Home Getting started Downloads News Support Contact FAQ- Frequently Asked Questions your first stop in case of questions. Last update: August 26th 2008 F1. What does DeepMeta do? DeepMeta is a portfolio management tool, tightly integrated with iStockphoto. It allows you to maintain a library of images, which make up your iStockphoto portfolio. Using a native application provides a rich and streamlined user interface for keywording, disambiguating and categorizing your artwork. F2. What computer platforms does this software run on? DeepMeta is a Windows program, running on Windows XP and Windows Vista. The software uses the Microsoft .Net framework which is present by default on all Vista and most Windows XP systems. If not, the installer can do this for you. A software version for Mac OS X and Linux is also planned. Check out Item F42 for the current OS X status. F3. Is this FREE software? Can I donate something? DeepMeta is free software and will remain free. It is possible that an extended version of the software may be introduced in the future at a small cost, but this has not yet been decided. There are no plans to provide a Donation function at this site or in the software. People wanting to support the software will be given opportunity in the near future, but will get something in return. Stay tuned... F4. When installing DeepMeta, I get this error "The windows Installer sevice could not be accessed". What to do? The full error message is: ""The windows Installer sevice could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running windows in safe mode, or if the windows installer in net correctly installed". There seems to be a lot of info on this error. Here is a page from Microsoft with tips on what to do. You may simply want to upgrade to the latest version of windows installer. If you're running Windows XP, then this is the download link. F5. The "fetch updates from iStockphoto" dialog shows 2 different types of info. What's the difference? There are 2 types of status line: File nr. XXXXXXXX updated: Imagetitle Updated image XXX of XXX: File nr. XXXXXXXX: Imagetitle Message 1 is shown when only some statistics have changed: download count, view count, etc. Message 2 is shown when a separate extra fetch of information was done. This is the case when new ratings/comments were fetched or when the file is new and was uploaded directly at the iStock site or with another upload program. F6. How many keywords and categories can I add to my files, and why is this more than iStock allows? The DeepMeta philosophy is not to limit the number of keywords and categories you can select for your files. Adding keywords and categories is a creative process, and we don't want to limit the user at that stage. The current iStock limits are 50 for keywords and 3 for categories, but these may change in the future. DeepMeta will only send the first 50 keywords and first 3 categories to iStock for Uploads/Updates. Things planned for later releases: Make it more clear which keywords/categories will be sent to iStock Allow the user to change the order of keywords/categories. F7. Does DeepMeta work with Vectors, Video and Audio? Not yet for uploading (the iStock API does not support this yet), but all files you have in your portfolio (images, vectors, video and audio) will show up in DeepMeta. You are able to change keywords, title, description, categories, add file links etc. F8. Using the filter in the DeepMeta image list, I seem to get images that I didn't expect. Some don't make sense. The reason is that DM searches in keywords, as well as all assigned terms. E.g. the keyword "tweezer", can be assigned to the term "Eyebrow Tweezers (Toiletries)". A search for "oil" would come up with this file, since "oil" is part of that text. The filter options will be enhanced in future versions. F9. Why does the data in DeepMeta not exaclty match what I see on the iStock site? When you let DeepMeta fetch data from the iStockphoto site, it does so in real-time. However, the iStock servers themselves do not provide the very latest data (downloads, views, ...). There can be a delay of up to 24h for the latest data. This is a current limitation of the iStock site itself and its API. This may change in the future. F10. Can DeepMeta cause duplicates of uploaded files on the iStock servers? In rare occasions this can happen. When there are performance problems with the Internet or with the iStock servers, it can happen that DeepMeta has successfully uploaded an image to the iStock servers, but the reply from iStock, reporting the success gets lost. In that case, DeepMeta will assume that the upload failed and will try to upload again. This sort of thing only happens in extreme conditions. When you see this happening, you can simply delete the duplicate file(s) at the iStock site. You can find this duplicate file in either of both locations: Your My uploads page at iStock In the "Unfinished uploads" section of the general iStock Upload page. Note that this "unfinished uploads" section is only visible when unfinished uploads actually do exist. If the file also had a Model/Property release attached, it's very likely that one of the (duplicate) uploaded files at iStock doesn't have any release attached. This is because DeepMeta does not send a request to attach a release when it considers the upload to have failed. There is also a related Wishlist item #W131. F11. When installing a new version of DeepMeta, do I need to uninstall the previous one? No, the new version will automatically update the existing one. Note that there is one exception: if, for some reason you would be installing an older version of DeepMeta over a newer one (a downgrade instead of upgrade), then you do first have to uninstall DeepMeta. From the Windows Start menu, go to "Control panel", select "Add or remove programs" (Windows XP) or "Programs and features" (Windows Vista), locate DeepMeta and click "uninstall". F42. What is the current status regarding the OS X version of DeepMeta? Expected: Summer 2008 The Mac OS X version will be built, using the Mono framework, a free library for Mac OS X. Early tests have been done, using beta versions of the Mono framework, but its current stability is simply not sufficient. As soon as the final version 2.0 of the Mono framework is released, a first test version of DeepMeta will be sent to a number of DeepMeta beta-testers. The final 2.0 version of Mono is expected in "Summer 2008". That's where the expected date for the OS X version of DeepMeta comes from. Sorry to keep postponing this OS X, version but the reason for this is now hopefully clear. All new developments in the OS X area will be reported in this F.A.Q. entry. Stay tuned... If you don't want to wait for the OS X version, here are alternative options to run DeepMeta on a Mac. F12. What are the current options to run DeepMeta on Mac, until the OS X version is out? Using Apple Boot camp to install Windows on a separate partition of your hard disk so that you can boot your system as either Mac OS or Windows. Using Parallels Desktop for Mac OS. From tygraphics: Fusion works outstanding for running Windows XP & DeepMeta on an Intel Mac. VMWare Fusion can be purchased through Amazon for about $40 after rebate and discount. F13. Some of my files show a rating in the average rating column, but on the iStock site, they don't have any rating. These files were probably from the time when all files had an initial rating, which was 3 by default. Some of those files show up as 3 on the site as well if you do a mouse-over. Once you click on the file it appears to have no ratings at all. This can happen to newer files too. This behaviour is also present in the Istockphoto site, and is unrelated to DeepMeta. F14. How do I add one or more keywords to selected files? You can do this with the Copy & paste tool. Just add 1 dummy image to DeepMeta, one that you're not going to upload. Assign the keyword to it, in your case "customer" and then press the Ctrl-C button or Right-click and select "Copy". Next select all the files to which you want to add that keyword, right-click and select "Paste to X selected rows". Make sure the "Overwrite" boxes are not ticked (of they are, then the existing keywords of the target files are first cleared). Then click the OK button. It's a bit of a trick to do it this way, but there'll be an easier way in future versions of the software. F15. How do I clear the local DeepMeta database and why would I want to do that? DeepMeta uses a local database to store a copy of all data retrieved from iStock for your account, and for any local changes you make to your files. The only reason you'd ever want to clear this database is in cases where it may have become corrupt. If you think this is the case, contact support and we'll evaluate. To clear the local database: start up DeepMeta and press the F1 function key to open up the Help | About window. Then click the link at the bottom "Clear local DeepMeta database", and confirm. Note that by clearing the database, you loose any local changes you've done in DeepMeta, along with Model/Property release data, not-yet-uploaded images, etc. After clearing the database, you'll have to reload your portfolio data from iStock (F5). F16. I get the error "Name resolution failed. The remote name could not be resolved". What can I do? This means that DeepMeta cannot access the internet for some reason. Possible causes: Your network connection is (temporarily) down, interrupted, or your dial-up connection is off. You have a firewall, proxy or router blocking access to the internet for DeepMeta. Examples are: Windows firewall, OneCare, Norton, etc. F17. Is there a limit as to the file size for image JPGs that can imported to Deep Meta? There is no specific limit. Depends on how much memory you have in the system. As a test, we imported an image of 10000 x 10000 pixels (that's 100 MPixels, or 36 MByte) without problems on a 4GByte system. F18. When I run DeepMeta, I see multiple connections to "xyz" on port 80. What are these connections? DeepMeta itself communicates with 2 servers only: istockphoto.com and deepmeta.com. Thumbnail images for iStockphoto are often served by servers from Akamai. Also note that the Description preview feature of DeepMeta uses an embedded browser window to show a preview of your file descriptions. If those contain links to e.g. thumbnails images to lightboxes that you are hosting somewhere, those URLs will also be fetched. F19. Why does sorting by "Downloaded" in DeepMeta and "Last Download" at the iStock site give different different results? The reason why the sort-by-last-download does not exactly match the list at the iStock site is that the API only provides the date of last download, and not the exact time. The iStock list apparently uses the time as well. F20. How do the Model/property releases work in DeepMeta and what can I check to verify When you add model/property releases to DeepMeta, always provide JPGs of single releases, NOT of files where you have already stitched them together! DeepMeta will resize the files and this way the stitched ones would become too small to read the individual releases. DeepMeta first uploads the file, then the model/property release(s). Either of both could fail, of course, due to network/server problems, but in both cases, DeepMeta knows whether the upload was a success or not. If the file upload failed, DeepMeta will retry up to 2 times. If that still fails, the file goes back to the "New images, not in queue" list, with the status "ToUpload". If the file upload was OK, but the release upload failed, DeepMeta will retry this up to 2 times before giving up. If OK, the file gets the "Pending" status and is removed from both lists in the iStock panel. If the release upload failed, the file goes back to the "New images, not in queue" list, with the status "ToUploadRelease". This is the only situation, where DM will have uploaded a file without release. But you can detect this: the file will have moved back to the "New images" list, and will show an Error link that you can click to see the detailed error. Multiple releases: DM stitches these for you, and no problems have ever been reported with this. You can easily check these stitched release files: in the image list: right-click the file which has multiple releases linked and select "View in web browser - Uploaded stitched model release". Things you can check if you suspect something went wrong: After the upload through DeepMeta: check to see if non of the uploaded files has been sent back to the "New images" list on the iStock panel. If so: click the error-link to see what went wrong. As a double check: go to the Edit page for the uploaded image at the iStock site, and check that there is the text "This file has a model release". Finally: you can look at the stitched release file generated by DeepMeta as described above. You can also inspect each individual release, as a 1:1 preview of the scaled release is shown in the right-hand side-pane of the Releases panel. Final remark on scaling: If the model/property release you add to DeepMeta is smaller than 1500 pixels (width and height), then DeepMeta leaves it alone. If it's larger, then DM scales it down so that it's max size (width or height, i.e. usually height) is 1500 pixels. Then, when more than one model releases are attached, DeepMeta will stitch them together without further scaling. F21. When I try to fetch updates from istock I get this message "invalid response from istockphoto (empty)" In many cases, this is because you entered a wrong username or password in the options window. The iStock API does not give a clear error message if you provide wrong credentials. In the DeepMeta menu: click Options | Main options, check your username. Re-enter your password (case-sensitive!), and then click the "Test" button below it. If it says: "Login OK", then you're good: confirm with the OK button and all should be well. F22. Is there a way to send a new MR when the status is "needs model release"? No, you still have to do that through the site. It's certainly possible to attach a Model release to an uploaded file through the iStock API, however, it's not certain whether doing so would bring its status to pending again, so that it's re-inspected. This probably won't be so. Will be further looked into. F23. What options do I have to run DeepMeta on Linux One option, reported by theasis is: http://www.virtualbox.org/ This tool is free, however, as with most of these tools, you still have to own/purchase a Windows lincense. VMWare is another option F24. Can DeepMeta fetch Model/property releases from iStock for already uploaded files? No. The iStock API does not allow this. F25. Can I edit the data for a file while its is pending on the iStock site? You can do that: just edit in DeepMeta and send the changes to iStock (F6). This will update the image data, even when they're pending. An exception is Model releases: the F6 refresh will not update model releases even of you've changed them in DeepMeta. F26. When I update the model release for a pending image in DeepMeta, can I update it to iStock No it doesn't. There is currently no way to do that in DeepMeta. F27. Can DeepMeta display stats for a selected group of images? See: this post. F28. Can I trust the calculation of the Image Resize Calculator or should I add a few pixels safety margin You can trust the calculations. The used formula already adds one or two pixels, so that you can be sure that your resized image will fall in the desired iStock size category (M/L/XL/XXL). F29. I have a very large portfolio and get a "Gateway timeout" error when fetching data from iStock This is a known problem: ever since beginning july 2008, the call to the API to fetch all image data for a portfolio got much slower, and for portfolios larger than about 2000 images, can load for 5 minutes and then return a network error "The Remote server returned an error: (504) gateway timeout". Sometimes, launching the request a second time, can work, sometimes it doesn't. There are currently 2 work-arounds: Fetch the data for individual files or groups of files by selecting them in the image list, and then right-click and choose "Fetch from iStockphoto" Tick the checkbox "Refresh all data" on the iStockphoto tab-page and then click the button "Fetch updates from iStockphoto". This will take a lot longer than a regular fetch, since it also fetches all keywords and descriptions, but it will work, because the requests are split up in many small requests, instead of one big request. iStockphoto is aware of the problem and hopes to come up with optimizations that will speed up the request. F30. How do I delete the DeepMeta configuration file? First of all: you only need to do this on rare occasions, when asked by DeepMeta support. If DeepMeta is running: exit the program. Open your windows file explorer and go to following directory: C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsLoginName\Local Settings\Application Data\Eazign (replace “YourWindowsLoginName” with your Windows user name: you’ll recognize it when you see it). In that directory are one or more sub directories, starting with DeepMeta.exe ... You can delete it/them, including all their content and subdirectories. The next time you start DeepMeta, it will make a new configuration file for you. F31. How do you delete a photo which is in the Queue or waiting to go into the Queue? An image which is in DeepMeta and not yet uploaded to iStockphoto, can easily be deleted in the "Images" tab page (the main image list), by right-clicking the image row in the table and clicking "Delete" in the pop-up menu. If the image is already uploaded to iStock, then you'll have to cancel it on the iStockphoto site. F41. Where are my rejected files? In DeepMeta, rejected files are grouped as "Inactive", along with purged and deactivated files. They are not shown by default. To see them, make sure the "Inactive" checkbox is ticked, at the top-left of the main "Images" tab-page. F40. Can I resubmit rejected files with DeepMeta? No, this is not possible. There is a related Wishlist item #W46 F32. Where does DeepMeta store its database and thumbnais files? Start up DeepMeta and press the F1 function key, or click the menu-option "Help | About" to bring up the Help window. Near the bottom of the window, there is a text, labeled "Data path". That's the path where DeepMeta stores its data. F33. Where can I go for support? Answer coming soon... F34. Is my iStockphoto username and password safe, when I enter it in the software? Absolutely. More details coming soon... F35. What does the "Refresh all data" checkbox on the iStockphoto tab-page do? Answer coming soon... F36. The "Pause upload" button in the iStockphoto tab-page does not seem to respond immediately? Answer coming soon... F37. When I change keywords for my files at the iStock site, these don't seem to be updated to DeepMeta? Answer coming soon... F38. What does the "Purged" status for a file mean? Answer coming soon... F39. Do I need to be online to use DeepMeta? Answer coming soon... F43. Why do I have to enter my copyright details in DeepMeta? You don't have to provide it when uploading through the site, because you have already specified that in your iStock profile. The iStock upload process extracts that info from there. This is how it works in detail: when you upload a file, through the site or through a 3rd party application such as DeepMeta, you do not provide your copyright data alongside with the upload. The iStock servers fetch that data at upload time from what you have specified at the iStock site in your online profile. However, and this is the funny thing, whenever you *update* file info for already uploaded files, you must provide your copyright details. Therefore, DeepMeta has an options setting where you can fill out your copyright details. I've received a lot of feedback from people reporting that some of their files had missing copyright info. This was because they had not filled out their copyright details in the DeepMeta options. After upload, all was OK, but as soon as they edited the file, before first fetching the details, they would overwrite the copyright info with empty fields. This is why I've changed the rules from DeepMeta v1.2 Beta onwards: I now demand the copyright info to be filled out in the Options dialog, even for uploading. F44. Get support FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions Wish list Known bugs & limitations Contact form DeepMeta forum