Migrating Photos from Facebook to Google Photos

Migrating Photos from Facebook to Google Photos

Byrichard

There has been a shift within cloud services such as Google, Facebook and others. That shift is to make migrating photos from one service quick and easy. The old fashioned method would be to download media from service A before re-uploading it to service B. This requires lots of space on hard drives and this could be a luxury you do not have, especially with laptop drives being as small as they are.

By some paradox laptops have become so slim and small that we are still using 250gb to 1TB drives in devices, that if fatter, could hold 8TB disks. Imagine a laptop with an affordable eight terabyte drive. Imagine how different laptop user experiences would be.

Clicking Easy

That is not the point of this blog post. The point of this blog post is to say that moving photos from Facebook to Google Photos is as easy as to or three clicks, and most clicks are to say “yes, allow meta to access blah blah”, in this case Google services.

Fast

Moving Data from Facebook to Google Photos was very fast. It took a few minutes. It moved all the files from Facebook to Google before then incrementally adding photos to the relevant albums. Remember, back in the zeros and the tens we would upload photos deliberately and add album names. Facebook has sent these to Google Photos and Google Photos is now populating all of these albums.

Temporarily empty

Plenty of albums are “empty” as I write this post, but that’s because it takes time for Google Photos to read the JSON files and re-create the album structures with the right photos and other data.

Wrong Date

The other issue is that all the photos are marked as being created today, i.e. the date that the photos were moved from gallery A to Gallery B. I suspect that this will be corrected at a later stage, once the albums have been populated with the right images.

The Nice Thing

The nice thing about this quick experiment is that Facebook made photo sharing awful. There was a time in 2007 when Facebook was a network of friends, and friends of friends, but from Zynga onwards it became rubbish because it became about marketers and others getting ROI, at the cost of users getting rubbish.
Now within seconds I have access to photos from two decades of my life. I can, at a glance see photos, with the name of the event, and be transported to another era. It’s nice.

And Finally

This experiment was done with my backup Google account rather than the primary one. This experiment was with the free account and I am using 8.5 GB of 20 GB. I am well within the free tier.

Try it, it’s “free” and you’ll find exploring photo albums easier.

Journey Through Time

Journey Through Time

Byrichard

For two weeks I have been sorting through terabytes of data and it has been a journey through time. It’s easy to collect data and every so often when the laptop is full, move that data to a hard drive until that drive is full, and then onto the next, and the next, until you have a drive or two per year, for several years.

What makes this interesting is that these drives have dmg files, iso images and more. They also have fitness tracker files and dive logs, and versions of your website as it changed over the years, and more. It reminds you of when you used Adobe Air and a Nokia 95 8gb and more. It also gives you access to files you had completely forgotten about but are happy to find. It’s photos and videos that have value.

Aperture and iPhoto Libraries

I tried to move Aperture and iPhoto libraries but they are very annoying to move because they contain tens of thousands of files. They contain thumbnails, preview files, a complicated folder structure and general chaos. When you move a photo app gallery from one drive to another it’s very slow because of all the files within. I usually choose “show package contents” go to “master” folder, and move the photo albums by year to an external folder. Transferring galleries this way is much faster. It takes the time to move data, rather than the time to recreate the complex folder structure.

Old Versions of Linux

In the process of clearing drive space I found that I had old versions of Linux on several drives. Some of those might have been good for 32bit challenges. I don’t remember if I kept any, or deleted them whilst trying to reduce the amount of gigabytes to transfer.

Pruning Files

Each one hundred gigabytes I transfer takes about an hour, so if I can delete several hundred gigabytes of files I will save several hours of sitting and waiting for files to transfer. I’m writing this blog post as I move 278 gigabytes in about two hours. If it says “more than two hours” it means that it will take almost three hours. Moving terabytes of data between drives takes a lot of time, especially with older drives, especially if the file structure is complex.

Diving into Final Cut Pro Packages

Final Cut Pro has package files. Within these package files you will find render folders, transcode folders, and other files. You can safely remove render files, but with originals and transcode files I would double check that those files are still available somewhere else before deleting them. Transcode files, render files, and preview files are regenerated when you open a project so you can remove them to save space once a project is finished.

For some reason I went into the FCP package file and moved the folder structure to outside of Final Cut Pro. It took me a while to realise this. As soon as I did I copied the folder back into the package file and when I established that all the files were duplicated I deleted the duplicate files and saved several hundred gigabytes. I also saved several hours of my time for transferring. I also saved time that I would otherwise have spent sorting. I still have 1.8 terabytes to move, so that’s another 16 hours or so to go.

And Finally

When consolidating files from several smaller drives to a large central volume the most time consuming part is the time that it takes to move data from old drives to newer drives. It’s at least an hour per hundred gigabytes so ten hours per terabyte. The one good thing is that you can start the transfer and forget about it until you notice a message about duplicates, or other.

This is time consuming but eventually I will have well organised files and I will be able to add the volume or two to photoprism and photoprism will index everything. It will be worthwhile in the end.

Nid-De-Poule and Yerba Maté

Nid-De-Poule and Yerba Maté

Byrichard


French speakers are familiar with the term “Nid-De-Poule”. It is a term used to describe potholes in French. This is a term I heard regularly but due to modern farm practices you don’t see these when they’re made by chickens. Chickens usually live in chicken coops and they don’t have the time to dig their little holes in the ground. 


As I walk by free range chicken on a regular basisI get to see chickens sitting on wheels, running towards people, or away from them, and I see them sheltering from the rain on a rainy day. What you don’t see so often is chickens that have built a nest. They dig a depression into the mud or soil and then they sit and watch the world go by. 


When I saw the chickens in their nest this time I thought that they look like entrenched soldiers in their foxholes. If you think of the first world war with its trench warfare, to the Vietnam war, and the mentions of foxholes, then you also think of Ukraine. It’s because of trench warfare in Ukraine that I thought of this point of view with chickens. 


Yerba Maté


Heading in the opposite direction recently I was reminded of maté. I found an option to make maté in Europe. 


I first had Maté in Valais by a climbing wall. One of the climbers, a South American had brought a gourd and shared the maté between the climbers. I liked the experience so finding a way to repeat the experience at home is nice. 


Origeens Yerba Maté Kit


What I like about this drink is that you place the leaves into the gourd, you pour water in, you drink, and then you pour more water in and drink again, until the taste is gone. You share it from person to person. It’s a nice drink to have at the side to a climbing wall. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQZeosAxvQ

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Not Enough Time

Byrichard

As I went through my video archive I’ve found a lot of good videos. As a result of this, I’ve been reminded of many moments and memories. There are a few people I’ve seen frequently since the shooting of the footage whilst others have not been present for months or years in some cases.

I love watching this footage and I can’t help but want to upload the videos to Facebook. It’s not that I particularly like the video interface on Facebook but rather it’s easy to do with the people bothering to look at them. The first video I uploaded to the web was of the Crete graduation back in 2000 but at the time no one would watch them. Finally, technology has come to a point where sharing is easier.

I’ve uploaded three clips and am in the process of uploading the fourth clip now. One or two are of a fashion show, another one is of a snowball fight and the last is of some friends dancing. These videos are tame compared to others I have. It’s part of contemporary life, that it is recorded. How many times are you photographed by tourists as you walk through London? How many times have you been filmed during parties that you may have forgotten.  What about those conversations?

I don’t live in the past. I live in the present and I love to film. I love to watch a scene and film it from many angles. I love to capture conversations without the people noticing so that a few years later we may laugh as we view them. Friends acting in plays or performing in various ceremonies are probably the best but parties are good too. Especially when the video is of the cameraman (in other words me) as he is distracted by something.  It’s amusing footage.

Some of it my friends will see, some of it will be archived and preserved for later.

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Digitising Old Videos

Byrichard

I have spent a few hours this morning and part of this afternoon digitising videos from a few years ago and it’s a time warp. I have one or two fashion shows on tape. I have at least ten theatre pieces. I have two or three field weeks and I have the 2000 graduation trip to Crete on tape. Those are moments that are not just static, in an album. They are alive. They are moving and they are nice to keep.

I would often spend weeks and weeks with the camera on me all the time, whether in a pocket or a bag. I would film life as it happened. I have a pre-show video of the Ramayana. I have a video of post-Ramayana drinks when the characters are still in character. I have some of the best nights I’ve spent in geneva on tape. I also have conversations.

Does anyone remember the suction pump s****tal scratcher? Do you remember why people were perplexed? I do. It’s on tape and I want to digitise and share them with the people concerned because they are nice to have and there’s a guaranteed laugh that would ensue. There are about 22yrs of my life on video and the past decade is shot mainly by myself.

At one party I was busy and someone filmed me whilst I was occupied with what I was doing. I can see how I appear to other people. I can also see how other people interact. It’s from a barbecue video that was had at home. That video won’t be going online anytime soon, in fact, there’s little chance of others seeing it.

It’s great to go through your own video archive, seeing your life as it happened whilst still a teenager. I’m going to go through some more tapes now, to find some footage that may have relevance to my showreel. It’s the turn of the Tanzania footage now.