When does Aves triggers rescanning of all media? ("Cataloguing" notification)

[Self-Perfection]

A started using Aves about 40 days ago

And during that time I have seen it "cataloguing" my media about 4 times.

This is a lengthy process, which takes about 20 minutes on my modest library of 5k files and considerably heats the device.

How can I avoid extra rescans?

[deckerst]

Are you often changing time zones?

[deckerst]

This is strange. I believe your device should catalog way faster than this.

As comparison, here's what I got on a Sony Xperia 5 V:

• 9442 items catalogued in 1’21
• 5728 items located in 1’28

More like ~100 items catalogued per second, and ~50 located per second (but there are various factors with reverse geolocating, so it varies widely depending on the collection and device).

[Self-Perfection]

Interesting. I agree from base principles, that 3-4 items per second seem quite slow.

I have only ~150 items without geotags, so it hard to estimate their rescan rate separately, but it seems items without geotags are processed about 10-20x times faster than with geotags.

[deckerst]

Just to clarify, scanning happens in 2 steps: first cataloguing (for all items), then locating (only for items with geotags, a subset of the first step). In the scanning notification, you can see the progress for each step.

You mentioned CalyxOS, but do you have the regular Google Mobile Services installed? I'm asking because the locating step relies on the geocoding service installed (if any). It's typically served by GMS, but some people use alternatives like Nominatim.

[Self-Perfection]

I never explicitly installed Google Mobile Services. I suppose microG acts on its behalf.

I ran a few more tests and now get more confused.

Speed of locating step varies greatly during one test. It might advance by 3 items in one step and 30 items in the next. Maybe results for some location get cached and reused if the next image is close enough?

I cannot reproduce baseline cataloguing speed of 3-4 images per second, now it is more like 10 per second.

With occasional bursts of speed to ~50 per second. It is not just images without geo metadata processed fast, some with geolocation are processed fast as well.

I am quite confused.

[deckerst]

Maybe results for some location get cached and reused if the next image is close enough?

Yes I cache the results to avoid querying the geocoder service for known coordinates.

It is not just images without geo metadata processed fast, some with geolocation are processed fast as well.

In the cataloguing step, whether an item has geo metadata doesn't matter much. I believe the speed would depend more on the media format. Videos are slower to process. Maybe HEIC and AVIF too.

[lalalasupa0]

Is there any way to force this "rescan" of all media? I sometimes create and delete .nomedia files or just add a lot of files to a folder and Aves sometimes—specially with a lot of files—doesn't "detect" them all

[deckerst]

This is not an issue specific to Aves. Your media need to be scanned at the OS level.

[lntegrity]

Would you please elaborate on this? I just encountered something similar (moving a lot of files to/from the SD card after modifying EXIF data with a Windows utility) and I waited 2 hours, then rebooted, then waited 2 hours, and Aves didn't catalogue, so I uninstalled and reinstalled Aves, waited an hour, and it decided to start cataloguing.

Does Aves have to be "told" by the Android OS that new media is available for cataloguing (e.g. a "push")? Is there not a way for Aves to "pull" / manually trigger a cataloguing event? And forgive my naivete - I'm familiar with Windows software development but know next to nothing about Android dev.

I just read through this - https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/media - and noted, "The system automatically scans an external storage volume and adds media files to the following well-defined collections (such as DCIM)". So, does ANY gallery app, such as Aves, have to "wait" until this "automatic" mediastore scan occurs?

And if THAT'S the case, do you have any idea how to manually kick off a mediastore scan at the OS level? Even through something like ADB? I'd be willing to kick this off manually if I knew I changed a boatload of files and didn't want to wait until Android felt like cataloging.

Thank you so much for your time on this app!

EDIT: I just clicked the "show more replies" here in this thread and noted your comment (#1812 (reply in thread)) - if this accomplishes the ask above ("pulling" new media), then I apologize for the double-ask and appreciate the information :-)

[deckerst]

@lntegrity

Does Aves have to be "told" by the Android OS that new media is available for cataloguing (e.g. a "push")?

When Aves starts it checks the current state of the Android Media Store and updates its own database accordingly. Afterwards, while Aves is live, it receives events when the Android Media Store discovers something new.

Is there not a way for Aves to "pull" / manually trigger a cataloguing event?

Programmatically, Aves can ask the Android Media Store to scan a specific file path. I believe there is no way to do so for the whole device storage or even a specific directory.

So, does ANY gallery app, such as Aves, have to "wait" until this "automatic" mediastore scan occurs?

It depends on the source of truth. For Aves, I favoured privacy so it only requires access to media and it depends on the Android Media Store. Other galleries may request access to all files, so they do not need the Android Media Store, can monitor the storage themselves, etc.

do you have any idea how to manually kick off a mediastore scan at the OS level? Even through something like ADB?

You could try this (pulled from this SO comment):

adb shell content call --method scan_volume --uri content://media --arg external_primary

if this accomplishes the ask above ("pulling" new media)

No it's different. The "rescan" inside Aves is about cataloguing media by using their metadata. It's rarely necessary, unless I improve cataloguing with new metadata parsing and you want to re-catalogue your collection.

[lntegrity]

Thank you so much for the informative, organized reply!

[thom-sa]

Iam Just Migrating my Data to a new Smartphone and also exported / imported the aves Database.

I have a few Photos now that are sorted in aves in the wrong Date. (1 year in the past). When i Look at the metadata from the Image directly the Date ist correct.

Perhaps IT was mit a good Idea to import the Database. Can i Trigger aves to rescan all my Pictures?

[deckerst]

Not sure why the sorting would be wrong if the date you see in the metadata is correct... In any case, in the Collection page, you can select all the items, then in the top right menu select Rescan.