Media-import pictures, audio files, and video from a variety of different cameras and devices, including AVCD and various RAW formats... even scanners. Just put in the SD card and run kbImport.
Used on varying computers at different times: Mac, Linux, Windows. This is a personal script that I have used and grown over several years of continuous use.
All files are organized under a uniform filing system so it's easy to find images etc based on when and what, not which hardware. That said, You need to edit the file to indicate the drives you use for archiving. Every system's drive layout may be slightly different. I wish that weren't so, but it is. My (Windows) archive is on "G:" -- yours may be on "R:" or who knows. So make sure you check! The expected drive locations are right near the top of the file.
Usage: insert media, then run:
python kbImport3.py [JobName]
The [JobName] is optional but helpful. Imported files will be laid-out onto the archive disk as follows (YYY MM and DD fields are numbers indicating dates):
Audio
YYYY
YYYY-MM-Mon
YYYY\_MM\_DD\_JobName
R09_0003.MP3
Pix
YYYY
YYYY-MM-Mon
YYYY\_MM\_DD\_JobName
rw2s
P2357652.RW2
P2357653.RW2
P2357652.JPG
P2357652.DNG
P2357653.JPG
P2357653.DNG
Vid
YYYY
YYYY-MM-Mon
YYYY\_MM\_DD\_JobName
P1090545.JPG
P1090545.MOV
AVCHD
MetaData: kbImport just moves files around, it doesn't assign metadata. For pictures, I use the 'AllMine' script within Photoshop, which can be found at https://github.com/joker-b/PhotoshopScripts
Variations: In the case of the Pix directory, the "rw2s" subdirectory is optional -- it was created by kbImport when convrting .RW2 format files to .DNG. If DNG wasn't applied, then the .RW2 files would be in the primary archive.
In the Vid directory, either the AVCHD directory will be present or the .MOV file with matching .JPG thumbnail (unless you have archived video from two different cameras using different standards into the same directory). Since AVCHD data formatting is somewhat... brittle, if you have multiple AVCHD cameras shooting on the same day, archive them using slightly different JobNames, e.g. "WeddingCam1" and "WeddingCam2".
As of April 2020 kbImport can also rename and arrange "simple backup" files in disk: e.g., if you have just copied am SD card DCIM to a local drive, kbImport can find those files, relabel and rearrange them on the same disk. This requires no real copying and is just very fast. Use the -r option for relabelling.
As you'll see below, raw copying followed by relabelling can be the fastest option for some devices.
Most measured with an 11.63GB collection comprised of 423 JPG and RAW files.
- Macbook Air 2013 with integrated SD reader
- To External SSD: 2.44 minutes, 81.394 Mb/s
- Win 10 desktop with IOGear SD reader
- To External SSD: 5.29 minutes, 37.547 Mb/s
- Win10 Galaxy Flex Book with OWC Travel Dock
- To UFS card: ~52MB/sec
- Macbook Pro 2018
- On Satechi external reader to SSD: 2:30, 79.29 Mb/sec
- Raspberry Pi 4 with UGreen USB-3 external:
- To external SSD: 2:35, 72.03 Mb/sec
- Chromebook Galaxy with Letscom external (reader faulty?):
- To External SSD (old reader): 7.471 Mb/s
- To microSD evo256 (new reader): 14.865 Mb/sec
- Drag to microSD of the same folder: about 8mins, 24.8 MB/sec
- as above, plus kbImport renaming: 36sec = about 24MB/sec in total
cp -rto internal drive: 5.5min or about 36MB/s before renaming -- about the same as using the WD Wireless drive.- WD Wireless Pro auto-backup: about 5 minutes, or about 40MB/s + renaming pass 28sec ("486MB/sec") or in total about 36MB/s
- Chromebook Pixel 2013 running Gallium:
- To External SSD: 14.05 Mb/s using the internal card reader
- Chromebook Pixel 2013 running Ubuntu:
- To External SSD: 13.97 Mb/s using the internal card reader
sudo lsblk -o UUID,NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,MODEL
sudo mkdir /mnt/pix20s
sudo mkdir /mnt/X100F
sudo chmod 770 /mnt/pix20s/
sudo chmod 770 /mnt/X100F/
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/pix20s
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/X100F
cd src/kbImport/
python3 kbImport3.py -p bjorke -j PiTest
sudo umount /dev/sda1
sudo umount /dev/sdb1
Because kbImport is meant to be useful even on small laptops when travelling (I often have used it on an Asus EE-PC with an external HD), it will first look for the "master" archive (for me, a drobo disk stack) and if it can't find it, it will seek a sensible local-system location for media storgage. Then later, when the master archive is available the temporary local archive can be merged into the master using drobolize.py -- be sure to double-check the expected locations in this script, because like kbImport it expects my drive locations -- yours may vary.