Let me step back and share some things and maybe then we can all speak the same language.
First, the media process in L8 was designed to be simple. And for someone, like yourself, whose files are organized, it should be trivial.
Remember what we are trying to do.
Every media object in your family file is associated with a file name and a folder where that file name is supposed to be.
Your L7 and L8 family file includes a table of Media locations. You can look at this table either at option 6.2 or from the Master lists tool. Both show the same list of folders.
Question: Do you see that folder list in L7 and L8 and are they correct?
Option 6.2 also has a tool for telling you if you have missing media. Missing media is defined as media file names based on your family file that are not in the folders they are supposed to be in.
Question: Does the Option 6.2 missing media list show any missing media?
--> I would assign the Option 6.2 Default folder to the top level folder where all of your media are on your K drive. I assign mine to a junk folder because I do not use it...
Now... let us assume that the Missing test shows you have media that are missing. Look at the missing.txt file and see why you have some images that are not properly linked.
Or not...
Then just go to Media Relinker and get your media back to being properly linked.
First, since you know all of your media is on your K drive, use the drive selector control to select the K drive only.
Then press the Media Relinker button.
It will now scan your K drive and build a list of all of the locations for each of the missing files. It may take a few minutes, but it gets the job done.
Because it can only compare file names, it now needs to show you the matches and let you decide if this is the right media. You get to browse through the various files of that name that it found and then select which one you want.
--> I have the same file often in several places because I re-use it in several family files. I have organized the files so that they upload easily to my web publishing application TNG.
So, you need to select the right file from the right folder. Then you can tell Relinker, take this file or you can tell it, take this file and any other missing files you find in the same folder or you can tell it, none of them is correct.
--> The second option might clear up your whole list!
Relinker will then take you to the next unresolved media.
When it completes, it will then tell you how many are still unresolved and missing.txt will give you the list for you to resolve more manually.
Does this help?
john.
At 01:58 PM 12/3/2013, Wesley Johnston wrote:
If this is the correct solution, then I would like Legacy to say so. Option 6.2 is precisely where I went to try to deal with the problem.
If all I have to do is point this media pointer to my Legacy folder on my K drive and have it then find all the media files in the Pix, Videos, etc. folders, that would be ideal. But since it is a single pointer and not specific to media type, I do not know what folder to point it at. I certainly do not want it "discovering" media files, such as reports, that I have created from my tree and stored either as PDF or JPG files within my Legacy database folder but intentionally not in my media folders.
But I am unwilling to experiment with this, since there are so many implications and possible consequences if I do it wrong. They really should have anticipated this issue when they eliminated the media-type-specific location options and prepared a guideline for how to make this migration.
From: Mary Moyer <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Migrating Pictures etc from 7.5 Folder to 8 Media Folder
Wesley
You don't need to migrate anything. I think what you need to do is set your default location for media. Legacy8 has a default location, but it's easy to change to what you want.
Options > Customize > Locations > item 6.2 (default locations for media)
Mary
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Paul Gray <[email protected]> wrote:
- Wesley,
- I am trying to understand your situation but I canât. Please bear with me as I ask in a different way questions Iâm sure you have already answered.. I am absolutely positive that your media can stay exactly where they are, and that there is no reason to change anything. I have my media (only a few items) on a separate drive, and they are linked identically in 7.5 and 8.0.
- I donât think whatâs in 6.2 has anything to do with existing links.
- So, with respect to your existing media, are the links to the K drive not there? I think you are saying that you can no longer see the images, is that true?
- Paul Gray
- From: Wesley Johnston [ mailto:[email protected]]
- Sent: December-03-13 11:20 AM
- To: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Migrating Pictures etc from 7.5 Folder to 8 Media Folder
- Your configuration of folders is very similar to mine, and like yours I have been using this setup for years - many years. And no prior Legacy upgrade has caused any problems with this, since I could always customize the locations for each type of folder.
- But Legacy 8 is clearly different in this regard, since this level of granularity is no longer there in the customization options. And the Media Relinker does not appear to have a granularity level below that of entire hard drive.
- So I am stuck here, not knowing what my choices are in terms of their long-term implications
- So I am in a situation that I need to know what to do to properly restore the images that are no longer showing (except for one) on the first tree that I converted as a guinea pig. (I have a great many more trees that all reference the same pool of folders of Legacy-related media files. So I want to make sure that I do this first one right, since making the wrong decision up front could have a lot of consequences.)
- I am going to copy and paste again here the current state of my understanding, based on Brian's note, so that he can clarify this. I really need to know the full implications of the choices that are available to me, since there are so many files involved.
- ---- repeat of questions for Brian -----
- It looks like I am either being forced to either (a) dedicate my entire K drive to Legacy by the Media Relinker looking only at the entire drive and not at a specific designated folder and all of its sub-folders or (b) dump all my files into a single Media folder, dealing with file name duplications in the short term and a massive hodge-podge of files on an on-going basis for as long as I use Legacy in the future.
- Are these really my only two choices?
- If those are really what I am being forced to do, then I will have to go with B, ugly as it is.
- ---- end of repeat of questions for Brian -----
- From: William Boswell <[email protected]>
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 9:54 AM
- Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Migrating Pictures etc from 7.5 Folder to 8 Media Folder
- The way I do it set up customized folders. A main folder for just photos of people and cemeteries. The second one is just for source images. The people photos folder has subfolders according to surnames; cemeteries by the name of the cemetery and surnames for those I have photos of graves.
- For source images, I have subfolders by category: census, obituaries, letters, certificates (birth, marriage, death), etc. I also have a category for text items and PDF files.
- If you set this up first and get it organized, it will be easier to find your images. The only thing is you may have to relink everything or get Legacy to do it for you. I've been using the same setup for years when I was using other software and they were all pointed to these folders. Lumping everything together in one folder is a terrible idea because when you start getting into hundreds of images, it's a very slow process trying to find anything. I always select to leave my images where they are and not copy them. I haven't found a way to make this a permanent selection within Legacy 8 or I overlooked it.
- Bill Boswell
- From: Wesley Johnston [mailto:[email protected] ]
- Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2013 11:57 AM
- To: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Migrating Pictures etc from 7.5 Folder to 8 Media Folder
- I am still not clear what to do here.
- I see that the Option 6.2 is for those people willing to let Legacy manage their media and store it all in a single location, which may be what I wind up being forced to do, even though it will cause a great deal of immediate term work and a lot more on-going management effort on my part because everything is lumped together in one enormous folder with no way other than file name and file type to distinguish people pix from source pix from video clips from location pix ...
- That is because the Media Relinker tool does not seem to have a granularity finer than entire disk drive level. My K drive is not exclusively for my Legacy files. So there are tens of thousands of other media files on the K drive that I do not want include in the search by the Media Relinker. But there seems to be no way to do that. Am I missing something about how to configure the Media Relinker, or is it going to look at my entire K drive? The notion that any media file on my computer or on a particular drive is fair game for Legacy makes Legacy a very nasty neighbor.
- It looks like I am either being forced to either (a) dedicate my entire K drive to Legacy by the Media Relinker looking only at the entire drive and not at a specific designated folder and all of its sub-folders or (b) dump all my files into a single Media folder, dealing with file name duplications in the short term and a massive hodge-podge of files on an on-going basis for as long as I use Legacy in the future.
- Are these really my only two choices?
- If those are really what I am being forced to do, then I will have to go with B, ugly as it is.
- Whatever you were thinking when you convinced yourselves that this extremely significant migration issue should be glossed over and not fully addressed in your announcements and testing and advance online support considerations was a self-delusion. It is one thing to create new features and ways of doing things. It is another when you do not fully disclose and support the upgrade from prior versions and leave so much work to your customers, work for which there is no guidance already in place for such an obvious issue.
- From: Brian/Support < [email protected]>
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 6:25 AM
- Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Migrating Pictures etc from 7.5 Folder to 8 Media Folder
- Legacy 8, like 7.5 is quite happy to use multiple folders for media but
- Legacy 8 now uses the Windows Standards for storing user data and
- programs instead of a special C:\Legacy folder for the program and sub
- folders of C:\Legacy for Data, and media.
- The Legacy 8 program is installed in the Windows Program Files folders
- and for user data we create a set of folders under your Windows User
- name in the My Documents. Use the Media Relinker tool, Limit the search
- to your K: drive and Legacy 8 will find all your existing locations and
- use them for your existing media.
- The Options you mention are for those users who are content to let
- Legacy manage their media and store it all in a single location. You can
- set that to the top folder in your K: drive media tree, if there is one
- and Legacy will then open that default when you store new media, you can
- then navigate from there to the folder where you want to store, or have
- stored the new media you are adding.
- The ff and gbl notation on options indicates whether an option is
- specific to the current family file or is a global setting which applies
- to all family files.
- Brian
- Customer Support
- Millennia Corporation
- [email protected]
- http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com
- On 03/12/2013 7:02 AM, Wesley Johnston wrote:
- > I am not at all clear on the new file structure within Legacy 8 and what I need to do to migrate all my folders of Pictures, Videos, Sounds. And right now this is a show stopper. I have no idea what I am doing nor how to get things right in the conversion and migration.
- >
- > I keep all my Legacy files on a different hard drive (K) than the default. There, under Legacy, I have folders for Geo, Pix, Sounds, Videos ... which were the Legacy 7.5 file structure.
- >
- > When I opened one of my existing FDB files in Legacy 8 (by navigating to the K drive using the Windows dialog box within Legacy), I was asked to convert the file and given three options, I chose "just convert my family file and open it" since I do not want the files to wind up in the My Documents folder.
- >
- > It was only when I went into Options / Customize / 6. Locations that I discovered that there are no longer specific folders for each media type. Instead option 6.2 only points to "media files (ff)" (and I have no idea what "(ff)" means nor the "(gbl)" in options 6.1 and 6.3.
- >
- > So what am I supposed to do?
- >
- > It looks like I am supposed to create a new folder named Media on my K drive under my Legacy folders and then move all my Pix, Videos, Sources, Geo files into this folder???? But that means lumping all my source pix and my people pix into the same massive collection of files, making this media folder an enormous mess and raising the possibility of duplicate file names coming from within the previously separate Legacy 7.5 folders.
- >
- > I definitely do NOT want Legacy 8 pointing to the default media folder on the C drive. I want all my media files -- preferably kept in good order in separate folders as with prior versions of Legacy -- on my K drive.
- >
- > I have been through many Legacy versions, but this one is very definitely not trivial nor transparent. This appears to involve major restructuring of the underlying folders in a radically different way than prior versions handled media files. And I am staggered at the apparent implications of this -- both in the effort to migrate the files to a "media" folder and in the mess that a single media folder creates -- and also stunned at the complete absence of any explicit addressing of this issue on the Legacy web site's announcement of Legacy 8.
Legacy User Group guidelines:
http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp
Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp
Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com).
To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
