Twonky Forum

I have tagged (image metadata) all my images in the media server. From an example client WMP 12 using the media client presentation of what's on the server under tags all images are grouped by containing folder, not tags. I cannot seem to get the client to see the tags.

If I use wmp 12 and simply add the server\public\photos folder to my local library, it reads all the tags and groups by tag under a folder that looks identical to the one in the server section. No problem.

Any one any ideas why the media server doesn't seem to offer up the tag metadata to the client?

If you read this post I'd be really grateful if you could post and say whether you HAVE seen the image tags from images on the server used and presented in WMP12 or any other client for that matter. Or if you have NEVER seen this in a client of a twonkey media server instance. Even if no one knows the answer, this would be give me a clue as to whether its MAYBE not supported or whether I should PROBABLY continue looking for a solution. Hope this makes sense.

I really appreciate any feedback any one can give.

Thanks.

To put it first, I don't use wmp but Picasa for tagging. So the details might be a bit different from wmp, but lets start with facts:
There are at least three correct standards for tagging of JPEG files. You can put your tags into Exif, IPTC or XMP structures. I'd expect wikipedia to give you some details if you want to read more about these standards. Description of valid field names can be found at http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exi ... index.html
Picasa uses IPTC to store the title and keywords, Twonky scans for XMP-dc. Other programs use Exif. Said this we've already the background of what we see. Three different standards and "everyone" is conform with (one of) it.
Now you can either retag all your photos or you try to sync your existing tags. Currently I'm trying the second (with a copy of the original photos) using exiftool. The benefit of exiftool - a GUI exists - is that it can read and write all three standards and that it is very flexible. To copy the IPTC:keywords into XMP-DC:Subjects you'd use the command Add -r to recursively travel a directory which you'd pass instead of "file". Even an if-construct is possible with the exiftools. Google for the "manpage exiftool" for quite some reading.
If you want to start at a somewhat higher level I'd suggest irfanview, a viewer which also lets you inspect the different tagging standards.

Hope it helps, Georg

Excellent, thanks for that Georg

BTW - I still seem to have a problem. I was n't using wmp12 for tagging BTW, infact I'm not sure that you 'can' use it for that. I have been using Picasa also, and so I asumed I must have the same problem as your self, ie tags as keywords in iptc rather than subject in xmp. However once I have used exiftool to create the xmp subject, using wmp12 as the client I can still not see the tagging. It presents the folders as the tags. However, if I simple point my local wmp library at the appropriate photo folder on the nas drive it reads the image metadata fine and presents the listing under tags.

I am not quite sure what it is, but something about the way twonkey presents the tag data to wmp12 or the way in which wmp12 interprets it means it cannot present the tags, even though it can do this fine in the local library if you point it at the right remote folder, rather than actually acting as client.

What client are you using that manages to receive the xmp tag data from the media server and present it Ok?

Another interesting thing I noticed, if one uses the twonkey web client provided, it picks up the tags, but it looks like either its a feature of twonkey or xmp dc subject items are intended to have meaning in their order (ie hierarchical, not just a list of keywords). This messes up my purpose in tagging which works fine for iptc keywords with some presentation software (eg wmp12 with a library floder) you can search for all and any images that have a particular key word. With xmp dc subject and twonkey web client however, you have to search through the first item in subject and down the tree.. Means because I have not included any meaning in my order, I will not be able to find stuff.