Your guide to browsing, analysing, and downloading media from supported cameras and devices.

What is camera storage?

This module lets you browse the media stored on connected cameras and mobile devices, verify that every trigger event was captured across the rig, and download the files as organized datasets ready for 3D processing.

Best practices

• Start every session with empty cards. Format or delete all photos and videos from camera storage before shooting. Leftover files from a previous session confuse the shot-matching algorithm and produce false "incomplete" warnings.
• Resync clocks before a long session. Open the Network Nodes module and run "Resync clocks" if your Pis or cameras have been online for several hours. Clock drift accumulates over time and large drift can prevent the analyser from correctly matching shots across cameras.
• Avoid accidental solo triggers. A single camera triggered alone creates an extra shot entry. If you do fire a test shot on one camera, that is fine: the analyser marks it as a 1-camera solo and excludes it from dataset completeness counts.
• Wait 3 to 5 seconds between shots. The matching algorithm uses a 2-second clustering window. Firing faster than every 3 seconds may merge adjacent shots.
• Use "Analyse All" before downloading. This scans every camera, calibrates clock offsets, and shows you which datasets are complete or missing files before you commit to a download.

How dataset matching works

When you click "Analyse All", the system scans every camera card and runs a calibrated timestamp clustering algorithm to determine which files across cameras belong to the same synchronized trigger event:

1. Group files into captures. Files with the same base name (for example IMG_0001.JPG + IMG_0001.CR2) are treated as one capture event, or one rendition set.
2. Calibrate clock offsets. Camera clocks drift apart over time. The analyser uses offset voting to determine the exact time difference between each camera and camera 1. This works even if clocks are minutes or hours apart.
3. Cluster by adjusted time. After normalizing timestamps, captures within a 2-second window that come from different cameras are grouped into a single shot. Each camera can appear at most once per shot.
4. Classify completeness. A dataset is complete when all cameras with cards have files for it, incomplete when some cameras are missing, and extra when only one camera fired.

Dot colors

Each dataset row shows a dot per camera: Present (file found), Missing (no file for that camera).

Download modes

• New timestamp. Downloads selected shots into your project's input folder using the current time as the dataset folder name, organized by camera. Ready for immediate 3D processing.
• Photo dump. Downloads raw files into a flat "Photo Dump" folder without organizing them into datasets. Useful for quick retrieval or manual sorting.

Typical workflow

1. Format camera cards (start fresh).
2. Resync clocks from Network Nodes if needed.
3. Shoot your session.
4. Click "Analyse All" to see all matched shots and completeness status.
5. Review any incomplete datasets (check for missing cameras).
6. Select the datasets you want, choose "New timestamp" mode, and download.