Special view modes for folders

Working with subfolders (nested folders)

FastRawViewer allows one to view folders not only in the current folder, but also in its nested folders (subfolders). In this mode, some constraints on the functions available to the program are in effect (see the section “Constraints while working with subfolders” below).

Switching to the mode where you can view a folder with its subfolders can be done by:

  • Menu – File – Open Folder – Open Folder with subfolders (Alt-O/Option-O)
  • The folder’s context menu in the panel Folders – Open in subfolder mode

After this, a dialog for scanning the subfolders will appear:

In this dialog:

  • Folder: the current folder, which you are opening
  • Arrow up: go one level up
  •  […] button: select a folder through the standard folder selection dialog
  • Recurse depth: how many levels down should the file search be implemented
  • Limits: the ultimate depth of scanning, in subfolders and files (which limit to hit first).

    The limits are set through Preferences – Special browse mode – Subfolder browse – limit fetched file/subfolder count group.

After pressing OK, FastRawViewer will perform a scan of the subfolders and files, and the resulting list of files will be displayed in the program window.

When first switching to this mode, FastRawViewer will display a warning with a detailed description of the constraints that are active when in subfolder browsing mode.

To turn off displaying this warning, check the checkbox Do not show this message again, before closing the window.

The order of sorting the files by name is set through the Preferences – Special browse modes –Subfolder browse – Filename sort in subfolder browse mode setting, which allows one to turn on/off accounting for folder name (as in “full path”) with such sorting.

Subfolder browse mode is indicated in the upper bar of the program in Grid View mode; Subfolder browse will be written before the name of the most upper-level folder:

If while scanning the nested folder tree duplicates are discovered, then under the default settings the following warning will be displayed:

This warning can be turned off through Preferences – Special browse modes – Subfolder browse – Warn if duplicated subfolders were found in subfolder tree.

Duplicated subfolders are detected in two cases:

  1. Cyclic symbolic links (symlinks) in the file system.
  2. Subfolders with identical names, differing only in letter case: FastRawViewer (purposefully) is insensitive to character case in file names; accordingly, it cannot display two subfolders with identical names in different cases.

Constraints in Subfolder browse mode

In Subfolder browse mode, the following constraints on FastRawViewer’s functionality are active:

  • The list of displayed files is fixed at the moment of “opening” the subfolder tree.
    • If, because of other programs working, new folders or files are added/deleted to the tree, FastRawViewer ignores these changes: the new files/folders will not be visible, and if a file/folder is deleted then when accessing them a barrage of messages warning of impossibility of access will appear.
  • Within FastRawViewer, actions that modified the current list of files are banned, specifically:
    • Moving files
    • (including) moving files to the _Selected/_Rejected subfolders
    • Copying files to the displayed subfolder tree
    • Clearing the _Rejected subfolder
    • Editing the folder tree.
  • The files are displayed in a flat list; the current file’s folder is shown only in the Folders panel.

These constraints are related to the fact that:

  1. Monitoring a large number of (sub)folders for changes (adding/deleting files) is a very resource-intensive operation, especially on slow carriers and (even moreso) over a network.
  2. Rebuilding the current (large) list of files can also lead to a substantial slowdown of the application.
  3. Moving files in the tree being examined looks very strange in the interface: either nothing changes (if files are sorted by name or by metadata, such as date of shooting or XMP rating), or the files simply change order (if the sorting is done by the full path of the file).

Exiting Subfolder browse mode

Exiting subfolder browse mode into regular (default) mode can be done two ways, explicit and implicit:

  • Explicit exit (through the explicitly-indicated desire of the user) can be done through the basic opening of a file or folder
    • Menu – File – Open
  • Menu – File – Open Folder – Open Folder
  • Implicit exit: all additional methods of opening a file or folder:
    • Opening a file through:
  • Menu – File – Recent files – selecting a file
  • Drag and Drop a file into the program window
  • Opening a file through the command line, the context menu in the file manager, etc. (Windows: only if the Single Instance mode is on, Mac: always)
    • Opening a folder through:
  • Menu – File – Open Folder – recent folders – selecting a folder
  • Drag and Drop a folder into the program window
  • Selecting a folder in the Folders panel or Favorite folders

When implicitly exiting subfolder browse mode, FastRawViewer will display a warning (see below)

This can be turned off through Preferences – Special browse modes – Subfolder browse – File (folder) open attempt:

  • Ignore – stay in subfolder browse mode (with this setting, one can only explicitly switch to regular browse mode, see above).
  • Ask – request confirmation.
  • Open w/o confirmation – switches to regular browse mode without asking.

Viewing a set list of files (virtual folder mode)

FastRawViewer supports working with a list of files (in text format, one full filename per line), the work mode is fully analogous to working with nested folders (the same constraints for accessible actions: only copying, and only to those folders where none of the files being viewed are located).

To open a list of files, use:

  • Menu – File – Open Folder – Open filelist (Alt-Shift-O)
  • Drag and Drop a list of files into the program window; the list file should have the extension indicated in Preferences – Special browse modes – Subfolder browse – Treat files with these extensions as file lists.

In this mode, the same features and constraints as for subfolder browse mode are active.

To create a file list, one can save a list of selected files through Menu – Select – Save selection to file.

Hotfolder mode: monitoring the current folder

The Hotfolder mode is intended for use together with programs for the remote control of cameras (Tethered shooting), when:

  • Another program is controlling the shooting and downloads the just-taken shots from the camera onto the computer’s local drive into a folder
  • FastRawViewer
    • Monitors this folder and finds new files in it
    • Upon finding them, moves to the last-found new file.

To switch to this mode, one must:

  • Point FastRawViewer to the folder where the files will appear
  • Select the mode via Menu – File – Open Folder – Hotfolder mode (Alt-Shift-H)

When first switching to this mode, the following warning with a description of the mode will be displayed:

This can be turned off via the checkbox Do not show this message again.

After turning on this mode, FastRawViewer will regularly re-scan the current folder and when new files appear in it, will open them.

In RAW+JPEG mode, one can set whether there ought to be expected a pair of files, or any file (default), or a RAW file. The other settings of this mode are described in the section «Program settings – Special browsing modes»

Exiting Hotfolder mode can be done through one of the following methods:

  • Menu – File – Open Folder – Stop hotfolder mode
  • Explicitly opening a folder or file (Menu – File – Open, Menu – File – Open Folder – Open Folder)
  • Implicitly opening a file or folder (reaction to an implicit opening can be set in the corresponding settings section).


Slideshow Mode

FastRawViewer has a basic “slideshow” mode, which is to say automatically moving from one file to the next.

To turn on this mode, use Menu – File – Open Folder – Slideshow (Alt-Shift-S), when doing this the following dialog, for setting the slideshow settings, will be shown:

This dialog sets:

  • The direction of file flipping (forwards, backwards)
  • Time delay while changing files
  • The maximal number of displayed files.

Essentially, slideshow mode is just pressing Next File (or Prev File) with set intervals.

Slideshow mode ends:

  • Explicitly, through Menu – File – Open Folder – Slideshow

    (or by pressing the hotkey Alt-Shift-S a second time)
  • Implicitly, if the current file does not correspond to the expected file

    (that is to say, some sort of navigation through folders and/or files was used).

Slideshow mode is compatible with subfolder browsing.