AlbumFetcher - Download multiple galleries w/ embedded captions and keywords

ohioboater · June 5, 2008

Help getting this to work on XP
Hi,

Anyone have any ideas on the problem described below? This seems like a great tool if I can get it to work...

I'm running Windows XP sp2 with a very fast Internet connection (comes in at 10 Mb/sec on smugmug.speedtest.net). Here's what I am doing:

Log in as owner
Settings:
- An existing folder on my hard drive as destination
- Original image size
- Skip video
- Embed IPTC data
- Do not download album descriptions
- Skip local files
Click Fetch Albums
Walk away for a really long time

Here's what happens:

A few images will download successfullly, but very slowly - at least an order of magnitude slower than if I go into Smugmug directly and choose "Save Original."
Download then will fail with a message like:
- "Download of image IMG_3238.JPG (Smugmug ID 306009690) from album "Alexa's first ice cream cone" failed. Download aborted:

Here are the relevant lines from the logfile:

6/4/2008 5:24:46 PM: Expect file of size 5289 bytes.
6/4/2008 5:24:46 PM: Received file of size 5289 bytes.
6/4/2008 5:24:46 PM: Expect file of size 983873 bytes.
6/4/2008 5:25:57 PM: Download failed on file http://omalley.smugmug.com/photos/306009690_nmNtP-O.jpg. Received Internet Exception: The operation timed out
6/4/2008 5:25:57 PM: GetUrlContentsAsMemFile failed in GetUrlContentsAsFile call.
6/4/2008 5:25:57 PM: Download of image IMG_3238.JPG (Smugmug ID 306009690) from album "Alexa's first ice cream cone" failed. Download aborted.

ohioboater · June 6, 2008

...and now it works fine
I tried another run last night, and about 20 albums downloaded successfully. Tyring another batch now, and the speeds are much more like I would expect and, so far at least, no errors. I suppose this all might have been congestion at one or the other end of the network. But it did seem strange that I could get very fast performance from a direct transfer when, at nearly the same instant, AlbumFetcher would just crawl. Perhaps smugmug has some sort of QoS policy that affects bulk downloads?

Anyway, nice tool. This will save me hours and hours re-creating all the keywords I entered via smugmug before I realized that they don't get written to the IPTC keyword field. Wish I had know that up front when I first became a smugmug user...

ohioboater · June 9, 2008

and now it doesn't...
AlbumFetcher continues to 'die' consistently. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the crashes. Sometimes it's simply a failed download like I describe above. Other times, it's this error:

Is there anything I might tweak on my system to make AlbumFetcher a little more stable? I appreciate all the effort you have put into developing this tool.

wellman · June 10, 2008

ohioboater wrote:

AlbumFetcher continues to 'die' consistently. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the crashes. Sometimes it's simply a failed download like I describe above. Other times, it's this error:

Is there anything I might tweak on my system to make AlbumFetcher a little more stable? I appreciate all the effort you have put into developing this tool.

Hmmm... That's the error I was trying to eliminate with the big redesign a few months back. No real help I can give, though... If you want to PM me a link to the gallery I could try myself to see if it's something strange about the picture.

atlanta · July 10, 2008

Thank you so much
Hello,
I lost all of my children's baby pictures due to a virus (all were on my smugmug site). A friend told me about your software and I am using it right now. I am in the process of 'fetching albums' to my hard drive and am going to back everything up on either a CD-ROM or DVD. THANK YOU SO MUCH. If I have any questions or suggestions, I will forward them to you, but I at least wanted to express my thankfulness for your help (I was going to download them one picture at a time which would have taken me months to do!)
NJD

wellman · July 11, 2008

atlanta wrote:

Hello,
I lost all of my children's baby pictures due to a virus (all were on my smugmug site). A friend told me about your software and I am using it right now. I am in the process of 'fetching albums' to my hard drive and am going to back everything up on either a CD-ROM or DVD. THANK YOU SO MUCH. If I have any questions or suggestions, I will forward them to you, but I at least wanted to express my thankfulness for your help (I was going to download them one picture at a time which would have taken me months to do!)
NJD

Sorry to hear of your troubles, but glad AlbumFetcher is able to help in the solution. Thank you for your kind words!

wellman · July 17, 2008

Had to move hosting services. Links in the first post should be good again. Sorry for the trouble!

speedbump · July 18, 2008

I'm having a problem downloading large galleries. When I go to download a private, password protected gallery it works for a gallery with 136 pictures, but doesn't work with a gallery of 199 or 310 pictures. I'm trying 'login as guest' and I'm using Windows Vista w/ SP1.

wellman · July 18, 2008

speedbump wrote:

I'm having a problem downloading large galleries. When I go to download a private, password protected gallery it works for a gallery with 136 pictures, but doesn't work with a gallery of 199 or 310 pictures. I'm trying 'login as guest' and I'm using Windows Vista w/ SP1.

Are you able to use the "skip existing files" feature the second time around to start where you left off?

speedbump · July 18, 2008

wellman wrote:

Are you able to use the "skip existing files" feature the second time around to start where you left off?

It never get's that far, I get an "Error in fetching image data. Download Aborted" menu. It didn't work with that box checked and unchecked.

wellman · July 19, 2008

speedbump wrote:

It never get's that far, I get an "Error in fetching image data. Download Aborted" menu. It didn't work with that box checked and unchecked.

The "skip" option is useful for the re-start. If you got images 1-50 of 100 done successfully in the first try, you can use the skip box to start the next go on image #51. Hope this helps.

speedbump · July 19, 2008

wellman wrote:

The "skip" option is useful for the re-start. If you got images 1-50 of 100 done successfully in the first try, you can use the skip box to start the next go on image #51. Hope this helps.

I didn't get any images done successfully in the larger galleries.

wellman · July 19, 2008

speedbump wrote:

I didn't get any images done successfully in the larger galleries.

Have you tried on another machine? I'm drawing a blank.

speedbump · July 19, 2008

wellman wrote:

Have you tried on another machine? I'm drawing a blank.

I'll try that, thanks.

speedbump · July 20, 2008

Didn't work with another PC either. Could it be something with the gallery?

wellman · July 21, 2008

speedbump wrote:

Didn't work with another PC either. Could it be something with the gallery?

Possibly. If you wish, you can PM me a link to the gallery and I'll try on my end.

DBS · August 9, 2008

Mac Version??
your app sounds great.. just what I need to download a full gallery of images. Any chance a Mac version is on the horizon?

wellman · August 9, 2008

DBS wrote:

your app sounds great.. just what I need to download a full gallery of images. Any chance a Mac version is on the horizon?

I'm not mac-savvy, so I'm not able to write a Mac version. I've heard people use it successfully with Parallels, etc. Sorry I can't help much...

encosion · August 9, 2008

wellman wrote:

I'm not mac-savvy, so I'm not able to write a Mac version. I've heard people use it successfully with Parallels, etc. Sorry I can't help much...

I'm sure someone could look into writing a Firefox add-on or even a Greasemonkey script which would be cross-platform compatible... I think that all a greasemonkey script would have to do is parse all the image filenames and then create a list of hyperlinks when requested - a download manager could then be used to download them all pretty easily... You'd have to find a way of allowing for the pro accounts with their own fancy pants domain names though! Heheh! Actually, an independantly hosted php script might be the be best... As long as the user remained logged in to SmugMug whilst accessing the php script on another site, the principal would still work I think! But I'm no coder, so it's probably a lot harder than it sounds!

wellman · August 9, 2008

encosion wrote:

I'm sure someone could look into writing a Firefox add-on or even a Greasemonkey script which would be cross-platform compatible... I think that all a greasemonkey script would have to do is parse all the image filenames and then create a list of hyperlinks when requested - a download manager could then be used to download them all pretty easily... You'd have to find a way of allowing for the pro accounts with their own fancy pants domain names though! Heheh! Actually, an independantly hosted php script might be the be best... As long as the user remained logged in to SmugMug whilst accessing the php script on another site, the principal would still work I think! But I'm no coder, so it's probably a lot harder than it sounds!

I'd actually love for devbobo to incorporate bulk downloading into SmugBrowser. It would be a logical and perfect fit.

Allen · August 14, 2008

I downloaded and can not log in to any account, tried three, neither
nickname or email. Keep getting log in failed. Any suggestions?

wellman · August 16, 2008

Allen wrote:

I downloaded and can not log in to any account, tried three, neither
nickname or email. Keep getting log in failed. Any suggestions?

Strange... Wonder if the API server was down. How about now?

Allen · August 16, 2008

wellman wrote:

Strange... Wonder if the API server was down. How about now?

Nope, two accounts failed log in, nickname and email. Might be ZoneAlarm
blocking it but get no access warning popup.

wellman · August 17, 2008

Haven't heard any other similar issues, so I'd put my suspicions on ZA. Can you make an exception or some other rule to allow AlbumFetcher through?

Allen wrote:

Nope, two accounts failed log in, nickname and email. Might be ZoneAlarm
blocking it but get no access warning popup.

Allen · August 18, 2008

wellman wrote:

Haven't heard any other similar issues, so I'd put my suspicions on ZA. Can you make an exception or some other rule to allow AlbumFetcher through?

Just shut down ZA and still no go.
btw, I did add the AF app and checked allowed for everything.

wellman · August 18, 2008

Allen wrote:

Just shut down ZA and still no go.
btw, I did add the AF app and checked allowed for everything.

Well, I'm pure stumped. Have you tried from a USB drive on another computer?

LoneStarSnapper · August 21, 2008

Hi Greg,

I am new to smugmug and looking for a way to let my family easily download photos (all at once vs one at a time) from smugmug. I found AlbumFetcher v0.3.3 and it is just what I am looking for. Unfortunately I get an error message when I try to use it. Am I doing something wrong?

When I:
Run AlbumFetcher
Login as Guest
Select Album
Enter Album Password
Click Fetch Albums
I get the following error message in the status box:
"Error in fetching image data. Download aborted."

Sorry if you already addressed this somewhere in this thread. I may have missed it.

Thanks for any help or advice you can give me on the best way for guest viewers to download multiple photos .

wellman · August 23, 2008

LoneStarSnapper wrote:

Hi Greg,

I am new to smugmug and looking for a way to let my family easily download photos (all at once vs one at a time) from smugmug. I found AlbumFetcher v0.3.3 and it is just what I am looking for. Unfortunately I get an error message when I try to use it. Am I doing something wrong?

When I:
Run AlbumFetcher
Login as Guest
Select Album
Enter Album Password
Click Fetch Albums
I get the following error message in the status box:
"Error in fetching image data. Download aborted."

Sorry if you already addressed this somewhere in this thread. I may have missed it.

Thanks for any help or advice you can give me on the best way for guest viewers to download multiple photos .

Hmmm... Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Are you able to download albums when logged in as owner?

anirudh.net · August 23, 2008

Found new bug in v0.3.3 when trying to get hidden images/videos
Looks like I uncovered a new bug in v0.3.3 when trying to get hidden images/videos. :cry I am using the "Login as owner" option and when the retrieval gets to the point where it encounters a hidden image/video, the program just hangs there without making any progress (the UI is responsive, except that it doesn't do anything). This should be easy to reproduce....just mark any of the images in one of your albums as "hide photo" and try to get the entire album logged in as owner.

Please let me know when you have a fix for this. And thank you for this amazing utility....this makes my archiving of smugmug albums extremely easy!

LoneStarSnapper · August 27, 2008

wellman wrote:

Hmmm... Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Are you able to download albums when logged in as owner?

I just tried it when I was logged in as owner and it worked great! When I try to log in as guest it fetches the album info. I then select the album I want to download and asks for the password. I enter the password and then the error "Error in fetching image data. Download aborted" appears in the status window.

I have a "standard" account with smugmug. Do I need to be a "power user" to use this feature?

Thanks again for a great tool and your help! It would be great if my friends and family could use it to download complete albums that I post.

AlbumFetcher - Download multiple galleries w/ embedded captions and keywords

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