Photobucket GRRRR!

[HotRodTractor]

With another new change coming to Photobucket on October 1st, I finally have decided I would try and figure out a way to download all of the pictures of my P15 from Don's account. This isn't an easy task with a login, and its even more difficult without. I'm essentially attempting to strip all the links out of their system and then do some magic and have an auto down-loader actually download the linked images. Unfortunately there are several pages that Photobucket won't even load for me to even extract the links. It seems pretty hit or miss, as if I keep refreshing the page eventually it might load. 

 

Its all very frustrating - and I just felt like venting. 

 

Also - if there is something specific someone wants/needs out of Don's account - let me know and I will see if I can snatch it. Or even if there is something in general elsewhere out of Photobucket I can probably do that too if there is time before it disappears. 

[Plymouthy Adams]

good luck....PB got to the point that it was so unfriendly to the the user I burnt all my photos off the page long ago....good luck with the downloads...Don had ton's of pictures supporting the build that is now your vehicle...hope you can save them all for prosperity.

[HotRodTractor]

I ditched PB long ago as well.... it sucks because it was the go to for so long. They broke so many threads on forums across the internet.... so much information was lost. I've been meaning to go after getting these photos since I bought the car, but there always seemed to be some roadblock. I'm afraid it might be a now or never thing with the October 1st changes.... so I gotta do, what I gotta do. 

 

I've managed to extract a little over 1000 links so far - and I think that covers almost everything that actually pertains directly to the car. Hopefully, after I massage the links to get around the paywall, they download smoothly. 

[Los_Control]

Yeah been years since I have used photobucket. I am no help for specific photobucket issues.

What happens if you right click on the image and copy it to your hard drive?

[HotRodTractor]

1 minute ago, Los_Control said:

Yeah been years since I have used photobucket. I am no help for specific photobucket issues.

What happens if you right click on the image and copy it to your hard drive?

 

You can do that and get the full size image if you aren't in the thumbnail views - so you need to get each picture that you want to actually load up, then do that. In my case for Don's photos, over 1000 times, just for the pictures that I want. 

 

RIght now - if you can get an album to load - you can select one image, then hit the select all button, which can give you links to the images (The direct links, which is what we really want, are blocked behind the pay features of PB). You can then take the links, copy and paste them into a text editor, and do some "find and replace" tricks and actually end up with the direct links. Once you have the direct links - you can use a program like Jdownloader to just download them all (or that is the theory). 

[Dan Hiebert]

Photobucket is like iCloud - your stuff on someone else's computer.  I'm not keen on that.

[Los_Control]

I admit I cringed a little when you mentioned already 1k photos ... daunting task to even consider manually.

Personally I would be skimming through them and cherry picking the ones I thought were significant.

 

Is it even a possibility to pay the yearly fee and gain access/log into the account just to get the photos? I dunno just a thought.

[HotRodTractor]

18 minutes ago, Dan Hiebert said:

Photobucket is like iCloud - your stuff on someone else's computer.  I'm not keen on that.

 

Except that is really the only way to share files/photos with others - unless you are setting up a server somewhere to host all of the images yourself. I do however understand the issue with privacy if you have all of your stuff on the cloud, potentially anyone has access to it. 

 

17 minutes ago, Los_Control said:

I admit I cringed a little when you mentioned already 1k photos ... daunting task to even consider manually.

Personally I would be skimming through them and cherry picking the ones I thought were significant.

 

Is it even a possibility to pay the yearly fee and gain access/log into the account just to get the photos? I dunno just a thought.

 

I think it would be impossible to pay and gain access to it. It was never my account. If I could pay and gain access to it, that alone raises so many red flags for me that I would never want to actually use that service.... imagine you used them and were fine with the free account.... I came along and paid them for full access to all of your stuff..... the implications of something like that scares me. Did I just pay them, for the rights to your stuff? 

Plus I loathe the idea of paying them anything - that rewards them for changing business models and wrecking the free image hosting service that they were based upon. 

[P15-D24]

If you can get the photos we can host them here for everyone. I need to figure out how to do an extra large gallery for all the images. Only issue is the photo links from the threads will broken but we can deal with that later. 

[HotRodTractor]

Let me see if I can get them downloaded (and then there will probably have to be a sorting exercise too...). I love the idea of trying to keep these as public as possible, as there is so much information contained in there about many subjects. I do want that to be the ultimate goal - so I am glad to see this offer.

[Los_Control]

16 minutes ago, HotRodTractor said:

If I could pay and gain access to it, that alone raises so many red flags for me that I would never want to actually use that service

I understand that 100%

While I have enjoyed Dons post here, I never knew him ... I was thinking if he had a surviving spouse or family member. You also need the password.

I am sure pb would take your money, but the account would still be in Dons name and you would not have access to it, unless there was a family member to help.

Thus my question that was not clear ... is there a possibility someone to help. I know you have purchased a car from Don ... maybe Don gave you access to the account for the photos.

 

I also loathe the idea of paying them ... what is it ... $15 ... $20   vrs individual click and download? May be money well spent.

If there is a family member you can talk to, explain what you want to do, they may offer to pay just so they can get a copy of photo's also?

[T120]

HotRodTractor,  Along with others, I am glad to hear you're making the effort to preserve Don's photo record of the build on your P15. Don amazed me at times with some of the detailed photos he would post when questions arose on this forum, ("been there,done that"), ?...along with his helpful advice.

[HotRodTractor]

2 minutes ago, Los_Control said:

I understand that 100%

While I have enjoyed Dons post here, I never knew him ... I was thinking if he had a surviving spouse or family member. You also need the password.

I am sure pb would take your money, but the account would still be in Dons name and you would not have access to it, unless there was a family member to help.

Thus my question that was not clear ... is there a possibility someone to help. I know you have purchased a car from Don ... maybe Don gave you access to the account for the photos.

 

I also loathe the idea of paying them ... what is it ... $15 ... $20   vrs individual click and download? May be money well spent.

If there is a family member you can talk to, explain what you want to do, they may offer to pay just so they can get a copy of photo's also?

 

Its my understanding that Don himself lost access to this PB account when a computer died and he didn't have the login information. I'm not going to to trouble Lisa with it - I think I have almost all of the links now that pertain to this car and P15/D24/Pilothouse vehicles in general ( I still can't get a couple of sub folders to load, for whatever reason). 

[Los_Control]

13 minutes ago, HotRodTractor said:

Its my understanding that Don himself lost access to this PB account when a computer died and he didn't have the login information. I'm not going to to trouble Lisa with it

I certainly respect your opinion for that. If Don could not do it, then no reason to bother Lisa.

 

My wife would have no idea about a photobucket account, But if you told her you needed a password ... she knows we have 4 different passwords for everything and she knows them all.

So it would be possible to figure it out if I were gone., But if Don could not ... I agree.

 

Again just tossing ideas out there and I see my ideas wont work.

 

 

 

[P15-D24]

If Lisa can get you access to his PB email registration account you might be able to do a password reset.  

[HotRodTractor]

48 minutes ago, P15-D24 said:

If Lisa can get you access to his PB email registration account you might be able to do a password reset.  

 

I'm totally going off of memory here - but I think that was the reason that Don lost access - he created it with an old email account and never updated it when he switched email accounts. I remember him telling me when I bought the car, but I can't say that I remember the exact details.

 

In any case - I've extracted and converted almost 1400 links at this point and I think I have a bulk of what everyone cares about - including his pictures of tools. Its not 100% everything - but its 95% of the technical car stuff. I'll fire up the downloader tonight and see what happens. 

[1950 Special Deluxe]

Thanks for your efforts.

Don was always good about helping others.

He would approve.

[HotRodTractor]

1269 unique photographs and videos have all been downloaded. It turns out I did have some duplicate links in my collection. They are all stored in one folder - so I now need to figure out a way to sort them (some will have to be hand sorted as several have the same name). I think I can do a quick script and use the folder structure from the download links to make a new folder structure and automate that part of it, but the hard part is really over - the files are no longer only on PB. The download itself probably only took 10 minutes. It probably took me an hour or so throughout the course of the day fiddling with actually getting the links. 

[48Dodger]

I wondered about all those images. I was actually going to ask Lisa about them, as I'm sure there were more than just cars.

I have her on Facebook and get comments from her all the time, though I have never "talked" with her on any other platform (ie the phone, etc)

The fact DC loved pictures of friends family and cars (like most of us) I'm sure the issue has come up with his family.

He heavily photo documented findings of his family's involvement in the Civil War, for example.

Documentation of his car was just an extension of that.

 

I think your effort HRT, is outstanding....as a guy whose had the benefit of Don's photo's for 14 plus years..... I Thank You.

 

48D

 

[HotRodTractor]

And just like that.... All the links to Don's Photobucket account are junk. PB didn't waste any time with their 10/1 changes......

 

 

I'm about half way sorting through the pictures that I got downloaded. I'm doing it by hand, so its taking a little longer. I decided to organize them slightly differently than how Don had them. A little more broken down and subject oriented.