ products to seek out bad thumbnails.  I just fetch them as I notice the bad ones while using Content Catalog. Wait to you deal with products from a store like Renderosity, where the fetch isn't even available. Then I had to go to the website, pick a promo to use, save the image as a file on my computer and then Replace Thumbnail with that saved image. I then really appreciated the Fetch from Daz functionality for Daz store products!

donniekeidic

barbult said:

donniekeidic said:

@DoctorJellyBean - a couple little hiccups I'm finding:

Any product from RDNA doesn't show the images properly and CC won't grab them either using the "Fetch thumbnail from DAZ" button. I actually have to manually select those thumbnail from the DIM thumbnail directory using the "Replace thumbnail" button for every single one by going to the thumbnails stored here: C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\Thumbnails

Also, a lot of DAZ IM images that are shown seem to be "lower quality" images, not sure how else to put it. So that if I click on the "Fetch thumbnail from Daz" button, the image quality will actually get a slightly better image, sometimes the image is just sharpened slightly, other times its a completely different rendered thumbnail. I can only guess that by default the thumbnails are pulled from the DIM server, but when you pull images using the Fetch button, it seems to get thumbnails from a different Daz server with better newer thumbnail images. So why are the thumbnails differrent though? It seems to make no sense other than lack of server upgrades or maintenance I guess. And is there a way to make sure CC automatically pulls images from the better Daz server so we that dont have to update thousands of images manually? Or at least have it as a batch process. 

I think the default product thumbnails in Content Catalog come directly from the Zip file contents, not from a Daz server. I've seen really crappy thumbnails for some old Poser products, sometimes not even representing what the product contains. I too fetch a lot of thumbnails from Daz. It is kind of satisfying to see a bad thumbnail replaced by a much better one. I guess I am easily thrilled by small things. I haven't gone through my 10000+ products to seek out bad thumbnails.  I just fetch them as I notice the bad ones while using Content Catalog. Wait to you deal with products from a store like Renderosity, where the fetch isn't even available. Then I had to go to the website, pick a promo to use, save the image as a file on my computer and then Replace Thumbnail with that saved image. I then really appreciated the Fetch from Daz functionality for Daz store products!

yes, but those zips are from a server, and why are those images not updated with the latest images? thats kind of my point. I'm not talking about DIMs that were even downloaded years ago, I can pull any of these DIMs right now and they will have the old images still. And regarding my 3rd party content, i don't have any of these issues because they all use the thumbnails I gave them when I created them using Content Package Assist, so all the thumbnails for 3rd party content is exactly what I expect. So oddly enough CC works better for my 3rd party content than my Daz content. 

By the way, these hiccups I'm not really complaining, I really love the app, I just want to point them out to DoctorJellyBean so he's aware and can maybe fix it in an update or offer a batch processing button for fetching images from Daz. A batch processing option would really be all that is necessary.

donniekeidic

ok, just for the heck of it i started opening up the RDNA DIMs, so none of them have runtime\support folders at all. Not sure why Daz would package them like that, so there is no thumbnail included with those DIMs at all. The only place those thumbnails exist is in C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\Thumbnails