Alternative to StarExplorer that is "fast" and can create folders etc on the fly?

Damon016

Starexplorer is good for what it is, creating folders, structures, and all of that but either it's slow or SM is slow as far as uploads go. I will go out on a limb and say it's not SM from several tests from firefox and IE8/9 <~Two different computers I tested on. In every test of 10 file uploads (8 to 9 meg photo sizes) SM uploader was over twice as fast. Why is this? I know my upload speeds from where i FTP to Fotki and it's over 3x as fast. I can upload 3000 files to my Fotki page in under a day. It takes 3 days with star... :scratch

And yes, I do have to use a file program such as this because I do horse shows where over 100 directories have to be created (1 for each rider). Is there another option?:rolleyes And no, not looking for smart $$$ answers, just yes or no and if yes, what the option is... since for whatever reason in THIS DATE AND TIME there is no FTP avail yet...

jfriend

I'm using smart galleries for each player for rowing and soccer. I keyword by person, then upload all images from an event to one gallery, then use smart galleries to display a gallery for each person. There's still the excruciating pain of creating a smart gallery for every person, but since you're asking about the upload, the upload is simpler (to just one gallery). This also has a benefit for me in that images that I want to show up for more than one person are only uploaded once. If, I find out later I tagged something wrong, I just change the keyword on it and it goes to the right place.

Have you asked the StarExplorer developer about the speed issue? I would think he'd want to know about that and might either look into it or have some advice.

Damon016

jfriend wrote: »

I'm using smart galleries for each player for rowing and soccer. I keyword by person, then upload all images from an event to one gallery, then use smart galleries to display a gallery for each person. There's still the excruciating pain of creating a smart gallery for every person, but since you're asking about the upload, the upload is simpler (to just one gallery). This also has a benefit for me in that images that I want to show up for more than one person are only uploaded once. If, I find out later I tagged something wrong, I just change the keyword on it and it goes to the right place.

Have you asked the StarExplorer developer about the speed issue? I would think he'd want to know about that and might either look into it or have some advice.

I have not yet dove into the arena of smart galleries, that may come at a later date. I like the idea of being able to keyword stuff, but unfortunately there are girls (that are quite young) that I do not want to put there names up. Their horses change some times twice a year so it's not feasible. With over 100 horses at an event and sometimes multiple riders riding one horse you can see where it's an issue!

As far as contacting him about the speed. The guy has had an attitude when questioning things before so figured I would put it out there to others that may have the same issue. I received a couple of emails on my personal email from people saying they have the same problem with speed. FTP is the way to go really, but it seems that after the 100000000 requests people have made, no one has honored thy request like other sites out there. 200kb is a VERY slow upload speed though considering the speeds I am getting from FTP (or even smugs uploader) which is quite a bit faster.

jfriend

Damon016 wrote: »

I have not yet dove into the arena of smart galleries, that may come at a later date. I like the idea of being able to keyword stuff, but unfortunately there are girls (that are quite young) that I do not want to put there names up. Their horses change some times twice a year so it's not feasible. With over 100 horses at an event and sometimes multiple riders riding one horse you can see where it's an issue!

As far as contacting him about the speed. The guy has had an attitude when questioning things before so figured I would put it out there to others that may have the same issue. I received a couple of emails on my personal email from people saying they have the same problem with speed. FTP is the way to go really, but it seems that after the 100000000 requests people have made, no one has honored thy request like other sites out there. 200kb is a VERY slow upload speed though considering the speeds I am getting from FTP (or even smugs uploader) which is quite a bit faster.

I'm not sure what your privacy issue is with keywording. I use the first name only for keyword. If there is more than one kid with that first name, I add the last initial like (KevinF). My parents have not thought that was a problem. If the kids are 6th grade of below, I password protected all galleries. At 7th grade and up, I don't password protect anymore (more convenient for everyone) and parents have universally thought this was fine. FYI, password protected galleries are not searchable on SM or Google.

Here's an example of the way I'm doing it. There are only two actual upload galleries here - all the rest are smart galleries (alternate ways to view the images).

The author of SE does sometimes have an attitude - we all do occasionally. But, he does want SE to be the fastest way to upload and if you had some good data on how he was 2x slower than Smugmug's uploader, I'd be surprised if he didn't look into it and see what's going on. FTP may have it's advantages, but it is not required in order to have a fast solution.

Damon016

jfriend wrote: »

I'm not sure what your privacy issue is with keywording. I use the first name only for keyword. If there is more than one kid with that first name, I add the last initial like (KevinF). My parents have not thought that was a problem. If the kids are 6th grade of below, I password protected all galleries. At 7th grade and up, I don't password protect anymore (more convenient for everyone) and parents have universally thought this was fine. FYI, password protected galleries are not searchable on SM or Google.

Here's an example of the way I'm doing it. There are only two actual upload galleries here - all the rest are smart galleries (alternate ways to view the images).

The author of SE does sometimes have an attitude - we all do occasionally. But, he does want SE to be the fastest way to upload and if you had some good data on how he was 2x slower than Smugmug's uploader, I'd be surprised if he didn't look into it and see what's going on. FTP may have it's advantages, but it is not required in order to have a fast solution.

I know I do, but if I am paying for something I want it to work (better) than the next guy. FTP has majority of the stuff out there. His product is great, speed not so much. When I upload to fotki.com it's at around 400kb... here 240 is the avg (huddling around 190/200). Over all though, it takes a FULL Day longer to do 3000 photos which is disturbing.

I like the idea of what you did, but for me just doesn't make sense (my opinion)

SamirD

I've been asking for FTP for years now. Feel free to vote and add your support to the request.

In the meantime, smugftp.com is a solution that is being worked on. I've used it quite extensively and we're patching bugs every week. I wouldn't even call it beta at this point, but it is usable. And it is FAST. I get 2x the speed of SM's uploaders.

There still isn't a fast, easy, robust way to get photos on SM. I've wasted 3hrs today trying to set up a 7gb upload batch with simple uploader. It's the most frustrating part of using an otherwise good service.

Andy

SamirD wrote: »

There still isn't a fast, easy, robust way to get photos on SM.

Samir, we know you want FTP. But I'm gonna call you on this. We have spent a fortune on making uploading more reliable and more robust. We are getting millions and millions of photos uploaded per day - from so many without any difficulty. I'm uploading 2000 photos from a soccer tourney, at 7-10 Mb/sec right now, as we speak.

SamirD

I'm going to raise your call.

I'm a fairly sophisticated user Andy. I know how to fix my computers, keep the software from getting full of trash, diagnose issues related to versions, etc. And I have to say it's still not there Andy. I've been with you guys for years now, and it's been the same thing every few years with something coming along to throw a wrench in the uploading process.

I have no idea what you guys recently did to Simple. I know that multiple file uploading for firefox was enabled, but now I can't run multiple sessions of Simple without crashing all the sessions. Just the act of launching a second session of simple uses so much cpu power that both uploaders crash.

I was able to get about 6mb of my 15mb bandwidth saturated when I could load three instances of simple uploading a single file at a time. But if I'm stuck to using a single instance of simple, I've actually gone down in speed, maxing out at maybe 3mb. So uploads are going to be 2x slower with this new uploader.

This new uploader will work wonders for those with a single connection, but it's not going to help me until it gets smart enough to automatically max out the bandwidth by increasing the number of files until it does. Make it do that, and make it robust, and you'll have one of the biggest advocates ever for your uploading system.

Damon016

It's not bad, but it's not great. Of course the "admin/ceo" is going to have everything working correctly. "no bias there...." Meanwhile us users uploading out here are getting garbage! I am not the only one complaining either. I should be WAY over the 230kb mark! Unless for some reason starexplorer is throttling, but nothing in the settings indicated this.

SamirD

Damon016 wrote: »

It's not bad, but it's not great. Of course the "admin/ceo" is going to have everything working correctly. "no bias there...." Meanwhile us users uploading out here are getting garbage! I am not the only one complaining either. I should be WAY over the 230kb mark! Unless for some reason starexplorer is throttling, but nothing in the settings indicated this.

I have a license for SE as well. And Nikolai and I have worked extensively at trying to make it work for me, but for some reason it crashes on almost every piece of hardware/software I have. :cry But that being said, even when it did work, it was never the fastest uploader as far as raw speed was concerned. It's just nice to be able to queue things and forget about them, or at least I think that's the way it works for most everyone.

Getting raw speed means getting efficient, which is hard to do using http uploading. That's why I keep harping on FTP. There's a reason the forefathers of the Internet created it, like they created http. And the speeds can be incredible. In just simple experimentation using smugftp.com, I've been able to get speeds 2x of what the newest SM uploaders can do. That's less time uploading and more time working.

Damon016

SamirD wrote: »

I have a license for SE as well. And Nikolai and I have worked extensively at trying to make it work for me, but for some reason it crashes on almost every piece of hardware/software I have. :cry But that being said, even when it did work, it was never the fastest uploader as far as raw speed was concerned. It's just nice to be able to queue things and forget about them, or at least I think that's the way it works for most everyone.

Getting raw speed means getting efficient, which is hard to do using http uploading. That's why I keep harping on FTP. There's a reason the forefathers of the Internet created it, like they created http. And the speeds can be incredible. In just simple experimentation using smugftp.com, I've been able to get speeds 2x of what the newest SM uploaders can do. That's less time uploading and more time working.

I hear you... it's sad, that for so long people have asked for something so simple. Excuses it all you get dealdeal and there is no reason for it. #$@% or get off the pot! Show us, don't tell us... it's always an excuse as to why it's not here. More catergories or sub or blah blah... that was fine 5 years ago when someone asked about FTP's but it's 2011 for god sakes!

SamirD

Well, in their defense, Andy did mention that more categories was a pre-requisite for FTP. Although I don't see why it can't be implemented now and then changed as needed--most of the other new features roll out like that.

It's been 12 hrs since I started my upload batch, and I'm still not done. Now I'm hunting to figure out why a dir *.jpg /s/w is 1407 files and the gallery is only 1404. And with 79 videos to upload, transcoding those is not an option. Looks like those won't be uploaded at all. I've looked at Vimeo and it's a solution I can use, but I'd rather not jump ship if the video issue will be fixed.

Andy

Damon016 wrote: »

It's not bad, but it's not great. Of course the "admin/ceo" is going to have everything working correctly. "no bias there...."

Hi Damon, we use the same publicly-available internet providers that you can use. No special pipes or tricks for us.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Hi Damon, we use the same publicly-available internet providers that you can use. No special pipes or tricks for us.

7-10Mb/sec upload speed is hardly what most of your customers have. Maybe that's publicly available for consumers where you live (it is not available where I live), but in any case, it is not what most of your customers have. If you had 500kbps up, you'd not be happy with Smugmug's uploading options for your 2000 soccer photos. You are personally not experiencing what most of your customers experience. When that upload takes a good part of 2 days (2000 photos at 6MB each at 500kbps upload speed is 55 hrs), the odds of it getting interrupted and messed up are extremely high.

You end up having to babysit it, fix it when it breaks, figure out what did or didn't get uploaded properly and the whole process can take twice as long as it should and cost you a lot of time.

Damon016

jfriend wrote: »

7-10Mb/sec upload speed is hardly what most of your customers have. Maybe that's publicly available for consumers where you live (it is not available where I live), but in any case, it is not what most of your customers have. If you had 500kbps up, you'd not be happy with Smugmug's uploading options for your 2000 soccer photos. You are personally not experiencing what most of your customers experience. When that upload takes a good part of 2 days (2000 photos at 6MB each at 500kbps upload speed is 55 hrs), the odds of it getting interrupted and messed up are extremely high.

You end up having to babysit it, fix it when it breaks, figure out what did or didn't get uploaded properly and the whole process can take twice as long as it should and cost you a lot of time.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ NO #@$%! (AMEN!)bowthumbbow

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

7-10Mb/sec upload speed is hardly what most of your customers have. .

It's high speed cable and lots of places have such, or they have FiOS, and other options too. My intent was not to brag, but to show that we can accept files fast if you have a fast connection.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

You end up having to babysit it, fix it when it breaks, figure out what did or didn't get uploaded properly and the whole process can take twice as long as it should and cost you a lot of time.

We just implemented a boat-load of suggestions that you gave us, to improve the error handling and performance of both the HTML5 and the Java Uploader. Thanks for doing that! But one thing we cannot control is the speed of your upload ability.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

It's high speed cable and lots of places have such, or they have FiOS, and other options too. My intent was not to brag, but to show that we can accept files fast if you have a fast connection.

My point is that most of your customers do not have this and if you personally were trying to do the 2000 image upload over a typical upload bandwidth, you would feel more of the pain we're talking about.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

We just implemented a boat-load of suggestions that you gave us, to improve the error handling and performance of both the HTML5 and the Java Uploader. Thanks for doing that! But one thing we cannot control is the speed of your upload ability.

Glad you are improving things. If/when I have a long upload that is to only one gallery, I might give it a try, but most of my long uploads span a bunch of galleries and your HTML5 uploader doesn't do that so I can't let a single upload across several galleries run overnight using your uploader. I've also seen posts about videos getting truncated using the HTML5 uploader and memory getting exhausted when uploading videos and since videos are now occasionally part of my uploads, those video upload issues are show-stoppers too.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

Glad you are improving things. If/when I have a long upload that is to only one gallery, I might give it a try, but most of my long uploads span a bunch of galleries and your HTML5 uploader doesn't do that so I can't let a single upload across several galleries run overnight using your uploader. I've also seen posts about videos getting truncated using the HTML5 uploader and memory getting exhausted when uploading videos and since videos are now occasionally part of my uploads, those video upload issues are show-stoppers too.

I dunno John - we're getting millions and zillions of photos and videos uploaded every day. There will always be folks that have issues, and we do help them - and we will continue to strive to improve things even more, uploading is the life blood of Smuggy! Thanks for your help.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

My point is that most of your customers do not have this and if you personally were trying to do the 2000 image upload over a typical upload bandwidth, you would feel more of the pain we're talking about.

Interesting data here: http://www.netindex.com/upload/

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Interesting data here: http://www.netindex.com/upload/

I find it hard to believe that the average US household has 2.7MBps sustained upload speed. Perhaps that data includes businesses or it's measuring something other than what we're talking about or it's reporting the promised but never delivered speed that the ISPs market or it's a burst speed that isn't sustainable past a few minutes?

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that the average US household has 2.7MBps sustained upload speed. Perhaps that data includes businesses or it's measuring something other than what we're talking about or it's reporting the promised but never delivered speed that the ISPs market or it's a burst speed that isn't sustainable past a few minutes?

Another question - is not Comcast high speed available where you are? Other folks in the valley seem to have fast options available.. just curious.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Another question - is not Comcast high speed available where you are? Other folks in the valley seem to have fast options available.. just curious.

I've looked before - it's probably worth looking again. It's available at who knows what speeds. They won't promise me an upload speed. For twice as much as I'm paying now, they say things like: "Downloads up to 12 Mbps, uploads up to 2 Mbps with PowerBoost®". I don't want speed "up to" some value for some short period of time. I want sustained upload speeds "guaranteed" to some value. They won't provide it.

The way it is now, if I install it, get new routing/modem infrastructure, reconfigure all that (which would probably take several days to get right and get both security and gaming working properly) and I get 1Mbps up, they'll just say that's what you get and I'll be out a bunch of money. Dealing with Comcast is a horrible experience.

I'm also not willing to give Comcast $100/mo just for internet. ATT is supposed to be building out faster upload speeds in our area (don't know promised speeds or $$ yet), but it's been on the "coming soon" status for a long time. Don't know if that will be a better option or not. I'd like to not have to redo my infrastructure.

Probably worth looking in to again.

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

7-10Mb/sec upload speed is hardly what most of your customers have. Maybe that's publicly available for consumers where you live (it is not available where I live), but in any case, it is not what most of your customers have. If you had 500kbps up, you'd not be happy with Smugmug's uploading options for your 2000 soccer photos. You are personally not experiencing what most of your customers experience. When that upload takes a good part of 2 days (2000 photos at 6MB each at 500kbps upload speed is 55 hrs), the odds of it getting interrupted and messed up are extremely high.

You end up having to babysit it, fix it when it breaks, figure out what did or didn't get uploaded properly and the whole process can take twice as long as it should and cost you a lot of time.

This is my experience too. :cry

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that the average US household has 2.7MBps sustained upload speed. Perhaps that data includes businesses or it's measuring something other than what we're talking about or it's reporting the promised but never delivered speed that the ISPs market or it's a burst speed that isn't sustainable past a few minutes?

Those results are from the people who have tested on speedtest.net. Most people testing there have higher speeds. I mean, most people won't care what their speeds are or bother to test them.

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

I've looked before - it's probably worth looking again. It's available at who knows what speeds. They won't promise me an upload speed. For twice as much as I'm paying now, they say things like: "Downloads up to 12 Mbps, uploads up to 2 Mbps with PowerBoost®". I don't want speed "up to" some value for some short period of time. I want sustained upload speeds "guaranteed" to some value. They won't provide it.

The way it is now, if I install it, get new routing/modem infrastructure, reconfigure all that (which would probably take several days to get right and get both security and gaming working properly) and I get 1Mbps up, they'll just say that's what you get and I'll be out a bunch of money. Dealing with Comcast is a horrible experience.

I'm also not willing to give Comcast $100/mo just for internet. ATT is supposed to be building out faster upload speeds in our area (don't know promised speeds or $$ yet), but it's been on the "coming soon" status for a long time. Don't know if that will be a better option or not. I'd like to not have to redo my infrastructure.

Probably worth looking in to again.

My brother just got the AT&T upgrade and he's really happy with it. It took them forever to get it, but he can tell a real difference. The one time I uploaded from there many years ago, his upload at 1mb was faster than mine, which was only 384k. If you do a lot of uploading, I'd upgrade to Comcast. My brother was telling me that when he told his friends with Comcast about the speed, it was like telling a giant that you've finally grown into size 10 shoes. Their Comcast speeds are even faster than his upgraded AT&T speeds.

I've had to deal with the pain of switching ISPs, and what I'd do is sign up for Comcast and keep AT&T until Comcast has it installed and you're happy. Otherwise, demand your money back. Most of the ISPs around here will refund for lack of promised service.

Hope you get faster speeds soon! 55hrs is a long time!

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

Glad you are improving things. If/when I have a long upload that is to only one gallery, I might give it a try, but most of my long uploads span a bunch of galleries and your HTML5 uploader doesn't do that so I can't let a single upload across several galleries run overnight using your uploader. I've also seen posts about videos getting truncated using the HTML5 uploader and memory getting exhausted when uploading videos and since videos are now occasionally part of my uploads, those video upload issues are show-stoppers too.

Hey John, one of the way I get around this limitation is to upload to a single gallery and then move the files. It's a bit of a pain, but it allows you to just use a single uploader session. Of course, I can do this easily since all my images are chronological in nature and easy to split out. If you have a lot of custom filenames and such, then picking out each of the files to move to a gallery will be a bit of a pain.

I've experienced the same issues with videos on the html5 uploader...well, when I was able to upload videos. :cry

jfriend

SamirD wrote: »

Hey John, one of the way I get around this limitation is to upload to a single gallery and then move the files. It's a bit of a pain, but it allows you to just use a single uploader session. Of course, I can do this easily since all my images are chronological in nature and easy to split out. If you have a lot of custom filenames and such, then picking out each of the files to move to a gallery will be a bit of a pain.

I've experienced the same issues with videos on the html5 uploader...well, when I was able to upload videos. :cry

There's no way I'm going to upload to one gallery, then try to find the right images to move them - that's just a lot of manual work. I have them categorized on my PC where it's easy for me to drag/drop them into the right gallery bucket. Not so easy to do that on SM. I need to be able to do all the upload setup ahead of time, tell it to go and have it be ready for the public when the upload finishes.

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

There's no way I'm going to upload to one gallery, then try to find the right images to move them - that's just a lot of manual work. I have them categorized on my PC where it's easy for me to drag/drop them into the right gallery bucket. Not so easy to do that on SM. I need to be able to do all the upload setup ahead of time, tell it to go and have it be ready for the public when the upload finishes.

Ahh, I completely understand. Have you looked into Komodo Drop or SmugLoader? They have some capabilities like SE, but have much more threading capability to max out bandwidth easier if that's an issue.

jfriend

SamirD wrote: »

Ahh, I completely understand. Have you looked into Komodo Drop or SmugLoader? They have some capabilities like SE, but have much more threading capability to max out bandwidth easier if that's an issue.

I was just explaining to Andy why I can't yet use their HTML5 uploader (I need multi-gallery upload in single unattended session). I'm already using StarExplorer and I don't have issues maxing out my bandwidth (because I don't have enough bandwidth). I'm trying to optimize the reliability of unattended multi-gallery uploads (that often take more than 24 hrs) which is a bit different than the bandwidth maximizing issue you're pushing.