Let the server download images and put them in place

"In my opinion obviously..."
you need to consider that there are customers on dedicated servers, so they should have the option to exploit their servers, otherwise they are really underused with no reason.

then, also...
FTP connection by client could be unreliable (often it is)... if you have many images to upload you can't rely on ADSL provider...while the server connection is UP 99,99%

I have many issues with images at the moment.
thanks

isn't that compatible with PS 1.4? why if store manager starts from 1.3 ?

well, I tried your bridge connector on PS 1.6.1.4 latest version

result is:
eg. about 4300-4500 products
about 12000 downloaded images (by client)... about 2 hours at 2MB/s

then it did more than 20.000 tasks on the queue
at an average of 1 per second... my upload speed is 1 Mbps

are you able to understand what this means for a multistore installation where the products are 60-100.000 for any store?
It means that the first import of a product list is a total nightmare.
Are you able to understand that your method is wrong (unfortunately) for a professional management and you need to take measures as soon as possible? to let the server do the complete image management (from download to anything else...) at least as an option.
About 8 hours (2+6) for just 4.000 products... what this means for 60-100.000 products and 6-7 stores (100.000 * 7) ?
Want to do a calculation yourself about the needed time? and not only... this maybe with someone who always keeps attention to your software, to repeat actions since the 30.000 batch on the Icecat window...strongly hoping that it doesn't become unstable at the end (already happened sometimes)...
and then, how to change the image folder? I don't want all those images on C:\... how to change local drive for the images when using the bridge connector?
thanks

UPDATE:
"then it did more than 20.000 tasks on the queue
at an average of 1 per second..."

no, that's even wrong...
process started at night about 00.30
now is 09:30 (exactly 9 hours) and it did about +7000 tasks on a total of 20000

so the average is 7000/9h = 777/h = 0.2/s !!!

Is it now clear that is impossible to manage and you need to add the option for image management by SERVER speed?
So, you need to do the exact opposite:
1) FIRST you let the server do its job for images... with the help of log files, maybe adding some options into the bridgeconnector
2) THEN you just download data from server to understand if images are in place, in order to sync client/server, retry if something's wrong JUST with the images not correctly set
ok...
thanks

option for servers: shared and dedicated. You first try with PHP memory 512/1024MB execution time at least for one hour for dedicated (you can request this as requirement), do your test... so you can understand how large may be every batch for dedicated... according to that you proceed for shared (maybe starting from 32/64MB memory) and lower time consuming for any batch...

at the end of any batch you help yourself with the log files, even if errors you can easily fix them...
you can register any download result and any copy process to the correct folder for images/thumbnails...
and/or let the users choose if they want to retry where it failed...

it's HTTP for sure with bridge connector for sure... indeed I get many "Connection reset by peer" and it's EXPECTED, about timeout ;-) you can't set an unlimited timeout, 'cause it should be crazy

and yes, you are right when you talk about Product Gallery (or better, High Res images)

eg. a specific product on Icecat has:
6 images (high res only)
7.74 MB | 9.53 MB | 17.8 MB | 9.38 MB | 9.53 MB | 9.38 MB

Total 63.36 MB just for ONE product! ;-)

So, put a 1 Mbit/s upload speed.
What happens?
Put even you are able to upload 7 MB/minute .... it takes at least 10 minutes for ONE product
then the server must do the other work... and this is the BEST scenario, in practice this often doesn't happen
and also consider the timeout issues...

Instead, the dedicated servers currently usually download at a range of 25MB/s - 125MB/s, then may do the rest...
it means that the image management finally becomes a "child's play" ;-)
not only, by client you could download data in realtime and see if product images are in place without consuming client upload bandwidth... (which in many cases, eg. ADSL like mine at the moment, could be really limited)

then, as already said, you can even let the users choose if they want to download one image kind...

eg. download by server only the medium pics (if available) and let the server do the thumbnail regeneration

IF the medium pic is not there on Icecat for a specific image, download the High version...
If medium and high for one image of the product are not available, break the foreach loop and go to the other images of the product... and so on...

you could do this:

eg.
- select products (or even all products, or 30.000 products) from Store Manager client...
- choose to find matching products on Icecat
- when it's all about text (product name, description, features...) you can even keep the current method Icecat -> Client -> Server
- BUT if the user chooses to update images, instead, and the options on the Icecat plugin to work the images by Server are selected, you download only the images URLs as text (http://..........), then send a tasks file to the server and let the server do all the needed...

best regards

;-) sure, I will be glad to test if you like ...even 'cause the default Presta csv import from backoffice currently seems to have issues when the images are from external source (eg. Icecat as in this case)... I'm developing my personal script to first download images, verify... and then assign the local images paths to a .csv
anyway, at the moment I don't know if local paths have issues too...
and if Store Manager will be able to easily do it... obviously better ;-)
and also, even better if Store Manager was able to do an automated import for Icecat

eg.
you auto import new products, after that daily routine has ended... you are able to auto import images from Icecat if found for the new added products

thanks

Update:
after my personal testing, my server was able to search by EAN about 7000 products, download any mid or high image (if mid, download mid, if not mid download high), writes the images local URLs in a .csv in about 37 minutes ;-)

then the default CSV import works fine when the images are on local path
with the format:
http://mydomain.com/path/to/file.jpg

then it takes about 3 minutes for any 1000 products import batch...

the 37 minutes period can even be improved 'cause into my script at the moment it also gets other infos I don't need...
I will retry setting to get images URLs only.

Test update:
52050 product rows by SKU and BRAND

just 1 hour and 44 minutes ;-) for searching and downloading images...
Max memory used by php process 384MB

Memory... (VIRT)

that's the final default Prestashop import...

before that, by PHP I had to search and download images, create a proper .csv
and It's really fast

p.s.: if users create the brands names accordingly to Icecat (and usually suppliers provide better SKUs compared to EANs, that is SKUs are 99% correct while EANs often are missing or bad)
searching on Icecat by SKU + correct BRAND name is really good and efficient

eg. if your brand is "ASUSTEK" better if you call it "ASUS"
if "BRAND MANAGEMENT GROUP" you need to rename it as "HP"
if "BUFFALO TECHNOLOGY" , "BUFFALO" is better...
otherwise results could be not accurate

and so on...

hey, forgot ;-) another option you could offer...

when user chooses to change product name if found on Icecat...

you could do a simple function to append the brand name to the product (if the user wants...)

that is, often when you update product name from Icecat it only writes a model name without brand... and it's not really good about searches on Google

so, let the users choose if they want to append the brand name before the product name...(if not already there in the name provided by Icecat) ;-)