13 replies to this topic

[strathglass]

Is there a way to generate a report to show where a particular media file is used (referenced...in a source, in a fact for an individual, etc.)?

I want to delete a media file and use a different (existing) file anywhere the deleted file was referenced.

 

[Jerry Bryan]

You can see the information you want in Lists>Media Gallery. Highlight the file you are interested in and all the places it is used will be listed in a window pane in the upper right quadrant of the screen. You can drag and drop the boundaries of the window panes to resize them to see your information more easily. The format of what you are seeing is a little cryptic (well honestly, it's a lot cryptic), but all the information is there.

 

I usually find List mode rather than the default of Thumbnail mode to be the most useful to look at my list of media files, but use whatever works best for you. There is a button to switch back and forth between the two modes in the lower left hand corner of the screen.

 

If you have lots and lots of media files, it's usually easiest to find the one you want by using the Search box on the Media Gallery screen rather than scrolling through the list.

 

It's usually enormously easier NOT to delete the old file and add a new file back in. That's because you will have to write down and add not just the file back in but also links to every place it was used. This process is called tagging. To avoid that process, highlight the file you wish to "delete", click Properties, click Change Media file, navigate to the file which will be the replacement file, select it, click OK several times, and you will be done. All the places where the old file was tagged will now be tagged by the new file, and you didn't have to enter any of the tags over again.

 

Jerry

[Jerry Bryan]

Also, you asked for a report but there really isn't one. The Media Gallery screen has a Print button, but that's only to print the image. What you are looking for is a Print button on the list of media tags, but the list of media tags has no Print button. That's all the more reason NOT to delete the old file and add the new file, but rather to Change from the old file to the new file.

 

Jerry

[Vyger]

Is there a way to generate a report to show where a particular media file is used (referenced...in a source, in a fact for an individual, etc.)?

I want to delete a media file and use a different (existing) file anywhere the deleted file was referenced.

 

 

You could export the Multimedia List report to Excel or other program and work it there.

[Jerry Bryan]

 

You could export the Multimedia List report to Excel or other program and work it there.

 

I'm probably missing something obvious, but I don't see how to do that. Is there a way?

 

Jerry

[kbens0n]

 

I'm probably missing something obvious, but I don't see how to do that. Is there a way?

 

Saving as a text file and opening in Excel or other spreadsheet program

[Vyger]

 

I'm probably missing something obvious, but I don't see how to do that. Is there a way?

 

Jerry

 

Jerry, I was just referring to Reports>Lists>Multimedia List

 

I enter my media in a different fashion processing all new items via a staging folder then using Fix Broken Links after they have been filed to the correct folder after each session. Back in the day before Fix Broken Links I worked an Excel worksheet to help discover and reconcile unlinked files in my collection. I have wished for an inbuilt compare media utility many years ago and sent a short video to fully explain, which I must have since deleted, anyway it's been uploaded again this morning and is available on the link below. Bruce has not disclosed any specifics regarding Media Management at this point so we will have to wait and see what comes forth.

 

https://youtu.be/S9NzUqHc6cE

[Vyger]

Is there a way to generate a report to show where a particular media file is used (referenced...in a source, in a fact for an individual, etc.)?

I want to delete a media file and use a different (existing) file anywhere the deleted file was referenced.

 

 

Strathglass, forgetting a report which has been explained in other replies I would just change your file in Media Gallery.

 

1. Select the file in Media Gallery and all the Tags will be detailed to the right.

2. Highlight the file and click Properties.

3. Click Change Media File

4. Select your replacement file

 

Jerry has already explained this in his earlier reply

[Jerry Bryan]

 

Jerry, I was just referring to Reports>Lists>Multimedia List

 

Aha! I was trying to get the needed report from Lists>Media gallery. You can't get the needed report from there, which is what I was trying to say. I know how to save an RM report to Excel, but I couldn't get the report in the first place the way I was trying to get it. The original request was about "a way to generate a report to show where a particular media file is used " and the information is available for a particular media file via Lists>Media gallery. I couldn't make a report from there.

 

Well, you win some and you lose some, I guess. Except that the Reports>Lists>Multimedia list is for all media files, not for a particular media file. You can filter by where the file is tagged (e.g., citations vs. facts vs. people etc.) and you can filter by a list of people, but you can't filter Reports>Lists>Multimedia list for a particular media file. My first efforts to play with this idea therefore resulted in a 980 page report. That's a lot of data to dump into Excel. Honestly, this is the kind of reporting that I usually just do from SQLite because it's so much easier than trying to do it through RM and saving a report to Excel.

 

RM7's source list reporting has some of the same problems where it's really hard to get at what you really want to get at from the RM7 user interface. The RM8 demos suggest major improvements in the area of filtering and reporting on lists like the source list and the media lists etc. We will have to see how good such reporting really is after RM8 is released.

 

Jerry

[strathglass]

 

Strathglass, forgetting a report which has been explained in other replies I would just change your file in Media Gallery.

 

1. Select the file in Media Gallery and all the Tags will be detailed to the right.

2. Highlight the file and click Properties.

3. Click Change Media File

4. Select your replacement file

 

Jerry has already explained this in his earlier reply

 

Thanks all! I wasn't sure the procedure above would actualy work, but it does.

 

HOWEVER it raises a new conundrum (the same one reported in my second post in thread "Downloaded Ancestry Images (via Treeshare)"):

A source has two different media files associated to it (the media do not associate to anything else), but these media files were just PDF and TXT versions of the same information.

So I edit the TXT via Change Media File so it now points to the PDF (and I delete the TXT file).

The problem that results:

In the media list I have two consecutive entries:

* exact same PDF file listed for both

* exact same source is tagged in both

* the properties can be different: I can have different captions on each (I thought RM7 had abandoned the unique captions per media citation!)

I have run every one of the database tools: the duplication persists.

 

This does not seem right/correct: I want the media list to just list each media file, not multiple entries for the same file.

What gives?

[Jerry Bryan]

Before running the Change Media file procedure, remove the TXT file as a media file from RM.Then there will not be duplicate instances of the PDF file.

 

You can do this before or after you actually delete the TXT file from Windows. There are several different RM screens that include the Remove Media button.

Except now I'm confused. If all you need to do is to do the Remove Media procedure and the the PDF file is already there, then why do you need to do a Change Media?

 

It sounds to me like you have two files in Windows - a TXT file and an equivalent PDF file. It sounds to me like you have only one of the files linked into RM - namely, the TXT file. If this is the correct scenario (and I'm guessing wildly), all you need to do is perform the Change Media procedure in RM to point it to the PDF file instead of the TXT file. There shouldn't be any duplication. At that point, you can delete the TXT file from Windows or not because the TXT file no longer has any impact on RM. So I guess I don't understand where the duplication is coming from. Or maybe I just don't understand your overall procedure.

 

Jerry

 

[Rooty]

You can see the information you want in Lists>Media Gallery. Highlight the file you are interested in and all the places it is used will be listed in a window pane in the upper right quadrant of the screen. You can drag and drop the boundaries of the window panes to resize them to see your information more easily. The format of what you are seeing is a little cryptic (well honestly, it's a lot cryptic), but all the information is there.

 

I usually find List mode rather than the default of Thumbnail mode to be the most useful to look at my list of media files, but use whatever works best for you. There is a button to switch back and forth between the two modes in the lower left hand corner of the screen.

 

If you have lots and lots of media files, it's usually easiest to find the one you want by using the Search box on the Media Gallery screen rather than scrolling through the list.

 

It's usually enormously easier NOT to delete the old file and add a new file back in. That's because you will have to write down and add not just the file back in but also links to every place it was used. This process is called tagging. To avoid that process, highlight the file you wish to "delete", click Properties, click Change Media file, navigate to the file which will be the replacement file, select it, click OK several times, and you will be done. All the places where the old file was tagged will now be tagged by the new file, and you didn't have to enter any of the tags over again.

 

Jerry

I tried this and it worked (sometimes) but RM7 was too stupid to show an item was correctly linked unless you closed out and repeated a search for broken links. This is an onerous process on a mac dealing with windows file and folder name limitations.

[strathglass]

I should explain a bit: I PROBABLY had the two equivalent files (PDF and TXT) linked to the same artifacts (probably just a source in this case), but I was not 100% sure of that...that is the main issue, and why I thought it easiest to relink the TXT media file to the PDF: I had erroneously assumed since it was the same file as an existing media item it would result in one media file entry, but obviously not!

 

But what I've learned from your responses (especially Jerry-thanks!) is that I can see in the top right pane the tag list identifying where the media file is being included.

So I can fix this simply by deleting one of the two media list entries that are pointing to the the same file as long as I do these two things:

("a") for the to-be-deleted media list entry: if it has any unique tags in the tag list not found in the other (to-be-kept) media list entry, add the other (to-be-kept) media list entry to those tagged items, and

("b") double check the caption of the to-be-deleted media list entry and compare it to that of the to-be-kept media list entry: reconcile any differences if required via an update to the caption of the to-be-kept entry.

QED.

Thanks for the help!

[Jerry Bryan]

I'm glad you mentioned the caption issue. I have a bad habit of ignoring it when I'm trying to describe how RM's media tags work. But I don't use RM's media captions, so it's sort of out of sight and out of mind for me with respect to RM's media captions.

 

I used to make heavy use of RM's support of captions for media files. But I stopped doing so after a particular RM upgrade. I can't find in the history of RM when the change was made. Prior to the change, each time a media file was used it could have a different caption. After the change, the media file itself could only have one caption and the one caption applied everywhere the media file was used. I had lots of things like photos of brothers where one of the captions would be be something like John Doe (left) and his brother William and the other caption would be something like William Doe (right) and his brother John. Putting aside the wisdom of using captions in that manner (and it probably wasn't wise), it was quite annoying to lose hundreds of captions and that the loss was totally outside of my control. And there wasn't anything in the announcement of the RM upgrade that it was going to cost me hundreds of captions. So I resolved never to use RM's captions again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

 

Another approach to captions that's surely better at least philosophically is to store captions in the IPTC data that can be associated with image files. That way, the caption stays with the file. But RM doesn't support IPTC data, and my experience with image files and IPTC data is that such data is easy to become lost when  you are editing image files. Also, it's my experience (with which not everybody agrees) that depending on what graphics software you are using, IPTC data can be deeply buried and hard or impossible to find. It's simply not front and center the way I would prefer - sort of like the clickiness problem in the RM7 user interface. Also, I prefer the PNG format to JPG because PNG is lossless and JPG is lossy, but PNG does not support IPTC. And I prefer the PNG format to TIF/TIFF because TIF/TIFF is not supported by Web browsers.

 

Therefore, I add captions to photographs by editing them, adding white space, and captioning the photo in the white space. It's sort of like writing on the back of printed photographs, except it's like adding white space to printed photographs and writing on the front of the photograph in the added white space. Not everybody likes my approach, but it's what works the best for me. By the way, when I edit photographs in this manner, I always keep the original around completely unmodified.

 

Jerry