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Vixlo 0.1

Known limits

These are real limits of Vixlo 0.1. The faults in this version sit in boxes headed In Vixlo 0.1, each with the way around it.

Export​

  • Max quality refuses a graded Take. The Max quality engine (darktable, for RAW files of any make) cannot apply Vixlo's develop settings, so if any Take in an export carries a film simulation, a look or an edit, it refuses the whole export rather than quietly delivering ungraded files. The message ends: Choose Fast instead, or reset those frames to their original look first. Nothing was rendered. Fast is the engine for a graded shoot.

The Couldn't export dialog refusing a Max quality export of developed takes

  • The camera's maker note does not come across in a Fast export. It is the camera maker's private data, so Vixlo leaves it out rather than copy it wrong. Camera, lens, ISO, shutter, aperture, focal length and the capture date do come across, and your rating, label and favourite travel in the .xmp file beside the export.

The .xmp files and other programs​

  • A change made in another program is only partly honoured. A develop setting changed in the .xmp file by another program is taken up the next time Vixlo opens that photograph. A rating or colour label changed the same way is not read back while the library's index stands: the index stays the authority for those two, though Vixlo writes them into the file's standard fields for other programs to read. Rebuild the index… reads them back, so after a rebuild the other program's rating and label are the ones Vixlo shows.

Culling​

  • Closed-eye detection ships switched off. Vixlo can measure whether a detected eye reads open or closed, but that reading has not been checked against enough real photographs, and a wrong warning would interrupt your cull over a frame that is fine. Nothing in Single, Compare or the Stack Resolver flags a closed eye in your own photographs. The one such line, Closed eyes in one frame, is written into the sample behind Earlier library · event, not measured.
  • The advisory often says nothing. With the signals available today, a confident "this one is sharper" is the exception, and Vixlo stays silent rather than manufacture a preference.
  • The three Earlier libraries cannot store adjustments. Their photographs are bundled inside the app, so Vixlo has nowhere to write beside them. You can cull them, but the develop panel and the edit page both say This library can't store adjustments and why. Importing one, from its row on the launch screen, fixes it.

The develop panel on an Earlier library, saying it cannot store adjustments

Deleting and the index​

  • Forget removes a library from the list, not from disk. It frees no space.
In Vixlo 0.1

The bin rule is shown but not acted on, and it is not kept. Whichever rule a library has, handing off neither asks about the bin nor empties it, although the sentences beside the last two rules describe such a step, and a rule set for an open library lasts only until it closes. Frames are deleted only by Empty bin… after its counted confirmation. The bin rule has the detail.

Emptied frames come back. Close and reopen a library and the frames you emptied are in Rejects again, with no photograph behind them. Rebuild the index… clears them, except the JPEG half of a RAW+JPEG pair: Empty bin leaves that in Originals/, and a rebuild reads it back in as a Reject. The one action that deletes a photograph has the detail.

In Vixlo 0.1

A rebuild loses your favourites, and the Rebuild the index… sheet does not say so: the heart lives only in the index. Give those frames a colour label first, which comes back. A rebuild also changes the id of a photograph an import filed under its content, and People files each face under it. Names usually come back, but a face you hid comes back as a circle and a Not … or This is … correction may no longer hold, so look through People afterwards. The index can be rebuilt has the detail.

Safe to format​

  • Volumes, not physical drives. Vixlo counts two copies as independent when they are on different volumes. Two partitions of one disk, or two volumes that share one, pass, though one failing disk would take both, so put the second copy on a separate drive.
  • A file the library already holds is checked, not read whole again. Vixlo compares its size and its first and last megabyte with the card's file. It was verified whole when it was copied in; the check finds a copy deleted, cut short or replaced since, not a changed bit in the middle of the file.
  • A narrow window at the end of an import. The claim is computed once, at the end of a copy run, from each file's already-verified state. If a file that passed verification is corrupted while other files in the same import are still copying, the final claim does not re-check it.
In Vixlo 0.1

A card with video clips, XMP files, a camera's own catalogue files or unrecognised files on it never reads safe to format, whatever its photographs' copies, and copying those files yourself does not change that. A Sony card's catalogue under PRIVATE, a Canon card's CANONMSC folder and a print order in MISC are enough. Look through the card in the Finder before you format it, copy what you want to keep, and decide for yourself. When a card is safe to format has the detail, and What counts as the card says which files are counted.

Models and their terms​

  • The models Vixlo can use come with other people's terms, and three carry a research-use rider. Vixlo ▸ Models… lists the models installed on this Mac with the licence and terms each one recorded. The words model SigLIP and the cleaning model LaMa are clean for commercial use. Three are not: the older words model CLIP and the two face models, AdaFace and FaceNet. Their code is MIT, but their weights were trained on data whose terms are research use. That changes nothing about what happens to your photographs, but it limits using face recognition, or search in words with CLIP, for commercial work.
In Vixlo 0.1

The Models sheet lists and removes models but cannot add one. Face models says how a model reaches a Mac.

Places​

Accessibility​

  • VoiceOver has not been confirmed end to end. Every label and hint is plain text, but what a screen reader says on a real screen has not been checked.