vizanto / git-annex-photo-import

Code to import photos into git-annex and munge some useful metadata into them.

git-annex-photo-import

A script to import photos into git-annex and munge some useful metadata into them.

import.py annex-dir files-to-import

Imports files and adds git-annex metadata from EXIF. It also queries the Google geolocation API to attach readable place names as metadata. The way it chooses from its location name options and names the metadata fields is currently a heuristic that will work best in the U.S.

It renames the files to include the date & time as well as the original filename, and uppercases all the file extensions so that git-annex will spot files with duplicate contents but different extensions as duplicates.

It puts all the files in one directory, and assumes that you will use metadata and annex views to create any hierarchy you want.

It also currently uses a /tmp directory (change it via the STAGING_DIR env var) to stage files, so that importing doesn't modify the original files.

Requirements

It currently requires the python module ExifRead, although an earlier version used exiftool, and most of the code to support that is still there, waiting on reintegration.

Example

Here's the metadata the script added to an iPhone picture of mine:

% git annex metadata 2011-12-02_18:31:52-IMG_1161.JPG
metadata 2011-12-02_18:31:52-IMG_1161.JPG 
  Address=8800 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78757, USA
  Code=78757
  Country=United States
  County=Travis County
  DateTimeOriginal=2011:12:02 18:31:52
  Day=2
  GPSAltitude=328243/1428
  GPSAltitudeRef=0
  GPSImgDirection=9857/1162
  GPSImgDirectionRef=T
  GPSLatitude=[30, 556/25, 0]
  GPSLatitudeRef=N
  GPSLongitude=[97, 873/20, 0]
  GPSLongitudeRef=W
  Locality=Austin
  Model=iPhone 4
  Month=12
  Neighborhood=North Shoal Creek
  Route=Burnet Road
  SourceFile=/Volumes/Four TB Backup/Mike's iPhone 4 backup/IMG_1161.JPG
  State=Texas
  Year=2011

This metadata allows you to do nice things with git-annex views like this:

% git annex view "Year=*" "Month=*"

% ls -l 2011/12/*
lrwxr-xr-x  1 mmccrack  staff   204B Aug  4 07:43 2011-12-02_18:31:52-IMG_1161.JPG -> ../../.git/annex/objects/gp/Wz/SHA256E-s1617420--96cd231aeab6f53379eb7ee7ecc6153f78132deec47cbaf795c572281654ecd1.JPG/SHA256E-s1617420--96cd231aeab6f53379eb7ee7ecc6153f78132deec47cbaf795c572281654ecd1.JPG

NOTE: switching views like this in git annex is currently very slow on large files. With around 10,000 images, the above view comand took 8 minutes on my system (not an SSD).

Caveats

Note that you currently have to do the final 'git commit' yourself after running the import script.