Is it worth it?

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vers85
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Is it worth it?

Post by vers85 »

I was planning on buying QNAP NAS mainly to migrate from Google Photos and my randomly stored family pictures. QuMagie seemed to be a cool alternative, but the low user rating on Google Store made me cautious. Then I found this forum where I can see even more problems with the app and the fact that support doesn't fix them for years. What are the biggest issues with the app right now?
- Auto upload from mobile device doesn't work
- All metadata like tags/facial recognition can be wiped out and there's no way to back it up

Did I miss something? Are there any workarounds to these issues for example syncing the device with google drive and then download to NAS on the schedule? The whole point of moving to NAS was to reliably store my multimedia... Or maybe I'd be better off investing in Synology product instead?
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dolbyman
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Re: Is it worth it?

Post by dolbyman »

There should be plenty of phone apps that can backup your phones data, once your phone is in your lan (or on the go via vpn)

no need for obscure apps like qumagie to do that..just use the nas as a nas

also make sure to never expose your nas directly to the web
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Is it worth it?

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

i don't use the android apps as much. there is a review of it on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HbY6rQ7SQA


but i do use qumagie in qts.

If you are expecting 100% perfection, you will be dissapointed. I already reported issues and shortcomings and hope in a future release it will rectify these. One thing that bothered me was when facial boxes were misidentified, you could not edit the box to correctly place it. In a previous early version you could, until that was removed.

but generally it will work. I like the UI and this app in qts definitely has potential especially for a nas that store your pictures, and you want an easy way to find pics and others that are related as quickly as possible.

a more basic experience would be something like browsing your pics on the nas using windows explorer and display extra large thumbnails. You the user would be responsible for sorting those images into folders and making sure they are named appropriately.

qumagie's goal is sort of to have a nicer picture viewer, and also more importantly to identify/classify images based on what category they may fit under, or to find similar pics and associations so the user can quickly zone in on those pics (especially if you did not properly name those pics in the first place). So that is what qumagie aims to do basically.

as ai improves, qumagie may also improve eventually.


if i'm not mistaken, synology's version of this is called moments? or something. they basically have the same goal, but how they do it has their own twist. I don't know how effective synology's version, because i don't have one to play with :(

outside these 2 brands, i am not aware of any other brand nas that has this sort of native app :'


aside from qumagie, they also have photo station. photo station is basically something like a basic version of qumagie. it displays the images from your nas, minus the AI features of Qumagie. Supposedly photostation was to have an major update a year back or so, but not sure what happened. I suspect they are holding it back for a major QTS release in the future.


anyway back to your question. worth it? yes. perfect? no. Also i would get a qnap nas, not just for this reason alone, as i like the hardware, the qts ui management which i'm use to and has enuff advance settings to tinker with.
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
JCNAP
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Location: UK

Re: Is it worth it?

Post by JCNAP »

I migrated to QuMagie.

Pros:
- Privacy.

Cons:
- Not as responsive, needs to got through a login process every time it connects.
- Pictures take a while to load.
- I only manage to sink them when I'm at home - haven't managed to sync them on the road. I know there must be a way.
- Just slow....

I have a 251D maxed out ram, TPU, and SSD Cache.

Conclusion: I'm keeping QuMagie for long term storage and using iPhotos or any online photo storage/app solution for recent photos only.
mleenheer
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Re: Is it worth it?

Post by mleenheer »

For storage the QNAP is a great solution.

For accessing and cataloguing photos, the software provided by QNAP is not great. QuMagie is pretty good at finding faces but it is limited in features; it's not Lightroom. My biggest complaint is that QMagie does not write any of the tags, ratings, or keywords into the photo's metadata - so to access the data you are forever dependent on QuMagie and hoping nothing damages the database.
JCNAP
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Location: UK

Re: Is it worth it?

Post by JCNAP »

mleenheer wrote: Fri Sep 02, 2022 12:08 am For storage the QNAP is a great solution.

For accessing and cataloguing photos, the software provided by QNAP is not great. QuMagie is pretty good at finding faces but it is limited in features; it's not Lightroom. My biggest complaint is that QMagie does not write any of the tags, ratings, or keywords into the photo's metadata - so to access the data you are forever dependent on QuMagie and hoping nothing damages the database.
What are you using if not QuMagie?
Douglas113
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Re: Is it worth it?

Post by Douglas113 »

I recently purchased a TS-873A as a backup to my Synology 4 bay NAS. I went with QNAP as I didnèt like the way Synology was going with their proprietary drives. I have used photo station on the Synology and the new QMagie is not any better. The face recognition is not very good and the ability to edit faces and apply them to the correct person is not there. I used Picasa for a number of years and it was much better at face recognition.

I just looked at the QNAP site and there is very little information on when an update may be coming out.
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Is it worth it?

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

i switched from photostation to photo prism hosted using docker on the qnap ts-877.

this app probably also has face detection since 2021 but i didn't delve too much into using those features, but you could try find yourself
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/com ... ding_face/
https://docs.photoprism.app/user-guide/organize/people/

it also does object recognition.


but how comparable is it to qnaps qumagie? no idea. just that it is a possible alternative.


so even if you do get a qnap, you may have alternatives for some of the apps which is usually available as a qpkg or a docker app normally.
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
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