What is with the sorry state of Metadata?
evilded777
Posts: 2,466
I mean... the confusion surrounding the G8.1 release is bad enough without having Starter Essentials suddenly move to Genesis 8 Male Power Pose Templates, but really the current state of metadata is a tragic affair. I thought it was just me, having had to reinstall everything and choosing to use DIM instead of Connect (because, y'know, we had that weekend where we lost a couple thousand products during the store migration), but that can not be the answer.
Now I'm looking to stick some clothes on V 8.1 (a rare occurence as I don't render the girls, except maybe when a new Vicky comes out) and I see half the clothes that show up are actually Genesis 8 Male clothes that I haven't noticed were missing.... because their metadata says they are all for Genesis 8 Female. And that's just the most obvious case... did you know Dasan 8 was actually for Genesis 8 Female, not Male? Along with a whole bunch of morphs by, totally not ironic here, MaleM3dia.
Seriously, something needs to be done about this. Shall I open a ticket for every product that has broken and or utterly useless metadata?
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Comments
Issues around 8.1 and metadata is known, and being worked on :)
Meanwhile, we unpaid beta testers hit our heads against the wall trying to figure out why a feature isn't working or why an advertised feature (which hasn't been released yet) can't be found. But we have to read reams of posts to find any info since there's no official announcement.
I would open a ticket. But do not expect any fast solution. I am opening tickets for any item with incorrect metadata when I notice them. Guess what.... I have quite some of them rotting in the tech support queue for MONTHS. I suppose tech support is completely snowed under, and metadata fixes most likely have low priority, as the product still can be used.
That's all well and good, Jack, but its just a symptom of a larger problem. The problem used to be vendors cramming their stuff willy nilly wherever they felt like it (and browsing the actual folders of my content, I see that hasn't really much changed). Smart Content and Metadata was supposed to help us find the REAMS of content that we have paid for; now, instead, it's effectively hiding it and making us search for it again...
I've seen male clothing show up in the female Smart Content for a long time now. I put in a ticket with a list of the items that I found in mine, but nothing has been done about it yet. I think it was at least six months ago or more. They're apparently overwhelmed with tickets to deal with, so I'm still waiting.
When I tried the "Smart" content, the problems with metadata got me quickly back to my old ways of navigating the actual folders and categorizing the content in there to suit my preferences.
With the metadata being wrong so often, there should be a way for the user to check it at the time of installation, maybe a pop-up giving the details and asking if that is correct/how the user wants them or if the user wants to change them.
If that was done the time of the installation, it wouldn't take that much time, compared to how much work it is to start fixing everything that's thrown into "Lost and Found" or even into completely wrong categories.
Wrong categories are more annoying that no categories imo. With stuff in L&F, you assign a category and most of the time it goes into that category. With wrong categories, I'm finding stuff goes into the new category, but also stays in the wrong category.
Is there some way around this?
Yes, I'm complaining since months about the bad meta data qualitliy.
I'm looking forward to an official statement from DAZ and the promise that they will fix all meta data, even the legacy stuff. So much under Lost And Found...
Yeah, metadata is basically unusable at this point. I wouldn't bother opening a ticket. I've literally *never* seen Daz fix a metadata error. Not once.
That's not ture. They fix them, but not all. And those which they are not fixing, will be ignored.
Well, I've never had any of mine fixed. Can you give a specific example of a product that they've fixed for you?
Yes, easily.
fixed
fixed
fixed
Interesting... Out of curiosity, do you use Install Manager? And, if so, did the fixes appear as updates in DIM? I'm starting to wonder if there's a problem on my end.
I noticed smart content is rather dumb too
I rarely use it but did to find where the new G8.1F expressions were stashed and though it found them it is useless for everything else
Some fixes come via DIM, some via a meta update inside DAZ Studio.
However, for some reasons, SOMETIMES meta data updates don't work for buggy reasons.
There are multiple work arounds, like reinstall the meta data via
Content Library->Content-DB-Maintance->Re-Import-Meta-Data (select there the products which you want to fix)
Sometimes I've to uninstall the product before:
But NORMALLY reimporting meta data or uninstalling the product should not be needed!
If the meta data are after this steps stays corrupt, it's still an error on DAZ side.
^^^^^^^This^^^^^ far toooften you can't get the wrong categories or compatabilities to go away and I have not found a consistent way to do it. Supposedley, they never "go away" but are hidden by some flag (Show Hidden Vendor Categorizations -- I believe), but I have tried with this flag on and off and it appears to actually do nothing.
I've filed metadata fix grievances in the past and seen them get fixed.
I'm thinking it is just time to file them all, one by one, and get some action. I've already started....
And people think I'm an idiot cause I refuse to use DIM ever. I manually install everything and I use the regular Content Library and I'm called old fashioned for doing so. Getting with the times means putting up with the headaches, I don't like headaches, so I'll stay old fashioned and take the few extra moments looking through the many libraries I set up to organize things. And while my scene is rendering, I'll come here and read all the posts about the problems people are having. Be a long time before I upgrade to 4.15 or G8.1
You are entitled to your opinion. I'll keep mine about this post to myself.