Baffled by Ten Dollar Technology!

December 19, 2008 1:56 PM

Anyone know how to change the order of photos displayed on a Kodak Easyshare digital picture frame?

I picked up Kodak EasyShare picture frame (S510) from a remainders bin because I figured my grandmother would like it, once I set it up with many photos in advance.

It's a very barebones model, no slick wifi or internet sharing, which I thought would be good in this case: there's no way in hell she'll manage with an SD memory card, but if I can set it up and show her the on/off, we should be good to go.

I've been through all the configuration menus. I can change transitions, timing, orientation, and all sorts of things. I've even read the manual, which is hard for me since I'm a guy. This is not addressed, though. I've Googled and failed, too.

I can't even figure out what order it is using, or I could manipulate the files to be in the "right" sequence. It's not random, since it's the same every time. It's not filename. It's not file date. I thought for a while it was file SIZE (weird I know, but the largest two are first) but nope, no pattern I can find after that.

Does anyone who have one of these know? I'll take good guesses, too. I'm stymied.

posted by rokusan to technology (7 comments total)

Not EXIF date, either, before anyone asks. :)
posted by rokusan at 1:57 PM on December 19, 2008

Probably is related to file name. Try renaming the photos with sequential numbers and see if that works. This is what I found with an HP frame I got (similar lack of documentation). I also found the frame had strange limitations on handling sub directories and long file names or file names with alphanumeric characters.
posted by cosmac at 2:05 PM on December 19, 2008

First thing I tried, cosmac. It's not file name alpha, AlPhA, 01xx or 1xx.

First four images to appear: img504.jpg, img336.jpg, 7.JPG, a12.jpg.
posted by rokusan at 2:14 PM on December 19, 2008

You can probably reverse engineer the pattern.

Just put two files on it, change different attributes on each until you find the one that makes the order switch.

It's also possible that the order is some sort of weird filesystem order that you actually don't have a lot of manual control over, but that seems like it'd be dumb.
posted by toomuchpete at 2:32 PM on December 19, 2008

The manual says the pictures appear in the order they appear on the card. vfat or some such I assume so it might not be file modified date, but file creation date?
posted by mce at 2:37 PM on December 19, 2008

I obviously have a different manual than that one. :/

It still does not quite make sense to me (nope, it's not creation date either), BUT.... if and only if I reformat the SD card and actually drag pictures onto it in the correct order... indeed they now show up in that order, regardless of their creation, mod, or any other date/criteria I can find. I can't get them to reorder without reformatting the card and dragging them on differently.

Crazy. It really must be using some very low level block type thing.

But a no-prize to mce for at least making me think about it differently! Thanks all.
posted by rokusan at 5:23 PM on December 19, 2008

I've seen that on nintendo ds flash cards and some mp3 players. I used a program called fatsort to sort my files.

It is not the creation date (which is stored as metadata with the file), but simply the order in which the files were created in the folder.

So, as an alternative to fatsort you can just move the files from one directory to another in the order that you want them to show up (you don't have to reformat).
posted by lordjoe at 8:07 PM on December 19, 2008