Kicking Off My Digital Library Project
I thought that technology is suppose to make life easier? I won't deny that the iPhone (my latest toy) has provided me with conveniences that a couple years ago would have required that I carry along a mobile phone, digital camera, MP3 player, and laptop computer. While I love my iPhone, I still use my MacBook Pro, iPod Nano, Canon HD camcorder, and Canon DSLR regularly, depending on the occasion. With 3 devices that can take pictures and 2 that can capture videos, I'm having a hard time keeping track of everything. What I really need is a simple and cost effective solution for organizing, editing, sharing, and archiving all my photos and videos.
In this blog, I'm kicking off my efforts (a personal project) to define and implement a single system for managing my digital library, one that I hope will make my life easier. As with any IT like project, before embarking on the design, it's important to understand the requirements. It this case, it's a matter of articulating my own needs upfront, so I can be sure that I'm successful and happy with the outcome. I anticipate that each key requirement will require additional analysis (topics for future blogs) before I can fully define and settle on the priorities (must-haves and nice-to-haves) for this system. For now, I just want to capture the high level requirements.
I need a system that can grow (scalable) with my needs. Although I don't foresee buying any new devices in the near-term, it's important that this system can easily accommodate additional data sources. For example, if my wife gets an iPhone, I will need a way to easily import and manage all her photos and videos as well. As technology is constantly evolving, I will need a digital library solution that can withstand the test of time. I anticipate there will be new medias (e.g. Blue-ray) or social platforms where I would like to publish or store my pictures. It would be great if the system does not lock me in to a particular social platform or external media type.
I enjoy taking pictures and videos, and I have seen my digital library grow exponentially in recent years. However, I prefer not to invest the equivalent increment in time to manage my digital library. I need a system that will make it easy to organize and edit my photos and videos. I'm not a professional, so I do not need a fancy editing tool. Nor do I want to spend a lot of time on editorial tasks. Generally, I'm quite content with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" touch-ups provided in tools like Picasa. While I have typically organized my photos and videos by dates or events, I would like to evaluate and assess the benefits of organizing by other means such as geo tags or facial recognition.
One of the great joy of taking pictures and videos is sharing them with my family and friends. Currently, I share my pictures with my friends through social media Web sites such as FaceBook. I also keep my photos from the past year online in my Picasa Web album. While I have uploaded a couple video clips on YouTube, I have largely deferred the editing of my HD videos from the past year. That will change, as I'm motivated by this project. For my family (who are less technology savvy), I need this system to also facilitate with the creation of slide shows and home movies for re-play on the home theater or distribution via DVDs. Occasionally, I do printouts as well.
I currently have my pictures and videos scattered across my Mac and PC, with back-ups on an external hard drive, CDs and DVDs. One of the key driver for doing this project is my constant fear that one day my PC or Mac will crap out, or that my external hard drive will fail, or that the CDs where I back up my picture are no longer readable by new hardware. What I need is a fault tolerant solution for backing up and preserving my digital library. Since my PC is dated and I work largely on my Mac now, I would like to build my digital library around the software and services available on the Mac. This means I will need a way to migrate and import the pictures and videos from my PC.
Well, I think this is a pretty good start on the requirements for building a system for managing my digital library. I have identified my needs for organizing, editing, sharing, and archiving all my photos and videos. Now, I just need a solution. Any suggestions?
Have a central file server and keep all your data there. Make it RAID to protect it from hardware failures. I setup a PC with OpenSolaris and ZFS. Macs & Linux can do NFS. I Run Samba so the PCs can get to it. The Macs can use Samba too.
Separate static data from changing data. For example, my photos are static. I never change the original. All touchups go onto a copy of the original in a different folder.
Copy the static data to DVDs (multiple) and store off-site. One set at mom's, one at mom-in-law, etc. Once it's on DVD, don't change the version on disk.
I'm trying to find digital library software too. Most things out there seem to be specific. iTunes for Music, Picasa/iPhoto for photos, Calibre for eBooks.
Calibre has a web server so you can read only it from many locations, but adding to it should be done on one system.
The others are not really designed for multiple access. Each computer would build up its own database of the photos or music. You could run into an issue with 2 PCs trying to update tags on your music and rewriting the same file for example.
For photos, I create a directory with YearMonthDay (20091105 for today) and make an HTML inside with jigl. I put these directoryies into parent directories until the parent is ~ 4 GB (a DVD) and then start another parent. I have 11 DVDs of photos so far.
Mostly, I'm just using a fileserver and have a web server running over the whole thing. I'm defintely interested in multi user type access (wife, kids, me...)
Posted by Tom on November 05, 2009 at 02:34 PM PST #
Hi Tom, Thanks for your suggestions. Although I have some technical background, I was hoping not to go as far as running my own web / file servers. But I appreciate your approach. Conceptually, I think it's what I'm after too, a methodical approach to managing my digital library.
Posted by Alfred Chen on November 05, 2009 at 04:05 PM PST #