Time to move to DeepMeta 4

Introduction

It's now been exactly 2 years since we announced DeepMeta 4.

Over this time, version 4 evolved from a shy little web application providing no more than some statistics into a capable replacement of DeepMeta 3, featuring more advanced statistics, collections, briefs, inspections, batches, uploads, and daily stats. The Daily Stats were one of the last features added, but by far the most popular feature, luring contributors to massively hit the DeepMeta 4 servers at midnight in Seattle, when the previous day's sales are revealed. And yes, we are loyal daily visitors too!

Now that DeepMeta 4 has more or less reached feature parity with version 3, we invite all remaining users of DeepMeta 3 to take the plunge and try out DeepMeta 4.

A good start is the detailed info provided in the blog post DeepMeta Uploads, but it's definitely a good idea to go through other blog posts as well. They will get you up to speed with the many possibilities of DeepMeta 4 in no time.

So what happened to DeepMeta 3?

We created DeepMeta 3 in 2017, when the iStockphoto upload facility was moved to Getty's own ESP upload platform. This required an extensive rewrite of DeepMeta, and we still remember the race-against-the-clock feeling to get DeepMeta 3 ready in time for the Getty ESP transition date.

From that point on, DeepMeta 3 enjoyed weekly updates and saw its feature set grow over time. For many users, it was the ultimate fine-tuned "upload machine". Fast native response, keyboard shortcuts and user muscle memory in general means that even today it is their upload tool of choice.

As we were preparing the next features to add to DeepMeta 3, Microsoft dropped a bombshell on August 30, 2023:

The mentioned 'Visual Studio for Mac' was the tool that allowed us to release both a Windows and Mac app from a shared codebase. This meant we now had to start looking for an alternative platform for DeepMeta!

One option would be to start 2 new projects: one native Windows app and another native Mac app. Each of these uses a completely new programming language and environment, different from the one we used for DeepMeta 3. There was no way we could tackle such a huge task, not in the least as it would require every single feature to be programmed twice! Only the largest of companies can afford such an endeavor, managing 2 specialized teams; one for the Windows app and one for Mac app.

The most viable way forward was to create a web application.

PROS:

• Write every feature just once
• No updates to install by users: just update the server and all users instantly have the latest version
• Uses a programming language (javascript) that is extremely well supported and unlikely to be "retired"
• Works on mobile and allows collaboration! (the #1 user request)

CONS:

• DeepMeta is an advanced tool with lots of things happening in the background; was such functionality even possible in a web app?
• Would it not be too slow?
• Everything needs to be re-written from scratch: still a gigantic task!

We decided to go for it and launched a first very limited version of DeepMeta 4 as web app on Jan 23, 2024

Will DeepMeta 3 stop working?

1. Short answer: yes.
2. Long answer: yes, but we have no idea when.

• As long as there are no major changes to the Getty server API and to the Windows and Mac operating systems, DeepMeta should keep working.
• Every year, in July, we need to create new versions for Mac and Windows, because the certificates expire. As long as the "retired" microsoft tools keep working for us, we will do this. The tools could stop working any moment though, so July is the next important milestone.
• If any of the 2 above points fail: DeepMeta 3 could stop working from one day to another, with no possible fix.

Are you still using DeepMeta 3?

We totally get it! As mentioned before, some of you have built a very efficient workflow with DeepMeta 3 and it works faster than DeepMeta 4. We won't stop you. In fact, even as we declare DeepMeta 3 "End of life", we will happily keep providing support. Mail us and we're on it! No problem.

The reason we decided to call out the precarious situation of DeepMeta 3, is because some of you may not even be aware of it. Not all of you keep constantly up-to-date with all news and blog posts we publish. Things can get busy enough doing shoots and the actual uploads. We get it.

As DeepMeta 3 user, what should you do?

Totally up to you of course, but here's our recommendation:

1. Try out DeepMeta 4, you might like it and it might grow on you too. Some parts of the upload process may not yet be as fast as DeepMeta 3, but we have some exciting new features planned that will make the process many times smoother.
2. Feel free to keep using DeepMeta 3, as long as it works. It's held up for 2 years since Microsoft's retirement decision, so... fingers crossed
3. But! Please, please do NOT hoard many batches in DeepMeta 3 without uploading them! The risk is just too big that you may not be able to upload them if DeepMeta 3 suddenly stops working!
4. If you must postpone batches from being published, work as follows:

• In DeepMeta 3 Settings: turn off the option 'Submit after upload'
• Upload your batches straight away and check ESP to see if the upload succeeded. This way, your uploads are already safe on the Getty ESP server.
• One caveat: Getty closes batches with unsubmitted uploads after 3 months of 'inactivity', so watch out for that!
• Every 3 months: revisit your pending batches at the ESP server, and for each one of them, make just a small change to one of its uploads. That's enough to keep the batch alive. Note that DeepMeta 4 has a feature called "auto-submit" that does this automatically (released end January 2026)
• To monitor this: open DeepMeta 4, go to the "Batches & uploads" section and click the round arrow button at the top right to sync with ESP. The Batch list will clearly mark batches that risk getting closed.