Unlike many other applications MediaboardONE gives you the choice to catalog or import your files.

Importing media files
Importing is what many consumer image management applications do. The images are copied to a specific location on your hard disk or a network server and then added to the catalog. If you download images from a digital camera this is most likely what you want.

Cataloging media files
If you already have several thousand images organized on your hard disk you don't want to make a copy of each of them you should think about cataloging instead of importing. Cataloging does not copy of modify your images, but only adds them to the MediaboardONE catalog. In this case you have to take care that you don't move the images later so that MediaboardONE is able to locate them again.

To catalog media files simply drag the folder to the catalog list (Asset Manager) or click the "Smart Add" button in the Asset Manager window.

Keep in mind that cataloging only adds your image information and thumbnail to the MediaboardONE database - so don't delete the original files after cataloging if you still need them.

Smart Add is intended for photographers that have organized their images in a folder structure.

Let's say you have a folder "Customer1" that contains sub-folders "Shooting1" to "Shooting5". If you select the folder "Customer1" with Smart Add this structure will be automatically re-created within MediaboardONE - so you simply don't loose the time you already spent for organizing your images.

Additionally it breaks down folders with more than 1500 images in smaller Film Rolls to make browsing faster (you can customize the maximum number of images per Film Roll with Preferences -> Image Processing -> Smart Add).

Choose Window -> Capture Panel to download your images from any digital camera or memory card that is supported by the MacOS X Image Capture Architecture (ICA). Usually the Capture Panel is displayed automatically after connecting a device that is supported by ICA.

To use the default options press "Capture" to download and catalog your images. If your media card or digital camera is additionally mounted as a volume (so it can be accessed with the MacOS X Finder), press Eject to unmount the volume before disconnecting your media card/digital camera. After ejecting the device it is safe to remove it.

Unlike many other capture applications you can define the download process manually. The "Default Download" preset makes a copy of your image file to "~/Pictures/MediaboardONE/MediaContainer/", deletes the image file after successful download from your camera or memory card and ejects the memory card after finishing.

If you want to define your own settings for the image download click the triangle on the left side of the Capture Settings selection. The following options are available to define your own capture settings:

If you want to keep your settings for future use select "Save settings as..." from the Presets selection in the upper right corner of the settings dialog.

If you want to start MediaboardONE automatically after connecting a digital camera, change the prefered application with Preferences -> Camera.

Technically it's almost unlimited. We do our testing with 120.000 images and 2500 movie clips. But you should keep in mind that it is not very convenient to scroll through a list with several thousand images.

It's much easier to handle a large number of images if you split them into junks and store only up to 1000 images in a catalog. As there is no limitation in the number of catalogs you can create, you can still add several hundred thousand images and movie clips.

MediaboardONE can import your Cumulus catalogs - including annotations, keywords and categories. Follow these steps to import your Cumulus catalogs:

1. Before you can start the import you have to start Cumulus and and choose File -> Export to save all or only the selected images in an exchange format. The export file has the extension .cre and is created language dependent. MediaboardONE only supports the export files created with Cumulus 5 or newer (including MediaDex) generated with English or German language settings.
2. With MediaboardONE choose File -> Import to Film Roll -> Cumulus Export File... and select the .cre file you have saved with Cumulus. The import reads all assets from the .cre file, converts annotations, keywords and categories and rescans the files to recreate the thumbnails.

Notes: As MediaboardONE has to recreate the thumbnails all media files from your Cumulus catalog have to be accessible. If you have stored your assets on a network or an external volume, you have to mount the volume before starting the import or these files will be skipped.