The Batch Transfer Update

Summary

• Moved: Analysis > Imports to Capture > Legacy Import > Blackbox Toolkit
• Added: Capture > Export
• Added: Capture > Import
• Added: Capture > Legacy Import > Palmreader
• Clicking the version number now opens the latest changelog

Batch transfers

This Palmreader upgrade enables batch transfers for captures. These are performed from the Import and Export pages. This feature is intended for offloading captures to other drives for e.g. long-term storage. If your workstation has no storage left, this is now the recommended way to move the captures somewhere else to free up space for new captures.

Exporting

From the Capture > Export page, you will see a familiar list of captures. First, choose a directory to save the exports to, then choose all of the captures you wish to export. Since this feature is intended for offloading captures, you’ll usually want to leave the “Delete after export” checkbox checked which will remove the captures from Palmreader once successfully exported.

Once everything is ready, press the “Export” button and allow Palmreader to export the captures. This may take several minutes as it has to process a large amount of data. Once complete, the selected directory will contain many .plm files; one for each recording. These files can be renamed and moved as desired, but the extension (.plm) must not be changed.

Importing

From the Capture > Import page, you can import .plm files exported from the Capture > Export page. First, select a search directory. This directory will be recursively searched, looking for any .plm files. The .plm files do not need to be direct descendants of the chosen directory, and can be located within subfolders of the search directory. For example, Palmreader will recognize all of the following files:

search_directory/
-> experiment1/
---> example1.plm
---> example2.plm
-> experiment2/
---> example3.plm
---> example4.plm

Once the search directory has been chosen, Palmreader will begin the search for .plm files. Searching usually takes less than a second. Once the search is complete, the list of captures will reflect all of the located .plm files. From the list, select the captures you want to import. Similar to exports, it is generally recommended that you leave the “Delete after import” checkbox checked which will delete the .plm files once they’re successfully imported.

Once everything is ready, press the “Import” button and allow Palmreader to import the captures. This may take several minutes. Once complete, all selected recordings will now be accessible from the Analysis page, as well as the Capture > Export page.

Conflict resolution

If the “Delete after import” or “Delete after export” checkboxes are not checked, it is possible to cause a situation where you attempt to import capture that already exists in Palmreader. When this happens, Palmreader will not import this capture. It is generally more likely that the copy Palmreader already has is more up to date than the .plm file.

Please note: there is no danger in a capture being skipped. The only drawback is progress being lost, causing Palmreader to do analysis from scratch rather than reuse data. It is safe to backup captures using this system because the videos are never changed and can be reanalyzed at any point no matter how old the backup is.

Legacy Imports

From Palmreader 0.5.9 and 0.5.10

You may have received instruction to offload captures by checking all “Export” checkboxes in the Analysis page. The Capture > Legacy Import > Palmreader page allows importing recordings that were exported in this manner. It functions almost identical to the Capture > Import page, but instead of searching for .plm files, it searches for metadata.json files.

To use this import tool, select a search directory. This directory will also be recursively searched but will look for metadata.json files. Once the search is complete, the usage is exactly the same as Capture > Import, so see those instructions for further instructions. There is no “Delete after import” option for legacy Palmreader imports so it is recommended that the old exports be deleted manually once every capture has been imported.

If you have been using this method to offload captures, please switch to using the Capture > Export page, as this method is no longer supported.

From Blackbox Toolkit

What was once the old Import page (allowing imports from the Blackbox Toolkit software) has been moved to Capture > Legacy Import > Blackbox Toolkit. This page is otherwise identical and its usage remains the same.