Metadata import / export

[chhutchins]

I don't see a metadata import/export function. Does one exist? It would be nice to be able to do a few things:

• Import metadata from web scrapes
• Import metadata that already exists as used in another media organizer
• Export metadata to be used in a hub on another computer

Perhaps there's a work-around or interface that can be used without making software changes?

[cal2195]

Hi @chhutchins! 😄

Some of this functionality exists, although not as complete as I'd like it:

Export metadata to be used in a hub on another computer

The metadata is stored as plain text json file (the .vha file), so you could transfer that to another computer if you'd like, or mess around with the file yourself in an text editor/script.

Import metadata from web scrapes

This is something I'm very interested in, and I've even implemented myself on my own branch - I haven't gotten around to merging it yet, but if there's interest, I certainly will. See #178.
The basic gist is that you can write your own web scraper to save .tag files to your library, and it will import them automatically as tags. This could be expanded to more metatdata if required. 😄

Import metadata that already exists as used in another media organizer

This might be harder, and less useful as not everyone would use insert other media organiser here. What had you in mind?

[chhutchins]

Hi @chhutchins!

Some of this functionality exists, although not as complete as I'd like it:

Export metadata to be used in a hub on another computer

The metadata is stored as plain text json file (the .vha file), so you could transfer that to another computer if you'd like, or mess around with the file yourself in an text editor/script.

I take that to mean that I can programmatically change the tags and other metadata by modifying the JSON using python/pandas or another tool.

Import metadata from web scrapes

This is something I'm very interested in, and I've even implemented myself on my own branch - I haven't gotten around to merging it yet, but if there's interest, I certainly will. See #178.
The basic gist is that you can write your own web scraper to save .tag files to your library, and it will import them automatically as tags. This could be expanded to more metatdata if required.

Thanks. I'll take a look at #178

Import metadata that already exists as used in another media organizer

This might be harder, and less useful as not everyone would use insert other media organiser here. What had you in mind?

I'm using jriver. I agree that it would be difficult and not very productive to write a custom interface for each "other" media organizer. It seems to me that if I can use JSON as a metadata input then I can accomplish what I want by writing something up in python. XML -> JSON -> .vha

[whyboris]

@chhutchins -- I hope the interface is easy to deal with 😅
The .vha (now .vha2) file is a JSON with this structure:
https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/blob/master/interfaces/final-object.interface.ts#L6
Each image element is this:
https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/blob/master/interfaces/final-object.interface.ts#L17
Please feel free to reach out with any questions 👍

[chhutchins]

Thanks, whyboris. I may spend a little time playing with it this weekend.

[whyboris]

It seems that some people might be using the native tags feature in MacOS. Perhaps it's not too hard to allow importing those 🤷‍♂ -- may be worth a look -- could be a quick win 👍

I think import is the more-important feature than export (if they are to be done in sequence).

[whyboris]

I'll try something this weekend: #178 (comment)

[whyboris]

PR for automatically importing os-native tags on a Mac: #370 😁

[whyboris]

As a bonus, thanks to osx-tag https://github.com/keichi/osx-tag -- we can save all the tags to OS-X 👍

I can't find anything for Windows yet 🤷‍♂ 🙆‍♂ 👌

[whyboris]

⚠️ this dependency can't be installed on Windows and I would have to maintain a mac branch in order for this feature to exist. This isn't a problem, but I think this may be a mac-only feature for a while.

[whyboris]

I figured out a way to import OS-X tags on first scan. I'll try to get this PR #370 merged before VHA 3.0.0 is released 🎉