This program will allow you to unify your disparate photo and video libraries in to an organised directory structure.
It also allows you to copy photos from your camera to your hard drive (see the Roadmap below for plans in this area).
It scans files in the source directory, analyses them, and copies them to the new directory structure in the destination directory.
Files are organised by year and quarter based on the approximate (see note on copy behaviour on different file systems, below) creation date of the files:
└── destination_directory
└── 2024
└── Q1
└── video.mov
└── Q2
└── pic.jpeg
└── Q3
└── film.mkv
└── Q4
└── cat.hevcThe program handles files with the same name but different sizes (name clash files) by copying the file and adding a unique suffix to the filename.
Duplicate files (files that have the same name and the same size) are identified and not copied.
The program gives a summary of files to be copied before asking for user confirmation of copy:
Discovered To be copied Duplicate Name clash
Count Size Count Size Count Size Count Size
______________________________________________________________________________
Media 7 2.89MB 7 2.89MB 0 0.0MB 0 0.0MB
Misc 0 0.0MB 0 0.0MB 0 0.0MB 0 0.0MB
______________________________________________________________________________
Total 7 2.89MB 7 2.89MB 0 0.0MB 0 0.0MB
Duplicates will not be copied
Name clash files will be copied with a unique suffix
Total to be copied:
7 files
2.89MB
This project is in beta and is under active development. See Roadmap section lower down for upcoming features and areas that need refactoring.
I aim to use the Python standard library or build my own helpers and tools wherever possible. As such pytest, pytest-mock, exiftool and pillow are the only dependencies.
There is only minimal error handling as I wanted errors to surface immediately during development and testing. Error handling is on the roadmap.
I prefer abbreviating lines for readability, so you (hopefully) won't see long lines going off the end of the screen.
My main language is Ruby. I wanted to learn Python and so taught myself whilst building this. As such I will not always follow Pythonic conventions.
I wanted to experiment with a few things so I've built my own logger and table generator. I have also explored using the singleton pattern.
Code reviews, feedback, and pull requests are welcome!
FileCopier for recursion, and a guest appearance from the controversial walrus operator!
StatPresenter for some metaprogramming that was deeply satisfying to write. I love the result (see the pre-copy file summary table, below). I tried a couple of table generators, including pandas, but it was inadequate for what I wanted to do.
Scanner for clean design, and functions being passed to functions.
The main.py tests to see me pytest mocking and fixtures.
The project is in beta; use at your own risk.
The fantastic ExifTool is required to run this program, and needs to be in your PATH. Follow the instructions here to set it up.
To run the project from the command line, navigate to the project root directory and run:
python main.py -s <your source directory> -t <your destination directory>
You will be presented with statistics on the files you want to copy. You can then confirm the copy or cancel it.
- Three modes
- Copies photos and videos from source directory to generated directory structure in destination directory
- Same as first mode, but copies the miscellaneous files to a single directory (/misc) in destination directory
- Lists miscellaneous file extensions that won't be copied when above mode is run
- Detailed pre=copy summary of source file analysis
- Command line interface
- Detailed log files
- Reorganise (move vs copy) files in source directory instead of copying them to a destination directory.
- Pause and resume function
- Status updates during and after copy
- Scheduled backup functionality
- GUI
- Auto-runs when camera connected
CaptureTimeIdentifier is a WIP and I am currently experiementing with two different libraries for extracting EXIF data for capture time. Exiftool works for videos and images but is relatively slow, and pillow only works for images. I haven't yet found a light weight library to extract capture time info from videos. FileGateway is too large and needs splitting up. Logger needs a rethink. Not sure I want to store so much in memory whilst the program is running.
One day I plan to have a raspberry pi set up to detect my camera via bluetooth, copy all files from the camera to my cloud storage, and then delete the files on the camera. Progress will be displayed on a small screen on the raspberry pi. This will allow me to leave my camera turned on on my desk and walk away, with the media transfer happening automatically.
On Windows the creation time (or birth time) is preserved when a file is copied. On Unix systems by default the creation time of a copied file is the time at which it was copied (for instance when copying with drag and drop). This program utilises the shutil.copy2() method, which wherever possible preserves the original file metadata when copying, even on Unix systems. This means that the program can be run twice on the same files and will be able to sort them again.
I have designed this program to select the earlier of either the file birth time, creation time, or modification time to be the date that is used to determine the destination directory. In future I may also check camera file metadata to determine the earliest date.
This is because I have some pictures on my Windows hard drive that somehow have a modified time that is before the creation time! I am unsure how this happened, but expect it happened during a transfer of some sort. The creation times are all the same, but the modified dates are different, leading me to believe that the modified dates are the dates that the photos were taken.