Gallery sort order doesn't use all time data

TheDuck

Sorting a gallery by "date taken" has always jumbled photos taken within a second or so of each other - messing up the sequence of sports action shots. I generally have gotten around it by changing the gallery to sort by file name instead, but this approach does not work if I am intermingling photos from two cameras, nor does it work when my camera rolls over the counter (9999->0001). I've brought this up in the past and nothings ever been fixed....any chance that this could get corrected???

Thanks.

Rogue 1

TheDuck wrote: »

Sorting a gallery by "date taken" has always jumbled photos taken within a second or so of each other - messing up the sequence of sports action shots. I generally have gotten around it by changing the gallery to sort by file name instead, but this approach does not work if I am intermingling photos from two cameras, nor does it work when my camera rolls over the counter (9999->0001). I've brought this up in the past and nothings ever been fixed....any chance that this could get corrected???

Thanks.

Hi Duck -

In a nutshell, the fix is to batch rename your files before uploading -

Time/Date sorts to the second, so yes, burst-mode shooting for multiple shots within a single second cannot be auto-sorted -

Mutl-camera shooting mixes filenames (but you should sync the clocks for sorting) -

For either issue, a batch rename during editing, using a four-digit system (up to 10k per shoot) is the normal work-flow for this - and best.

Note - use this function to 'tag' images within a shoot > eg: NYCMarathon_2011_0001.jpg through NYCMarathon_2011_8927.jpg

This makes 'searching' your site, hard drives, external media etc much easier down the line - (as opposed to basic img_2098 repeating hundreds of times) -

I do hope this helps - and if you have further questions, we'll be happy to assist - or contact us on the help desk -

Seán
Support Hero
http://www.smugmug.com/help

jfriend

TheDuck wrote: »

Sorting a gallery by "date taken" has always jumbled photos taken within a second or so of each other - messing up the sequence of sports action shots. I generally have gotten around it by changing the gallery to sort by file name instead, but this approach does not work if I am intermingling photos from two cameras, nor does it work when my camera rolls over the counter (9999->0001). I've brought this up in the past and nothings ever been fixed....any chance that this could get corrected???

Thanks.

The date taken field in your camera EXIF simply doesn't have enough resolution to handle multiple shots taken in the same second. The fix on Smugmug's part would be to use filename as a secondary sort key when date taken was equal on two files. That would practically eliminate the issue (yes, there is still a corner case where you wrap file numbers in the middle of a sequence that all has the same seconds, but that would be pretty rare rather than every sequence like we have now).

I work around this by renaming my files to include a date number and the file number and then sort by filename.

TheDuck

Thanks for suggestions. It would be great if SM would use jfriend's sort suggestion, but in the meantime I'll add the manual renaming step.

SamirD

jfriend wrote: »

The fix on Smugmug's part would be to use filename as a secondary sort key when date taken was equal on two files. That would practically eliminate the issue (yes, there is still a corner case where you wrap file numbers in the middle of a sequence that all has the same seconds, but that would be pretty rare rather than every sequence like we have now).

Brilliant!! Best solution hands down.

jasonscottphoto

SamirD wrote: »

Brilliant!! Best solution hands down.