Folder weight

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kirks4
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:32 pm

Folder weight

Post by kirks4 »

I'm having a tough time figuring out how to weight a specific folder.

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish: I have a couple of .url files pointing to some pages I created that have clocks, calendars, latest tweets stream, etc. This works just fine and plays in the slide show, however I'd like for these two files to play much more frequently than the individual images, so I might have 1 or 2 images play and then one of these files play. The only thing is that I can't figure out how to add weight to the folder in which the two .url files are located. Any ideas?
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gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Folder weight

Post by gpb »

Hello,
to add weight to a specific folder you need to add that folders to one of the gPhotoShow lists, I guess you added the folder with those urls in the "Web and 360 panoramas" section, in this click on the value under the column "weight" and change it from 1 to another value, for example 100.
Anyway the weighted randomization can't do exactly what you asked, it only allows you to display some files more often others. If all files have weight of 1 and the 2 urls have a weight of 100 it means that they will be displayed 100 times more often but there no guarantee you will see one of those urls every few images.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
sl4ppy
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2015 5:06 pm

Re: Folder weight

Post by sl4ppy »

I too am having trouble understanding with weights..

I have 2 image folders defined with a total of about 60 images across both. Each folder has a weight of 1.

I also have a "Web & 360 Panoramas" folder defined with about 10 URL shortcuts defined. This folder has a weight of 1000.

This leads me to believe that for every 60 images (60 images & weight of 1), I should see a URL 10,000 times (10 URLS * weight of 1000)..This is definitely not what is happening..

When I start the screen saver, it seems to not use the weights as I would expect. If it starts displaying images first, it will display all the images defined in the images folder before it displays a single URL despite URLs having the maximum weight set. It's as if the weights are re-evaluated after each image and only after each category is completed.

I have "Show Files in Random Order" selected in the File Options with "Use Weighted Randomization Algorithm" selected, but it doesn't seem to shuffle types of categories together in a way that adheres to the weighting I've setup...

What I'm trying to acheive is that URLs are shown the vast majority of the time and single images are sprinkled in infrequently. What I'm getting is a series of URLs back to back followed by a series of images back to back... Am I going about this the wrong way?
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gpb
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Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Folder weight

Post by gpb »

You missed one important point: gPhotoShow never repeats files, for this reason you will never see urls 10,000 times every 60 images. Or better, you have too few images/urls for that to happen.
With your setup on first run gPhotoShow will probably display first all 10 urls then it will display images, at this point the slideshow is restarted.
Weight are useful when you have thousands of files, for example if you have 1,000 urls with a weight of 10 and 1,000 with a weight of 1 on a long run you will see urls 10 times more often that images. Also in this case you can't be sure gPhotoShow will display 10 urls and 1 image, it can happen you see 2 images then 20 urls.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
sl4ppy
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2015 5:06 pm

Re: Folder weight

Post by sl4ppy »

Oh interesting.. yeah, the not repeating anything is what's causing the behavior I'm seeing.

Is it possible to override that repeat option?
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gpb
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Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Folder weight

Post by gpb »

It is not an option, it is one of the basic features of gPhotoShow and can't be changed, probably you have just few files to display and repeating files seems a good idea but gPhotoShow has been designed to display huge image collections where normally one doesn't want to display the same image more than once. There is a lot of code to deal with this and adding such option would require lots of work.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
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