Camera Upload + Naming = Deleting + No Video

General Discussions
1

Hey guys, and Happy New Year!

I’ve been fiddling with camera upload feature which i hadn’t tried up until now.

I used to own all android mobile, but just recently I got iphone 7 (very much newbie in IOS eco-system). Long story short, I realized iCloud is very much restricted to its own platform, where I can’t backup photos from different platform mobiles (android, ios, windows).

Here where I looked up Camera Upload, and correct me if I’m wrong, i see it as a means to backup all my photos/videos from multiple platforms into one, with no intention of sharing anything as I just want it on my server as a means to lessen the load on my mobile while still got easy access to see my media (similar to google drive on android).

I didn’t know which section to post my problem, as its related to IOS iPhone 7 + Server + Plex Media Player. I did try to search the problem, but didn’t receive an answer.

When I did setup my camera upload, I did the following:

I then went to my iPhone 7 settings and chose “Camera Upload”, located “Camera Roll” library and created a new album called “iPhone 7 Media”.

Everything went smooth and started to upload. Now based on searching the forums, I learnt that Plex auto-names them according to date, which is great for me, and love the tagging feature.

However, I got several photos that got named exactly the same, I found out the naming scheme was like this:
YYYY-MM-DD hh.mm.ss

Now I dunno if i was either taking pictures so fast or maybe my iphone’s clock was buggy, but I had 2 different pictures that I took on same day, same moment were named 2016-12-21 12.39.06. When I uploaded them to the server, only one was uploaded, while the other was gone, maybe it was overwritten.

But I realized also that if I receive 2 photos sent from my family members, they will both be tagged same date/time depending on how fast my network downloaded them.

So my first question

Q1 Is there a way to fix this issue?

Fortunately I have my NAS Synology as a media storage for my server, and I can download an app called DS Photo where I can use it to upload my photo to the same library destination where Plex can pick it up and can use plex app to view them, which kinda leads me to my second question

Q2 Viewing the media library I can see both Photo and watch the Videos, and can easily distinguish Video by its small right hand side “camera” icon, but when viewed from plex media player on my intel nuc home theatre, both photo and video shown as all photos, and I can’t play the videos as if they were taken as photos. Any way around this?

PS: Sorry for the long text, basically want to use camera upload exclusively to backup my photos with no intention of sharing the library, and its only means to view them on my mobile devices without taking up space, but the naming type it overwriting each other + my videos are shown as photos only in PMP.

I like Plex camera upload because its simple, the DS Photo for Synology feels like a burden to setup, but its only great feature is its manual selection of media to upload.

2

In the iOS ecosystem, all photos are named IMG_nnnn.JPG (or .MOV)

I am using the iPhone SE iOS 10.2.

As I take photos, iOS will increase the Photo ID number. iOS does not use Date/Time stamps as names. The iOS app takes advantage of this and only concerns itself with the file name as it uploads your photos.

Here is an example of a photo as it exists in my Camera Upload area:

/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media Upload/Chuck/IMG_0810.JPG

3

@ChuckPa Thanks for the reply!

The naming for me on Plex is named as date, but as you said the iPhone names them as IMG_XXXX.JPG

heres my example of the photo directory taken from Plex Library that was uploaded.

\\ASH-PLEX\photo\Camera Roll\Plex\2016-12-19 00.41.29.JPG

I have also tried DS Photo and iCloud, where the naming of the photo was kept and not touched. Using the example of that specific photo named on plex, it’s original name is here:

\\ASH-PLEX\photo\Synology\IMG_0235.JPG

PS: I’m using iPhone 7 with iOS 10.1.1 (have not updated it to 10.2 yet).

4

iOS has been using IMG_xxxx.JPG since iOS 6 days when I started.

What version of Plex are you using?

5

PMS says its up-to-date as of now its Version 1.3.3.3148

EDIT: Re-checked my photos from different softwares (iCloud, Synology, iTunes) they’re all saying the naming is actually IMG_0000.JPG as you said.

I tried to remove the photos from plex, reset the procedure again, and it still renames them based on date.

6

The Edit button is getting buggy today, couldn’t edit my previous post to add something…

I opened “Automatically Upload Photos” and left the camera upload ON. Took some pictures just now, waited for it to upload then checked the name on Plex and still shows date (inside the plex folder directory that is).

EDIT: spelling

7

We have submitted a trouble ticket to the forum provider. It has been buggy since Christmas. They seem to have taken the whole week off. Another issue which will be addressed when everyone is back from the holiday. The temp workaround. Edit in the silly minibox. Save the post. Let it paint up the 3rd copy on the display. Press F5 to repaint the page. Yes, totally unacceptable but that’s how we’re getting by.

I ask about

However, I got several photos that got named exactly the same, I found out the naming scheme was like this:
YYYY-MM-DD hh.mm.ss

Are you referring to the name shown in Plex Web or the actual name stored in your library? This is where I am confused. I cannot replicate this on IOS 10 or my iOS 6 rev locked iPod.

8

@ChuckPa
Are you referring to the name shown in Plex Web or the actual name stored in your library? This is where I am confused. I cannot replicate this on IOS 10 or my iOS 6 rev locked iPod.

Hey @ChuckPa sorry for the late reply, faced another issue with plex server earlier, couldn’t sign/claim the server, but anyways got it fixed.

I was referring to the names that are stored in folder directory. When I upload the photos to Plex, Plex is already assigned to save them in this directory:

\\ASH-PLEX\photo\Camera Roll\Plex\

Which is on my NAS, and when I view them within that directory, the naming scheme is on dates.

I can replicate it several times as I just did, and the photos kept being uploaded on that folder named as dates. However, only 2 pictures were named IMG_0000.JPG and they were taken on 15th of december. Anything taken after that date is named on its dates. Dunno if its relevant, but seemed worth mentioning.

The image below shows the actual directory of where Plex saved my uploads. Including recent photos.

The picture below shows the uploaded pictures in a directory where I used NAS Synology Photo Station (via DS Photo App on my iPhone). It also had the option to disable “Renaming photos.” Showing as IMG_0000.JPG, but if I enable “Renaming photos” on the app before uploading, they will be renamed similar to plex, as dates.

EDIT: Both folders contain the exact same pictures, only using different method of upload. In this case its Plex Camera Upload vs NAS Synology.

EDIT2: Dunno if it helps, but I can erase all pictures, and re-apload newer pictures and can send in the logs? Still trying to figure out the iOS with plex here.

9

The server (plex.tv) went down last night. I’ve not heard why but the Operations Team was on it and forced it into maintenance mode and got it back up. It might have started celebrating the new year a bit too soon. lol

Please show me where you’re seeing the ‘Rename’ option. I do not have it on my iPhone (app version 4.6.1)

640×1136 19.5 KB

10

@ChuckPa lol, indeed too soon, figured that much, but now the server is perfectly working here.

Back to the topic, I meant the DS Photo App (for Synology) has the Rename option to Dates. While Plex app (which is exactly similar to your picture above) does not. I meant that Plex automatically renames them with no option to turn it off (I shouldn’t have mentioned Synology App which caused a bit of confusion, just wanted to compare it to Plex in terms of actual name vs Plex names, what I really meant is that Plex is actually renaming them according to dates, and are not kept as IMG file names which should’ve been compared to other Apps such as synology and iCloud)

EDIT: Spelling, words changed.

11

As for the Synology app? Seriously? You and I both own Synology products and we both know how they think, true? :smiley: LOL

To the matter at hand, I think your sorting filter needs to be changed.

Here you can see the Options slide out (in the browser). When you slide it out, you can change the filter. Is this what you’re looking for?


12

Lol, actually I never used synology app before today, didn’t have any other means to backup except plex and synology ;p (synology app is a bit complicated to use, but has its ups and down).

But no, my main problem isn’t the actual filtering, the problem is how Plex saves the files as dates and not IMG, as you can see the picture I uploaded previously here the naming changed from IMG to date:time (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss) why is that?

for example, the highlighted photo shown on the picture is called originally “IMG_0519.JPG” but when I tried to upload it through Plex app, the name was renamed to “2017-01-01 07.51.27.JPG” as you can see from the highlighted photo on that pic i attached. I’m not talking about the naming structure within the plex app, its about the name that plex ‘saved’ to that folder.

EDIT: I don’t mind how plex saves them, but the only problem i’m facing with that is lets say i have IMG_0001.JPG photo and another IMG_0002.JPG, both were taken within the same second, if plex “saves” them to my PC (or to NAS for that matter, where I keep all my medias), it changes them to YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss

lets say I took them on 2017/01/01 @ 12 Hrs, 30Mins, 20 second time. then both photos will be called 2017-01-01 07.51.27.JPG

What will happen is only one picture will be saved to pc, while the other was overwritten based on same name (or possibly ignored as plex sees one photo is already there, based on similar names).

13

@Ashus said:

for example, the highlighted photo shown on the picture is called originally “IMG_0519.JPG” but when I tried to upload it through Plex app, the name was renamed to “2017-01-01 07.51.27.JPG” as you can see from the highlighted photo on that pic i attached. I’m not talking about the naming structure within the plex app, its about the name that plex ‘saved’ to that folder.

This is what I cannot replicate and do not know where you are getting it from.

As you see here, in this directory listing, the files are uploaded by iOS app using iOS file names. What is your iOS app version so I may go ping the dev.

[chuck@lizum Plex Media Server.104]$ ls
Cache/          Logs/          Metadata/            Plug-in Support/
Codecs/         Media/         plexmediaserver.pid  Preferences.xml
Crash Reports/  Media Upload/  Plug-ins/
[chuck@lizum Plex Media Server.105]$ cd Media\ Upload/
[chuck@lizum Media Upload.106]$ ls -la
total 32
drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex  4096 Dec 31 22:38 ./
drwxr-xr-x 11 plex plex  4096 Jan  1 04:16 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 plex plex 24576 Jan  1 10:44 Chuck/
[chuck@lizum Media Upload.107]$ cd Chuck/
[chuck@lizum Chuck.108]$ ls
Chuck_2010.JPG        IMG_0823.JPG  IMG_1502.JPG  IMG_1904.JPG  IMG_2328.JPG  IMG_2826.JPG
FullSizeRender-1.jpg  IMG_0824.JPG  IMG_1503.JPG  IMG_1905.JPG  IMG_2335.JPG  IMG_2827.JPG
FullSizeRender.jpg    IMG_0825.JPG  IMG_1504.JPG  IMG_1906.JPG  IMG_2337.JPG  IMG_2828.JPG
14

@ChuckPa

My iOS is at version 10.1.1 using iPhone 7.

I checked my PMS Analysis Logs, and the pictures are being uploaded as dates and not IMG. Got me curious so I went and took a random picture, opened up my Plex iPhone App, and uploaded the picture, it was uploading as date:time and not as “IMG_0000.JPG”

heres a screenshot of my iPhone uploading a photo. it was uploading as 2017-01-01 20.20.27.JPG

EDIT: I’m starting to doubt my iPhone, but then again I also tried viewing the photos from my iPhone through Synology App and iCloud, both show as IMG_0000.JPG. Maybe some settings from iPhone? Again, very new to iOS Eco-system:(

15

I need to know the Plex app version. Current version is 4.6.1

16

@ChuckPa said:
I need to know the Plex app version. Current version is 4.6.1

I’m on 4.6.1 as well. Latest one.

17

@ChuckPa Sorry to revive post, but was wondering if there’s any update regarding my issue.

My Plex Server would not keep the “IMG_0000.JPG” name, it still uploads it as “date format” from my iPhone. Anything from the devs?

The other (very) minor issue is about trying to playback the videos from my camera upload feature via PMP. It shows the videos are photos, whereas the web UI I can see the small video icon and plays the videos along side the photos.

EDIT: Only reason the “date” format is an issue is if i took 2 photos at that same second, it overwrites the other and only one show up rather than two (due to same date and the exact time - happens when taking quick pics or shutter photos).

18

Getting back to you.

It appears there is a problem with PMS when burst-mode photo sequences are used. Another team member and I have recreated the issue and submitted a bug report.

19

@ChuckPa Great! Thanks for the respond!

Glad to know It wasn’t just me. Also wondering why my iPhone 7 uploading my camera pics as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss instead of just IMG_0000.JPG. But doesn’t matter as long as the burst mode is fixed and nothing is over-written.

20

Time for me to amend my remarks too.

Please confirm the following behavior if you can:

  1. Create a new library using the app itself
  2. enable upload to that library
  3. start upload
  4. observe the file names being uploaded as IMG_xxxx.JPG until you see photos, taken after Dec 22, 2016, suddenly showing up with date/time based names.

Can you confirm this?