Category problems

[travellingpete]

Hi there,

first I want to describe the way that led to the current situation. In installed XnView on a new laptop as I wanted to get rid of Picasa. XnView just looked great to me, especially as I wanted to use categories as virtual albums.
On said laptop everythin worked as intended. But once back home after the first vacation, I wanted to migrate the images to my NAS and most of all access them from my desktop computer.
I exported everything into XMP, copied them all to the NAS and set the desktop to put the database into my image root directory. I imported the Categories, Ratings etc. via "Update catalog from files". I noted that the image count for each category was not the same than on the laptop. Here I started fiddeling around and lost track of what I did. One last step was that I copied all images of one category that is most important to me into a new directory, made sure that that category was set on all of them and copied them (via XnView!) into the original directory, overwriting the existing files. Also within XnViews file browser I deleted that temporary directory.

The situation now:
In the category view, the very same image is shown multiple times. Same name, same path etc. and if I select "All files" as a filter, I even get the deleted entries from the temporary directory. Of course without preview, file size 0 bytes. But why? I could understand if they were still in the database if I just deleted them with the Win Explorer, but I used XnView so it could update its database.

I also have an image number next to the category name that does not match the number of images. That was dicussed in viewtopic.php?t=35835 but I think my problem goes way deeper. E.g. if I use the category filter "Aosta2018", some of the images don't have that ribbon indicating the have a category. Also, if I select one, the category window shows no category checked on that image. Still it is included in the view (and should have that selected category).

I am very, very confused as this is to me the key feature I want to use. If it is not reliable, I can't use XnView.

Cordialement, Peter

[michel038]

Hello,
Are you using Windows or another OS ? Are all your images JPG type ?
When you write

I exported everything into XMP,

you mean all catégories were written in xmp:subject keywords ? (or xmp:lr:hierarchicalSubject)
Stars rating (and coulour labels) are also in xmp tags ?

If you are sure that all keywords and ratings are OK in XMP tags, you can rebuild whole database ...
But first, copy your xnview.db file to a safe place.
You can also export a kind of backup of database (Categories panel, small arrow , File's categories, Export)
And export categories names in a text file (in the same menu, categories managment, export)

I paste here my own method to renew database

1) backup categories in a text file
2) Backup files-categories in a xml file
3) Copy xnview.db to xnviewdb.old. Delete all categories
4) Close xnviewmp, delete xnview.db, restart xnviewmp.
5) Import categories (text file)
6) Sometimes, I use " import file's categories" xml file if previous database had a good behaviour. Sometimes, I ask xnviewmp to read the whole set of images (about 30000) , that takes half an hour, but the database is completely renewed. For this purpose, use Tools, settings, catalog, add folder (select root folder containing all images)
- Before 6th step , check your settings: Metadata->IPTC&XMP to ensure category import has been ticked. Check also other options.

- I use only the first ooption "import", because it occured that keywords were read two times if "export" option was also enabled ...
When importation is ended, I remove mark in "import" , and enable "export" for categories be written in keywords

( Can you tell us if both "export" and "import" options were ticked when many instances of the same picture appeared in database ?)

Thanks to Deepl.com translator.

[travellingpete]

Hi,

sorry for the late reply as I unexpectedly had to travel for my company.

Seemed to work so far, thanks. Now I have to fight my way through a lot of Tags (garbage from Picasa) I thought I had deleted. Turned out they were deleted in XnView, but not within the images/XMPs. So it worked better than intended

Thanks again,
Peter