Ask HN: SmugMug locks-in (part of) my data. What shall I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: SmugMug locks-in (part of) my data. What shall I do?

10 pointsgingerlime5 comments

I just discovered that the original video files that I uploaded to SmugMug were downsampled into another format, and to make things even worse - the metadata is lost on download. That is, the original video date and time, location info etc is visible on SmugMug, but no longer available when I download a video (either individually or inside a gallery). This metadata is really important to me.

I contacted SmugMug support, but they basically say they can't help :( they don't seem to be willing to re-apply it to the video, nor to export it into another format (the metadata is still shown/stored on SmugMug, so it's not totally lost, but it's effectively locked-in).

What shall I do? I thought maybe submitting a GDPR data portability request for all my data[0]. It seems a bit weird to go down that path, but it is within my rights as a European citizen. Otherwise, any ideas on how to "convince" SmugMug to avoid this weird lock-in? They're generally a very helpful company, but not in this case it seems.

[0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-data-portability/

You could give up trying to change their policies and do an ugly hack: find a tool that will let you programmatically insert metadata into the new format, then kludge up something to go through your account, screen-scraping the metadata, grabbing the video, and calling the metadata-insertion tool. Or since it sounds like you maybe have all the videos already just screen-scrape the metadata, figure out the appropriate file name, and inject the data.

Log into your SmugMug account and open the Organizer. Browse to the gallery (or galleries) containing the videos you want to download, click the "Download" button in the toolbar (downward pointing arrow with a flat line underneath), and select "Download Gallery".

SmugMug will generate a zip file containing the original, unmodified images and videos in the gallery, and will email you a download link when it's ready.

Yes, that's what I'm doing and it works. But the videos that I download are stripped out of the metadata :(

EDIT: I created a blog post[0] that tries to explain this in more detail

[0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2018/smugmug-video-data-loss/

UPDATE (since I can no longer edit):

SmugMug appear to have a (secret?) data portability request form. I contacted support, and then got a special link to a form to fill. I was promised it would include all my data after explicitly asking also about video metadata... It should take up to 30 days according to them. I'm waiting to see how this pans out. Will keep updating it on the blog post[0]

[0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2018/smugmug-video-data-loss/

GDPR process might actually work. And hopefully it creates just enough more work (or involves a different department pushing) they'll make it easier to self-download.

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