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EZfinder Promos a bit confusing

ChoppskiChoppski Posts: 635
in The Commons

The promos make it seems like the product contains ezfinder AND the other ezproduct--like ezhdri, shader etc. I am assuming it doesn't, but does anyone know. I initially ignored the item because the price is a lot, but if that coupon for 5 bucks applies, I think I might have to try it. I spend SOOO much time looking for stuff and content search is so limited. 

Any info appreciated.

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Comments

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338
    edited February 23

    I had the same question. Took the chance and bought it. I hope this is okay to post from the readme:

     

    EZFinder is actually a suite of integrated applications:

    • EZFinder (Main Application) - Primary interface for browsing, searching, and managing
      content
    • EZOrganizer - Virtual folder management system for hierarchical organization
    • EZDesigner - Linking data matrix for filter configurations
    • EZHDRI Scanner - Specialized scanner for HDRI environment maps
    • EZShader - Categorize shaders by the image types within them
    • EZISO - Advanced shader management and material blending tool
    • Internal Scanner - Core engine that indexes your DAZ library
    • External Scanner - For integrating custom DAZ content
    • Project Scanner - For scanning projects folders for EZFinder organization
    • EZReader - Reads Daz products for search and precision curation
    • DSXScanner - Scans for product info, “products” can be organized

    Maybe this could be the forum thread for it since I don't see one already. Been some chatter in There's Always Another Sale thread as well.

    Post edited by Cam Fox on
  • ChoppskiChoppski Posts: 635

    OK, thank you. I don't think I can pass up 5 bucks. Personally, I am leery mostly because I am using an older computer and don't want to use this until I get my new computer back (it's display went wonky). But for 5 bucks, I should just do it. 

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338
    edited February 23

    Given its eye popping list price, probably worth picking it up for $5 if you could use it at any point in the future.

    Post edited by Cam Fox on
  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 9,451

    The fact that there isn't a thread on the product in the commercial forum and the lack of any expanded detail in the read-me seems ominous in terms of the support one might hope for.  From what I can tell, it looks a bit like P3DO Explorer, but with fewer features and a less elegant interface.     

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338
    edited February 23

    I'm unsure why Daz would do a launch day for something so expensive (and potentially useful) without calling it out somewhere in the sale/email. Or why the publisher wouldn't have a promotional video ready on his youtube channel, and linked to the store page. Maybe a communication breakdown happened somewhere.

    There are some developer stream recordings on the publisher's youtube that I used to get a better idea how the interface worked before I bought.

    • Some hands-on with the "virtual folders" in EZOrganizer window https://youtu.be/O2m05U_YZMQ?t=2057
      It's in the middle of another discussion and it's not a polished elevator pitch but you can see asset management, renaming, colorizing happening. Clicking any of those virtual folders (the colorful links) loads the collection's items in the main asset browser. The interface is very minimalist/specialized but it's customizable tabs of columns of collections so you can slice and dice assets however you wish.

    • EZreader https://youtu.be/O2m05U_YZMQ?t=2811
      This looks like a feature to find products by publisher or sku.

    • EZiso shader combinator https://youtu.be/O2m05U_YZMQ?t=3073
      This looks rather novelty but still a really interesting subfeature to mix and match texture maps to create custom shader presets.

    My initial reaction at seeing the very unusual rainbow UI was that it looked like a hastily designed vibe coded thing. The more I watched it in use, the more it struck me as having careful thought behind it / elegant simplicity to it.

    Post edited by Cam Fox on
  • mikeha_camikeha_ca Posts: 30

    not sure where the official support for this is, but I can't use EZHDRI at all. It won't let me put in my Daz 3D Library path, it says I can't use system folders as a path. which is weird because the main product already scanned this same folder for all my Daz stuff just fine.  So why doesn't EZHDRI use the same path? It seems like a bug to me.

  • Charlie JudgeCharlie Judge Posts: 13,355

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

  • Peter WadePeter Wade Posts: 1,676

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

    Here are the minimum requirements from the included manual:

    Minimum Requirements

    • Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
    • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
    • SSD or M.2 Storage (HDD not recommended)
    • 550 MB free disk space for program
    • Additional space for JSON files based on library size:
      • Small Library (< 10,000 items): ~50 MB
      • Medium Library (10,000-100,000 items): ~500 MB
      • Large Library (100,000-500,000 items): ~2 GB
      • Very Large Library (500,000+ items): ~5 GB+
    • .NET 9 (included)
    • DAZ Studio 4.x for injection features

    I don't know if it won't run at all with a HDD or if just the initial scan will be slow. My guess is it'll be slow all around because you might have a collection with dozens of files which all need to come from different parts of the disk. HDD has to spin platters and move a reader head whereas SSD can do random reads almost instantly. (SSD is a good upgrade for Daz Studio in general if you can budget for one.)

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,745

    Cam Fox said:

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

     

    ...

    I'd guess the long gear-up process is related to it populating some internal database, which would be required for it to be as fast as advertised. Makes sense. Hopefully new additions to our libraries will be easily perceived as 'diff's and update the database efficiently, rather than doing a full scan everytime we add a new product... We'll soon see.

    If the PA (EZ3DTV) who produces this product happens by here, I'm also one who uses *multiple* libraries to manage my data. If/when you update this product, *please* allow for a list of libraries - TIA. I manage, isolate, and separate all of my products in separate runtimes/libraries  - e.g. by figure (genesis1), project, renderer (e.g. Reality or 3DL), and/or any other scheme that suits my needs. This allows for better resource management when working on separate projects, etc.

    I'm curious how this product will all work together - if you look at the 'live' stream tab of his YouTube page, there's a lot of information about this product and many other interesting topics. Props to him for sharing his knowledge so liberally!

    best,

    --ms

     

     

  • Charlie JudgeCharlie Judge Posts: 13,355
    edited February 23

    Cam Fox said:

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

    Here are the minimum requirements from the included manual:

    Minimum Requirements

    • Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
    • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
    • SSD or M.2 Storage (HDD not recommended)
    • 550 MB free disk space for program
    • Additional space for JSON files based on library size:
      • Small Library (< 10,000 items): ~50 MB
      • Medium Library (10,000-100,000 items): ~500 MB
      • Large Library (100,000-500,000 items): ~2 GB
      • Very Large Library (500,000+ items): ~5 GB+
    • .NET 9 (included)
    • DAZ Studio 4.x for injection features

    I don't know if it won't run at all with a HDD or if just the initial scan will be slow. My guess is it'll be slow all around because you might have a collection with dozens of files which all need to come from different parts of the disk. HDD has to spin platters and move a reader head whereas SSD can do random reads almost instantly. (SSD is a good upgrade for Daz Studio in general if you can budget for one.)

    I have a 1 TB SSD with the OS on it but with over 8 tb of DAZ content storing it on a SSD is not practical. 

    Post edited by Charlie Judge on
  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 9,451

    Crosspostinng my own post from elsewhere there are multiple videos by the creator on youtube here: 

    https://www.youtube.com/@EZ3DTV/streams

     

     

    Unfortunately, I'm ot very impressed with the videos, the product, or the creator. His videos are extremely long and he rambles on forever before actually starting to demonstrate anything... at 13 minutes into the first one with a lot of rambling and complaining about losing two of his hard drives with not a single thing demonstrated, I flicked it off, splurged the $5, downloaded it and pulled up the manual.  My initial impressions, albeit just from reading the first few pages, are not great:

    First problem - it seems the product is designed to work with a single library.. to quote: "If you have customized your Daz Library install locations of items you may have unpredictable results from EZFinder," and it has to be in the default C drive position.  So, no guarantee that it wil work properly or at all with the multiple libraries that many of us maintain, and it only works for that single installation of DS, so there goes any use with dual installations of beta versions, 

    Second,) it's built around SmartContent, not the actual library.  That one was a killer for me right there...

    Third, when he talks about handling thousands of items, it seems that he's talking about each individual item within a product as a seperate item rather than overall products.  That would shrink all the advertised numbers down by at least a factor of ten.

    Fourth, when talking about librariy size, he notes that a "VERY large library of 500,000+ items" will require 5 GB+ of additional storage to handle all of the additional files the program generates

     

    On the positive side, the other utilities mentioned do seem to be included as scripts.

    Summary: it seems to be an entry level product, possibly useful for casual users or newbies.  The individual scripts may be useful, but it's definitely not the cat's pajamas.

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 9,451

    Cam Fox said:

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

    Here are the minimum requirements from the included manual:

    Minimum Requirements

    • Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
    • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
    • SSD or M.2 Storage (HDD not recommended)
    • 550 MB free disk space for program
    • Additional space for JSON files based on library size:
      • Small Library (< 10,000 items): ~50 MB
      • Medium Library (10,000-100,000 items): ~500 MB
      • Large Library (100,000-500,000 items): ~2 GB
      • Very Large Library (500,000+ items): ~5 GB+
    • .NET 9 (included)
    • DAZ Studio 4.x for injection features

    I don't know if it won't run at all with a HDD or if just the initial scan will be slow. My guess is it'll be slow all around because you might have a collection with dozens of files which all need to come from different parts of the disk. HDD has to spin platters and move a reader head whereas SSD can do random reads almost instantly. (SSD is a good upgrade for Daz Studio in general if you can budget for one.)

    SSDs are faster, but not a great place to keep your DAZ libraries due to the fact that they have a finite number of write cycles after which that sector no longer rewrites.  That means, as I've found out the hard way, that you can think you're saving something only to find that, if you can read it at all, you'll find an older version.  HDDs, by contrast, have an unlimited number of rewrites but are prone to mechnical hardware failure.  Also, when an SSD fails, it's more likely to be unrecoverable than a traditional HDD.     

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 9,451

    Charlie Judge said:

    Cam Fox said:

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

    Here are the minimum requirements from the included manual:

    Minimum Requirements

    • Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
    • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
    • SSD or M.2 Storage (HDD not recommended)
    • 550 MB free disk space for program
    • Additional space for JSON files based on library size:
      • Small Library (< 10,000 items): ~50 MB
      • Medium Library (10,000-100,000 items): ~500 MB
      • Large Library (100,000-500,000 items): ~2 GB
      • Very Large Library (500,000+ items): ~5 GB+
    • .NET 9 (included)
    • DAZ Studio 4.x for injection features

    I don't know if it won't run at all with a HDD or if just the initial scan will be slow. My guess is it'll be slow all around because you might have a collection with dozens of files which all need to come from different parts of the disk. HDD has to spin platters and move a reader head whereas SSD can do random reads almost instantly. (SSD is a good upgrade for Daz Studio in general if you can budget for one.)

    I have a 1 TB SSD with the OS on it but with over 8 tb of DAZ content storing it on a SSD is not practical. 

    Same here.  I have somewhere in excess of 10 TB of DAZ/Poser/etc. files spread out over multiple hard drives, not counting "retired" backups.  To hold all that on SSDs would require several thousand dollars worth of drives, vs only a few hundred for HDDs even when they're not on sale... and no, those 16TB ssd drives you see advertised on Amazon and Temu have been repeatedly proven to all be bogus, usually proven to be an SSD shell with a small SD card inside.  

  • tsroemitsroemi Posts: 3,527

    The limitation to a single library and especially to the c drive is just bonkers, I kinda regret now that I bought it. If anyone sees a quick and dirty way to lift at least the restriction to the c drive, or finds out how to bypass it, that'd be very cool.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,612

    Cybersox said:

    Crosspostinng my own post from elsewhere there are multiple videos by the creator on youtube here: 

    https://www.youtube.com/@EZ3DTV/streams

     

     

    Unfortunately, I'm ot very impressed with the videos, the product, or the creator. His videos are extremely long and he rambles on forever before actually starting to demonstrate anything... at 13 minutes into the first one with a lot of rambling and complaining about losing two of his hard drives with not a single thing demonstrated, I flicked it off, splurged the $5, downloaded it and pulled up the manual.  My initial impressions, albeit just from reading the first few pages, are not great:

    First problem - it seems the product is designed to work with a single library.. to quote: "If you have customized your Daz Library install locations of items you may have unpredictable results from EZFinder," and it has to be in the default C drive position.  So, no guarantee that it wil work properly or at all with the multiple libraries that many of us maintain, and it only works for that single installation of DS, so there goes any use with dual installations of beta versions, 

    Second,) it's built around SmartContent, not the actual library.  That one was a killer for me right there...

    Third, when he talks about handling thousands of items, it seems that he's talking about each individual item within a product as a seperate item rather than overall products.  That would shrink all the advertised numbers down by at least a factor of ten.

    Fourth, when talking about librariy size, he notes that a "VERY large library of 500,000+ items" will require 5 GB+ of additional storage to handle all of the additional files the program generates

     

    On the positive side, the other utilities mentioned do seem to be included as scripts.

    Summary: it seems to be an entry level product, possibly useful for casual users or newbies.  The individual scripts may be useful, but it's definitely not the cat's pajamas.

    I also looked at some of the videos and came to a similar conclusion. The author's rambing style would have driven me mad fairly quickly, and the idea of sitting through 3 hours of that (per video) looked like a form of torture. From the brief amount of data that was available, I came to the conclusion it was unlikely to be something of use anyway, so I spent the $5 on another new release which trigged discounts in the high 90s % on a lot of other items. My content is reasonably well sorted and accessed via the content library, I rarely use smart data much these days, although it was useful when I had a lot less content. As such I am not sure this new tool added much for me.

  • kprkpr Posts: 345

    Thanks to all for the heads-up and info. I too was going to spend the $5 to see if it worked, but if it doesn't work too well with non-standard library paths and needs so much additional drive space, then - for now - I think I'll save the $5. Little bit of a pity but see if he produces any revisions/updates...  Afterall, there's always another update wink

    As an aside, there seems to have been quite a few 1-product PAs just recently, doesn't there (maybe because of the recentish recruitment drive etc?)

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338

    Cybersox said:

    SSDs are faster, but not a great place to keep your DAZ libraries due to the fact that they have a finite number of write cycles after which that sector no longer rewrites.  That means, as I've found out the hard way, that you can think you're saving something only to find that, if you can read it at all, you'll find an older version.  HDDs, by contrast, have an unlimited number of rewrites but are prone to mechnical hardware failure.  Also, when an SSD fails, it's more likely to be unrecoverable than a traditional HDD.     

    Yes, you're right. I use SSDs for daily drivers (because to me, the performance is worth it) but I'll only trust HDDs for backups of those SSDs.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,612

    Cybersox said:

    Cam Fox said:

    Peter Wade said:

    I bought it and have installed it but haven't worked out how to use it yet.

    It says it's a stand alone application but it is installed in the scripts directory and you can start it from the scripts menu of Daz Studio. It also installs a lot of .dll files and python scripts in the script directory. I don't know what is going on here, can you run an executable from a Daz Studio script? 

    It can't handle more than one Daz Library which is a limitation for some users (I've got 4 Daz libraries).

    I currently have about 20 libraries because I was using that as a way to organize content. :/ I hope it gets multi library support soon.

    The product zip drops the app in Content\Scripts\EZFinder\EZFinderApp\ and the EZLaunch.dsa runs the exe as eval() or openFile()

    The python scripts and binaries are in a subfolder OpenImageIO which looks to be an open source image processing library, maybe this one https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home

    Charlie Judge said:

    It looked ninteresting and for $5 I bit the bullet and grabed it. I have a very large library (over 33,500 items) with all of it stored on an external mechanial hard drive;. However I have a pretty fast system (Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, 64 GB Ram, RTX 3090) and it has been doing the initial scan for 5 hours with no end in sight.. I wonder how long the scan should take ???

    Here are the minimum requirements from the included manual:

    Minimum Requirements

    • Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
    • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
    • SSD or M.2 Storage (HDD not recommended)
    • 550 MB free disk space for program
    • Additional space for JSON files based on library size:
      • Small Library (< 10,000 items): ~50 MB
      • Medium Library (10,000-100,000 items): ~500 MB
      • Large Library (100,000-500,000 items): ~2 GB
      • Very Large Library (500,000+ items): ~5 GB+
    • .NET 9 (included)
    • DAZ Studio 4.x for injection features

    I don't know if it won't run at all with a HDD or if just the initial scan will be slow. My guess is it'll be slow all around because you might have a collection with dozens of files which all need to come from different parts of the disk. HDD has to spin platters and move a reader head whereas SSD can do random reads almost instantly. (SSD is a good upgrade for Daz Studio in general if you can budget for one.)

    SSDs are faster, but not a great place to keep your DAZ libraries due to the fact that they have a finite number of write cycles after which that sector no longer rewrites.  That means, as I've found out the hard way, that you can think you're saving something only to find that, if you can read it at all, you'll find an older version.  HDDs, by contrast, have an unlimited number of rewrites but are prone to mechnical hardware failure.  Also, when an SSD fails, it's more likely to be unrecoverable than a traditional HDD.     

    A single sector is normally not written to over and over again, as the underlying hardware ensures that with each write a different sector is used. This does become an issue though if the drive is almost full, and you write/delete frequently to what little space is left. For data that is relatively static (eg 3D content data) an SSD is likely to function normally for many, many years.

    That said backup on a different medium is never a bad idea.

  • SapphireBlueSapphireBlue Posts: 1,374

    tsroemi said:

    The limitation to a single library and especially to the c drive is just bonkers, I kinda regret now that I bought it. If anyone sees a quick and dirty way to lift at least the restriction to the c drive, or finds out how to bypass it, that'd be very cool.

    tsroemi I don't think there's any restriction to the c drive. It just scans the library that it is installed in. DIM installed it on my d drive DAZ library location (my main library), and it just scanned that library.

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 338

    tsroemi said:

    The limitation to a single library and especially to the c drive is just bonkers, I kinda regret now that I bought it. If anyone sees a quick and dirty way to lift at least the restriction to the c drive, or finds out how to bypass it, that'd be very cool.

    You can create a directory symbolic link with mklink in the console. (I always forget the syntax and have to google it) It redirects the path to another path or drive.

     

  • XtraDimensionalXtraDimensional Posts: 513
    My DAZ library is on my L drive (for library). Program works just fine. Took about an hour to scan my library folders, and another hour to do the hdri scan, which is amazing considering how much I have. There's a touch of learning curve, and the organization is a little bit clunky, but I think it's going to work a treat as soon as I get all my sorting done.
  • ArtAngelArtAngel Posts: 2,032

    XtraDimensional said:

    My DAZ library is on my L drive (for library). Program works just fine. Took about an hour to scan my library folders, and another hour to do the hdri scan, which is amazing considering how much I have. There's a touch of learning curve, and the organization is a little bit clunky, but I think it's going to work a treat as soon as I get all my sorting done.

    How big is your library? How many Library GBs or TBs did it scan in a hour?
  • XtraDimensionalXtraDimensional Posts: 513
    Just under 2TB
  • Sensual ArtSensual Art Posts: 646

    Cybersox said:

    Crosspostinng my own post from elsewhere there are multiple videos by the creator on youtube here: 

    https://www.youtube.com/@EZ3DTV/streams

     

     

    Unfortunately, I'm ot very impressed with the videos, the product, or the creator. His videos are extremely long and he rambles on forever before actually starting to demonstrate anything... at 13 minutes into the first one with a lot of rambling and complaining about losing two of his hard drives with not a single thing demonstrated, I flicked it off, splurged the $5, downloaded it and pulled up the manual.  My initial impressions, albeit just from reading the first few pages, are not great:

    First problem - it seems the product is designed to work with a single library.. to quote: "If you have customized your Daz Library install locations of items you may have unpredictable results from EZFinder," and it has to be in the default C drive position.  So, no guarantee that it wil work properly or at all with the multiple libraries that many of us maintain, and it only works for that single installation of DS, so there goes any use with dual installations of beta versions, 

    Second,) it's built around SmartContent, not the actual library.  That one was a killer for me right there...

    Third, when he talks about handling thousands of items, it seems that he's talking about each individual item within a product as a seperate item rather than overall products.  That would shrink all the advertised numbers down by at least a factor of ten.

    Fourth, when talking about librariy size, he notes that a "VERY large library of 500,000+ items" will require 5 GB+ of additional storage to handle all of the additional files the program generates

     

    On the positive side, the other utilities mentioned do seem to be included as scripts.

    Summary: it seems to be an entry level product, possibly useful for casual users or newbies.  The individual scripts may be useful, but it's definitely not the cat's pajamas.

    How does it handle incremental product addition to the library? Does it need to rescan the whole library again to refresh its indices and other metadata?


    In general, I am intrigued by how it keeps its proprietary indices and metadata in sync with updates to the library, considering that none of the current official Daz installation methods support any plugin functionality (RIP DazCentral) where such integrations would be possible.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 10,286
    edited 6:07AM

    Cybersox said:

    SSDs are faster, but not a great place to keep your DAZ libraries due to the fact that they have a finite number of write cycles after which that sector no longer rewrites.  That means, as I've found out the hard way, that you can think you're saving something only to find that, if you can read it at all, you'll find an older version.  HDDs, by contrast, have an unlimited number of rewrites but are prone to mechnical hardware failure.  Also, when an SSD fails, it's more likely to be unrecoverable than a traditional HDD.     

    Well DAZ library content is generally read-only after it has been installed, so I'd say SSDs are fine for your library.  But the price even for the cheaper ones is pretty high per GB.  I only use them for system disks because of the fast boot up, I never store data, only programs, on system disks, so a 250 GB is more than enough.

    I use HDDs for data, they can last pretty long actually.  I have four WD disks in my main PC, system disk is close to 10 years, the other three are between 7-8 years.  And that is not physical age, but power-on time (they never sleep so power-on time = spin time), according to their SMART data.  They are well cooled,.rarely go over 40 degrees C, which I believe is a factor. 

     

    Post edited by Taoz at
  • Charlie JudgeCharlie Judge Posts: 13,355

    XtraDimensional said:

    My DAZ library is on my L drive (for library). Program works just fine. Took about an hour to scan my library folders, and another hour to do the hdri scan, which is amazing considering how much I have. There's a touch of learning curve, and the organization is a little bit clunky, but I think it's going to work a treat as soon as I get all my sorting done.

    I'm glad somebody got it to work. Is your library on an SSD? My library is on an external HDD. It took about 18 hours to scan my 8 TB library and even after the scan the results did not display properly. Any suggestions? 

  • hjakehjake Posts: 1,308
    edited 12:48PM

    Cybersox said:

    ........

    Summary: it seems to be an entry level product, possibly useful for casual users or newbies.  The individual scripts may be useful, but it's definitely not the cat's pajamas.

    Well if you are looking for The Cat's Pajamas then https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016715/

     

    Post edited by hjake at
  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 2,341

    Like many others, I found the promo confusing. I'm not sure if it really offers anything I want.

    But $119 for a utility? No way.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 10,447

    Please take a look at the official support thread:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/756431/ezfinder-advanced-content-manager-for-daz-studio-released#latest

     

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