21 replies to this topic

[lawrence2000]

I just tried creating a CD with the program and it aborted. Later discovered I had too much data for the CD. It would be nice to know that before hand instead of trashing CD's. Also, is there a way to make it where it will handle more than 1 CD and put the information on another CD if neccessary? Thanks!

[Jim Belanger]

You had more than 700 meg of data? Wow.

If you start out on a 500 mile trip with only 300 miles of gas on board, you will run out!
Sorry, just trying to be funny!!

[Candy]

I just tried creating a CD with the program and it aborted. Later discovered I had too much data for the CD. It would be nice to know that before hand instead of trashing CD's. Also, is there a way to make it where it will handle more than 1 CD and put the information on another CD if neccessary? Thanks!

If you have that much data, wouldn't it be easier for storage/transfer to put it into a zip file first, and then put the zip file onto the CD? While zipping any media (photo, mpeg, etc) might not decease its size, the text information would definitely be smaller and perhaps fit easier on a CD.

I'm sure there are some zip programs available at a 'shareware' fee or even free evaluation programs (I have had an evaluation program of WinZip for nearly 10 years now without being asked for any purchase, registration numbers, etc) that would work.

[Alfred]

I assume that you were trying to create a "Sharable CD" and you had quite a few multimedia items.
If you have multimedia picture files stored as BMP you could run out of CD space rather quickly.

Creating the CD folder and then burning the CD with your CD burning program would tell you that there is not enough room on the CD, but the RootsMagic buring facility isn't all that sophisticated.

If you want it on one CD, about all you can do is either reduce the size of the multimedia files or, the number of them. Reducing the size of the files could be as simple as changing the format to JPG or resizing the dimensions of the photo in the file. Do either of these on a copy fo the multimedia files though, to save the original in it's best state.

I downloaded IrfanView some time ago, it converts format or sizes a folder full of files in a very short while and it is FREE.
_Here is one of many places wherefrom you can download it.
http://downloads-zdn...2-10021962.html


If you do a convert forrmat with IrfanView or any other program, put the converted files in the same folder , then do a search and replace in RootsMagic.
Search and replace Multimedia file names
Search for ".BMP"
Replace with ".JPG"
and you can see the pictures again. (Without the quotation marks.)

If you put them in a different folder, you can do another search and replace and change the pathe to the photos.

[aplucinik]

I just tried creating a CD with the program and it aborted. Later discovered I had too much data for the CD. It would be nice to know that before hand instead of trashing CD's. Also, is there a way to make it where it will handle more than 1 CD and put the information on another CD if neccessary? Thanks!

It's very easy to know whether you had too much data for a CD if you click on the button "I will use my own CD Burning Software to burn the files to the CD" INSTEAD OF "Burn the Shareable CD Now".

This omits burning the "shareable CD" data to a CD and only burns it to your hard drive.

Now open Windows Explorer to the C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Application Data\RootsMagic\CDProg folder.
Highlight all the files in the CDProg folder and Windows explorer will tell how many bytes they occupy on the disk.
Also go into the Pictures folder and do the same thing.
Add up the two numbers.

If it's over 700 MB then it's not going to fit on the CD.

I know that you would prefer that RM added up the bytes for you and warned you, and maybe Bruce can add that warning feature to a future version but the steps I outlined above is still a pretty simple and quick thing to do.

[John_of_Ross_County]

I just tried creating a CD with the program and it aborted. Later discovered I had too much data for the CD. It would be nice to know that before hand instead of trashing CD's. Also, is there a way to make it where it will handle more than 1 CD and put the information on another CD if neccessary? Thanks!

A hardware solution is a burner with CD/DVD capabilities. However, sharing DVD media with relatives would be limited to those with DVD drives. I think the DVD capacity is between 4.0 and 5.0 GB.

Current drive prices after rebates at several office supply and computer stores are from $60 to $80. Some drives work with both CD's and DVD's. So you can save money if you do not need the DVD capacity by just using CD's.

There are also external USB 2.0 units at higher prices if you do not have room in the computer or do not care to work inside the case. Use a static wrist strap if you do.

For what it is worth, I have not had any trouble burning a shareable CD.

[Nick Brown]

The same thing happened to me recently. I was going to meet with a cousin I am trying to get to upgrade from from Family Origins to RootsMagic. I wanted to make a new shareable CD to show him the features. Sadly without any warning that I had over 700 MB of data and without a pause to allow me to use my own writer as I believe it used to do it charged on off and wrote me a coaster. I had to confess to my cousin that it broke and had to substitute an older version (2 years older) that was OK. Had I known the size ahead of time I could have used a DVD since I am actually using a DVD writer. Unfortunately I didn't have any blank writeable DVD's and I was doing this on short notice. I managed to find the files later on that RM was attempting to use which allowed me to determine their size when I tried to write it with Nero, which shows me a graph of how big it is.

I have complained about something before that is largely responsible for this problem in my case. I freqently use images from CD or Internet of Census pages where my relatives appear. I make a Census event entry on each person that appears on that page. I opened the CD and looked at the file structures on it. The Census entries resulted in individual copies of the same file multiple times, like seven or eight, with the path name I had used but numbers added at the end of the file name to make them unique. That is a HUGE waste of space since the page is the same every time it is referenced. It looks like RM should be smart enought to not have to make multiple copies of the same file, particularly when they are bitmap or jpg files which are huge to start with.

One could argue that I should convert to DVD's instead. This reduces the number of people who would be able to run it since some of these folks have older computers that don't have DVD drives. I know that time is coming because Microsoft and others are now shipping software on DVD's, but not everybody is upgrading to Vista right away. I have used these CD's on Windows 95 and 98 systems to show my relatives where they came from.

[Alfred]

If you do not place a blank CD in the drive before you start to create the Sharable CD in RootsMagic, you will probably not click any thing too quickly.

Here is a copy of the dialog window that I see before the CD is burned (RootsMagic 3.2.4)

Sharable CD Files Ready

The files for your shareable CD have been created in the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\RootsMagic\CDProg\

You can have RootsMagic burn the files to CD now, or you can use your own CD burning software to burn all the files from this folder to CD.

[ Burn the Sharable CD now ]
[ I will use my own CD burning software to burn these files onto the CD. ]

This tells you where the files are stored and the bottom two buttons give you the burning choice.


--------------
Yes, there is some wasted disk space when a photo or file is used multiple times.

[Nick Brown]

If you do not place a blank CD in the drive before you start to create the Sharable CD in RootsMagic, you will probably not click any thing too quickly.

Here is a copy of the dialog window that I see before the CD is burned (RootsMagic 3.2.4)
This tells you where the files are stored and the bottom two buttons give you the burning choice.
--------------
Yes, there is some wasted disk space when a photo or file is used multiple times.

[Nick Brown]

Then can you tell me why RM seems compelled to add another copy when it finds an obvious duplicate? It knows it is a duplicate since it goes through the process of rendering the file name unique by adding characters to the file name. Couldn't there be a switch one could activate that suppresses the creation of unique file names? This would solve this particular problem. What new problems would it create?

[Alfred]

I don't think that it knows that they are the same file, only that they have the same name and two files of the same name cannot reside in the same folder, so it adds a number.

Try creating a new folder in My Documents or somewhere. just leave it with the default name, "New Folder"
Now try again, the default name will be "New Folder (2)" then "New Folder (3)" ...

I think that it is probably a Windows thing.


You MAY be able to attach the photo or file to a source, then cite that source as many times as you want and get awy with just the one copy of a file in the Sharable CD.

I will try it, if it doesn't work, I will ammend this post.

[Nick Brown]

Look, I have been programming computers since 1959. The operating system obviously recognizes that the names are identical and probably has a call to copy a file and replace any previous version (which in my case is completely safe, since they are identical), and it probably has an option to return a status that shows the name already exists, in which case the calling program can simply elect to abort the request without rewriting the file.
The former option creates more file traffic and generates fragmentation, so it's not the preferred way. The point is that I am trying to do what the RM program selection of Create a Shareable Copy of your database on a CD. And My database was created by the windows file system and the individual file names are already FORCED to be unique ( as long as they have the same path )!

[Alfred]

See, RootsMagic doesn't force all of your multimedia files to be in the same folder.

The sharable CD stores only the filename, it doesn't store the former path, maybe it could, but it doesn't.

I am sorry, I am only an old dirt farmer so, from your previous posts, I couldn't tell you were a computer programming expert.

[Nick Brown]

See, RootsMagic doesn't force all of your multimedia files to be in the same folder.

The sharable CD stores only the filename, it doesn't store the former path, maybe it could, but it doesn't.

I am sorry, I am only an old dirt farmer so, from your previous posts, I couldn't tell you were a computer programming expert.

[Nick Brown]

Alfred,
I know RM collapses all the files in a folder called pictures. But it has to obtain the contents of the files from somewhere. It has the path to these files stored in the database, so it can go get them and copy them to pictures. In fact, under reports there is even an option to produce a list of all the multimedia files you have referenced anywhere in the database. Since it HAS to know where they are to get them, it could very easily compare the file path as well as the file name and tell if they are the same before it copies them and simply not copy a second time if it already has one copy in pictures.

I very much like the general feature, being able to take a disk with me that can be demonstrated on anyone's machine. I liked it when it first came out, but I looked at the structure of the folder pictures and saw all the duplications of the same file, and knew it was a ticking time-bomb. CD's are not infiinite in size. It was like another Y2K waiting to happen and I sent email to RM about it but never heard an answer. It's a wonderful idea that was executed in a not quite wonderful way. I am hoping RM is monitoring this discussion and taking notes.
You have obviously been on this forum for a while so tell me what you think about the chances of their taking notice?

I gave up writing code when I retired and I don't have access to their source code so that I could really make constructive suggestions. I have used Family Origins, its predecessor for many years and am glad most of it still survives in RM, and they continue to add features to keep up with the technology.

[Cecilia]

Hi all,

I had the same problem with a full CD because files got duplicated and I did something like this... complicated but it worked. I can't try now exactly how I did it since my CD-burner is not working, but hopefully my explanation is correct.

I created the shareable CD but did not burn the CD. Instead I went to the folder where Rootsmagic stores the files for the CD:

:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\RootsMagic\CDProg\

and in the folders "pictures" I found the same file in many copies for instance:
Census 1900 - August Kutter.jpg
Census 1900 - August Kutter(2).jpg
Census 1900 - August Kutter(3).jpg.
etc

In the original family file, there is only 1 file, but on the CD, there is one copy of that file for each time I have added the file to the family tree.

So I opened (in Rootsmagic) the family tree file that was created for the CD:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\RootsMagic\CDProg\Family Tree.rmg

Then I went to Search - Search and Replace:

Search in "multimedia filenames"
Search for: (2)
Replace with: [empty]

In other words, I changed the PATH from "Census 1900 - August Kutter(2).jpg" to Census 1900 - August Kutter.jpg

After that I could remove the actual files with the name Census 1900 - August Kutter(2).jpg. And so on... When I had finished, I only had one file, and no identical copies, and all paths in the family tree, took me to the original file and not to any of the copies.

And then of course, I could burn my CD. Well, it worked, but I would certainly appreciate if the program understood that it is the SAME file.

/Cecilia
Ps. The folder :\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\RootsMagic\CDProg\Family Tree.rmg may be hidden, in that case you need to change your file settings so that you can view hidden folders.

[Alfred]

That might work, but the file for the search and replace would be "Family Tree_M.FPT" not, "Family Tree.rmg"

I don't know how modifying one file of the database might affect the index and things, you MAY end up with the remaining photos shifted to the wrong person. I don't know yet

========= LATER ============
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
THIS IDIOT DID

[Cecilia]

Hm.... when I go to the folder where the CD files are stored, there is only one file that I can open from inside Rootsmagic, and that's the .rmg file. I have only made one CD this way, but I think it worked just fine for the person I sent it too. But I guess there could be bugs we did not discover.

Btw, when I opened the CD family file through Rootsmagic (the main program), the program did not see one single image despite the fact that the paths were correct. Every single image said "Can't find... However, if you open the CD family file through the program Rmreader , which you will find in the CDProg folder, every image works as it should. RmReader is used for the CD. You do need the main program Rootsmagic in order to use the Search and replace option. That option is not included in RmReader (of course).

/Cecilia

[Alfred]

OH! You changed it with RootsMagic?

I tried it from within Windows Explorer and WordPad- IT DON'T WORK THAT WAY.

It locked my computer up, I finally got the {ctrl]+[Alt]+[Delete] to shut it down,m then rebooted and tried opening the CD file again with the regular RootsMagic program, when I looked at the Multimedia files, it crashed again, this time I had to shut the power off to get out of the freeze.

Ok now, Create the sharable CD on your hard drive, Close down the viewer and open the regular RootsMagic and browse to the CD family database and open it.
Use search and replace to change all "(2)" to "" then all "(3)" to "" etc.

THEN you can go into the pictures folder and remove the ones with the numbers in parenthesis.

I KNEW that we shouldn't modify the database files from without RootsMagic, but that's what I misunderstood you to say. -- I just wasn't thinking --

= After trying with a new Sharable CD === not on the CD, while still on the hard drive. =======

YES, using the RootsMagic search and replace > Multimedia filenames and searching for the numbers in parenthesis and replacing with nothing works perfectly. Deleting the duplicate files with the numbers from the "Pictures" folder can be a chore, but it is doable.

(Just hope that you haven't used a number in parenthesis in your regular filename

[Cecilia]

Hi Alfred, I'm sorry that you misunderstood my instructions, I don't blame you. It is not easy to explain every single detail so that no one misunderstands. Open the CD family file from inside Rootsmagic, but close down the CD Viewer program first, in case you have it opened.

I have a family photo with 48 people in it. For about 2/3 of the people in it, this photo is the only photo that I have on them. So of course, I added that photo to everyone's multimedia section... I get 48 copies of the same photo on the CD...... I love Rootsmagic, but this is ridiculous.

And yes, no file names can be named (2) etc - unless you remove that too, in the actual file name in Explorer.

/Cecilia