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Download galleries in one step

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tgriffen
 
Posts: 41

Download galleries in one step

Post Sun Jun 05, 2022 9:36 pm


I am trying to create an mp4 presentation of some galleries. The slideshow feature on pbase is so crude, it is utterly unsuitable. I have tried several external tools, they either do not work or have disappeared long ago. There used to be a tool to do that, many years ago, but I can't find it. Can anyone point me to a reasonable solution? I am on Windows 7. It is frustrating that pbase does not provide a tool for downloading galleries, but then considering the default displayed photo size is still 800 pixels, I guess pbase has been basically abandoned.

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Download galleries in one step

Post Sun Jun 05, 2022 9:52 pm


tgriffen wrote:I am trying to create an mp4 presentation of some galleries. The slideshow feature on pbase is so crude, it is utterly unsuitable. I have tried several external tools, they either do not work or have disappeared long ago. There used to be a tool to do that, many years ago, but I can't find it. Can anyone point me to a reasonable solution? I am on Windows 7. It is frustrating that pbase does not provide a tool for downloading galleries, but then considering the default displayed photo size is still 800 pixels, I guess pbase has been basically abandoned.

Pbase is more like the ancient Forum of Rome. It used to be a very crowded place, but now only a few visit while waiting to visit the Coliseum. But I like the leisure pace. As to the tool you seek.. We believe its existence is a myth, long lost and poorly understood at the time. I being very ancient, did once attempt to use it. But alas, it didn't work. I attempted to repair it, and even tried to create my own version. The gods did not look favorably on my efforts. I am so sorry, but this is what I know.

tgriffen
 
Posts: 41

Re: Download galleries in one step

Post Sun Jun 05, 2022 10:59 pm


Thanks, richo. I used it at one time, many years ago, and back then it worked. Now I tried various tools I found, none of them work, usually fail without so much as an error message. I don't even need metadata for my purpose (although it would be nice), just the original jpegs would suffice. I haven't used wget or curl in ages, but I suppose it will be faster to relearn than to wait for pbase to do another line in their gallery interface: "Zip all images and download". I mean they already have the opposite, right? Nah, that would be too obvious.

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Download galleries in one step

Post Sun Jun 05, 2022 11:40 pm


tgriffen wrote:Thanks, richo. I used it at one time, many years ago, and back then it worked. Now I tried various tools I found, none of them work, usually fail without so much as an error message. I don't even need metadata for my purpose (although it would be nice), just the original jpegs would suffice. I haven't used wget or curl in ages, but I suppose it will be faster to relearn than to wait for pbase to do another line in their gallery interface: "Zip all images and download". I mean they already have the opposite, right? Nah, that would be too obvious.

My tool relied on the tree structure and the html remaining unchanged. That didn't happen. So I started creating local folders that mirror my galleries and only put in the bare minimum information. I then link the images to my own website. However, in recent years I have been trying to get away from even linking the images for fear one day, Pbase will just go *poof* and be gone. It still takes my money each year, but I can't remember the last time the owners bothered to take a few minutes to even say hello. For all we know the entire site is on autopilot and an AI bit is running it. No that can't be true, AI bots are way more chatty.

tgriffen
 
Posts: 41

Re: Download galleries in one step

Post Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:02 am


richo wrote:for fear one day, Pbase will just go *poof* and be gone

That is becoming my concern as well. I have all the images, but arranged in a different format, and it would be a pain to recreate the Pbase setup.

thresholdprod
 
Posts: 575

Re: Download galleries in one step

Post Fri Nov 11, 2022 11:08 am


The old tool was a 32 bit and would likely have problems with anyone running 64 bit windows versions.
Yet that legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The PBase server, it is said, never gives up her data
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a loads of photo bytes twenty-six thousand gigs more
Than the mighty PBASE weighed empty
That good sever and RAID drives was a bone to be chewed
When the holiday bandwidth gales of November came early....


There is this older thread for help https://form.pbase.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=48495 for a new fork of an older download tool. Although there was far earlier version that snagged the images. I can't remember the guy's user name at the moment, he was from India and it began with "S" and he helped out in the forums a lot in the early 2000's answer questions along side a few of users. If you want to try and search it up. EDIT Their name was (found in my old outdated sigfile of all places) srijith maybe their website has a saved copy or there is a saved copy on the internet archive.

There is a post about HTTrack working on reddit in "Open Directories" subreddit but that is dangerous place to lurk, you could wind up downloading far more than you every thought possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/comments/q4xtto/pbase_downloading/

The having an ability to download your account in one or a few clicks that automates the collection and presents it as a file for you, has been a long requested featured. You can download the images , saving the EXIF data with them but saving any comments becomes an issue. HTTrack would save each page with comments but you have to set the option for how far to go down and to account for sub galleries inside of sub galleries and then the images. Which would need to be factored in. Grabbing the Small, medium, large, original images would be include 4 links down if I recall. I used long ago.

I've been here since October 2001 and remember back when the owners were unmarried, dating and in college. Site issues took longer to get back up during finals week. In those years. "Slug" (Charles) took donations but he built PBase so photographers could share images online easier without having their free site go dead for the images being popular. Yes the free hosting sites worked by serving ads to visitors but if you had to many visitors, hence they served far more ads, they would make it your images unreachable until the bandwidth clock limit reset for the day, week, and/or month. Being popular was a blessing and curse. Surprisingly Tripod and Angelfire are the only 2 that survived and are still hosting those free websites. Not that google will show them in search results.

I too worry about PBase staying up and past the owners, I think they'll outlive me. As the Internet Archive doesn't want to record or save copies of PBASE . That Web Archive thinks its far better trying to save some of Instagram or tumbler's crap. The odd thing about our pictures and now looking back over 10 millions hits later, thought I was hot ka-ka for reaching 5,000 and then 10,000 hits. I never set out to document and serve as the depositor of my city scenes and friends lives. PBase was a way at first to help people get images because the images from a night out would over run everyone's inbox limits. Remember those days of hotmail/yahoo email account 100MB limits ? Then came the glorious 250 MB increase..... Now a days, I don't upload much but those galleries serve more and more as memorials. Every time someone passes, there is surge in traffic. Some Photos still don't have names, seriously what a cruel joke was it to make a person that is bad with names responsible for getting them right on their images. Some people will only be know forever as ?? it seems. It is weird looking back and seeing what I helped build, without intending to.

Nothing stays online forever and worse there is so much digital content that the odds of any of it being preserved, if you didn't make prints and send copy to the library of congress, is sadly very low. It will be like when Yahoo deleted all the Geocities websites and images. Basically taking out the early internet and all those early images people painstakingly had to scan the film image in to digital formats then upload and finally code that into a website to be seen. Back when an image scanner bed cost so much, you would go to the library to use their 1 scanner in the computer lab. If you remember how much Photoshop 4 was the next big "game changer"...., you're just making even Pepperidge Farm feel old.
Bill Freeman
"A picture may be worth a thousand words, but usually consumes the bandwidth of more than two thousand." --Gym Quirk
Many great words of wisdom and advice http://www.pbase.com/help http://pbasewiki.srijith.net/


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