Duplicate file names

PIX4Dmapper PIX4Dmapper Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Im having massive issues with duplicate image file names.

I have 13 projects on the go, with around 2000 images each. They have all processed on my main machine and work fine.

However, when I come to transfer them to a portable hard disk for client handover, my point clouds are picking up images from other projects and folders (admittedly with the same file name). So I have done a ‘save as’ from my main machine to my portable HD for each project. I have also replicated the image file structure onto it - each project has it’s own image folder, and carefully assigned each project to the correct image folder on my portable HD when I first launch the the portable HD copy (on a separate machine to ensure I’m not picking up anything from my main machine)

However when I click a point in point cloud, it brings up the matching images as you would expect, except some with identical names in other projects and other folders are displayed.

This cannot be correct surely? how can I fix this, work around it, manual change folder redirections - anything to make this work quickly.

I don’t have time to rename my images, re-compile and re-edit my point clouds, I have been working on this for weeks and didn’t expect a simple transfer to another machine to cause all this pain.

 

I’m against the clock here - any ideas please?

2

OK I’ve got around this by moving the images with duplicate names to an entirely different directory.  So for simplicity lets say my file structure was :-

            Pictures

folder1   folder2  folder3

file-x      file-z       file-x

 

where folder1 is asscoiated with project1, folder2 project2, etc. so for project1 PIX4D was picking file-x up from folder3 not folder1, despite folder1 being the only specified image folder for project1

 

my workaround is :-

 

       Pictures                         Pictures2

folder1   folder2                    folder3

file-x      file-z                           file-x

 

 

So it seems the folder hierarchy is not respected by PIX4D mapper, so if a filename occurs anywhere under the high level qualifier, it can get picked up. By having a different high level qualifier for the projects where duplicates occur, it seems to work around the problem.

 

Surely this can’t be the behaviour that anyone wants? can this be corrected as I’v just been up all night working around this.

I’m just trying to transfer working, tested projects to another device/storage medium, I didn’t expect 20 odd hours of pain to do this.

You know how to charge for your software, make it work properly for something this basic.

 

 

3

Hi Nick, thank you for providing a detailed description of the issue you were facing.

I would recommend saving the projects in a way that the image folder and the project folder of a certain project are stored together in a unique subfolder.

For example, for Project 1, I would create a new folder “Project 1” and would copy inside the images and the project files. 

Best,