Where files go, and what stays yours
Every way out of Vixlo writes into a folder you choose and nowhere else. This page gathers how to choose that folder, what each kind of run leaves in it, and the things that hold true through every export, hand-off and review collection.
Choosing a folder
Export, Hand off takes and Share review each open a folder picker with one line about your originals and its own button: Export Here, Write Here or Build Here. Choose any folder on this Mac, or make a new one from the picker. A library's own folder also has an Exports folder, made when the library was created; nothing is written there unless you choose it.
Keeping away from your photographs
Choose a folder of its own for each delivery, never the folder your photographs are in, and above all not the Originals folder inside your library (What a library is on disk). Vixlo checks the folder only for a card and for whether it can write there, and each action names what it writes after the original:
- Export, with no rename pattern, writes
DSCF1234.jpg, which replaces aDSCF1234.JPGin that folder, such as the camera's JPEG beside a RAW on a RAW+JPEG shoot: on a Mac's disk the two names are one file. Its.xmpreplaces the one Vixlo keeps beside the photograph with its decision and develop settings, even when the original is a RAW file. - Share review writes
DSCF1234.jpgtoo, with the same result for a JPEG original and for the JPEG beside a RAW. - Hand off takes writes
DSCF1234.xmp, which replaces Vixlo's own.xmpthere.
The folders Vixlo refuses
A folder on a removable card or drive is refused before anything is written, for all three actions. Vixlo treats any drive you can eject as removable, so an external SSD or USB drive is refused too: write to a folder on the Mac's own disk, then copy it across. The message names the folder, says to choose one on this Mac instead, and ends with the reason: an export, a hand-off or a review collection never writes back to a source card. A folder you cannot write to is refused the same way, with isn't writable, so nothing was written there.
What each run leaves behind
| For every take | For the run | |
|---|---|---|
| Export | the image and an .xmp sidecar | export-manifest.json |
| Hand off takes | an .xmp sidecar | decisions.json |
| Share review | a .jpg preview | review-collection.json |
The three manifests are plain text. export-manifest.json and review-collection.json list every take that was written and every frame that failed, with the reason. An export stopped with Cancel lists what it wrote, and any frame that failed before the stop; the takes it never reached are on neither list. decisions.json lists every take handed off; a hand-off that stops part way writes no decisions.json at all. The export manifest also records the preset's name, the format, the size and the engine, so a folder found a month later says which recipe made it.
What never changes
Your originals are left alone. Export and Share review open them only to read and render from; Hand off takes does not open them at all. No run copies, moves, renames or deletes a photograph, and none of them empties the bin. The one way to lose an original is to choose its own folder as the destination, above.
Your develop settings stay where they are. An export renders a new file from the original plus your settings and never bakes anything into the original. A watermark, and your Creator and Copyright lines, go into the exported file only.
Nothing leaves this Mac. No run uploads anything or makes a link. The one web page these dialogs ever open is darktable's download page, and only when you click Install….
Ratings, labels and favourites travel as a sidecar, never inside the image. Export writes them to the .xmp beside each file, in the same fields the hand-off uses: the rating and the label where any XMP reader looks for them, the favourite in a field of Vixlo's own.
A read-only account can still deliver. When a trial or subscription has ended, the notice under the title bar says: Every library still opens, and Export and Hand off still write real files; culling and developing are paused until you subscribe on your account page. Share review works too.
Running the same action twice into one folder
Every run that finishes rewrites its own manifest, so the folder's record describes the latest finished run only.
- Export, with a rename or subfolder pattern, on either engine: no image already in the folder is written over. The newcomer takes the next free
{seq}, or a(2)when the pattern has no sequence. An.xmpthat has the same name as a new image, apart from the extension, is still replaced. - Export, Fast, no pattern: a file of the same name already in the folder is replaced by the new render, and so is its
.xmp. Two takes that would share a name stop the run before it starts, unless the names differ only in capital letters (see the caution below). - Export, Max quality, no pattern: a file Max quality rendered the same way before is reused, and the same frame rendered differently is rendered over. Another file of the same name, such as one Fast wrote, is rendered over unless it carries an identifying code of the shape Vixlo reads, 32 characters each a digit or a letter from a to f, in capitals or not, which some cameras write into every file. Then it is taken for another frame's, left alone, and the new file goes beside it marked
-2. Do not rely on any of this; Max quality and darktable has the detail. - Hand off takes and Share review: a sidecar or a preview of the same name already in the folder is replaced.
The check that stops two takes with one name compares them letter for letter, so IMG_0001 and img_0001 pass as two names. A Mac's default disk ignores capitals, so they are one file. With Rename and Subfolder both empty on Fast, whichever of the two is written second replaces the first, and its .xmp replaces the first's; the report counts both as rendered and the manifest lists both. Typing {name} into Rename avoids it: Vixlo then compares names without regard to capitals and gives the second take (2). Or keep only one of the two marked Take.