Photos, Videos and Audio

Development of a new media album

Requirements

• Upload of single and multiple files

• Upload via web and SSH

• Support for all common file types. Non-image files are of course not viewed.

• Preferrably non-database based. Folder structure with simple metadata files and or image metadata should (.folder and .files) should be enough. No files should also work with default information. This makes it scriptable.

• Metadata edit directly via metadata files or web interface.

• Strict XHTML output. Layout customization via CSS.

• File names should be kept.

• Static access to files should be provided directly from webserver.

• Database may be used to cache metadata.

• Folder refresh should be possible to trigger.

• Video/Audio transcoding to supported browser standards.

• Allow integration with another ruby application e.g. Instiki.

• Upload should be to a anonymous location (not a folder).

• Tags are used to categorize files.

• Views

  • Thumbnail
  • Single file
  • Slideshow
  • Search
  • Any set of tags may be used to specify the file set

• Caption for files shall be supported. Preferrably stored in the file metadata (EXIF)

• Simple EXIF data should be shown

• Resize of thumnails and target images should be supported

• Integration with wiki or other application should be supported

• Transcoding of audio and video to support all browsers

Solutions

• Use sinatra?
• Use plain text files with database backup for metadata.
• Use scp for upload and rails for editing?

Available solutions

• Ruby on Rails WebAlbum

• AJAX based with similar design as intended

• Balder

  • FreeImage - available in ports from OpenBSD 4.6.
  • ExifTool - available in ports as p5-Image-ExifTool.
  • A set of gems; AuthLogic, Mime-Types, ImageScience, RubyInline, Mini_ExifTool

• Mollify webbased file manager. Mephisto is also an alternative. Are there any other? Different file types must be supported.

Photos

A new album implementing most of the ideas presented above is now deployed. This is very early testing so bugs and problems are anticipated.

Check it out on http://photos.lounge.se

References

• Galleria

Videos

See Anders doing radical moves in Verbier 2008.

• Previously Anders “extreme” skiing in Verbier was located here. But on request from Anders Karlsson this was too radical for the public to survive. So it is now censored. Maybe it will show up on You Tube some day …