Family Historian User Group

From time to time, I do a review of my database to check for consistent names and formats, missing references, etc. In the list of media records, images are recorded as both jpg and jpeg format, even though all the original files are of type *.jpg.

My first thought was that editing the files to remove excessive borders or to de-skew was changing how FH saw the filetype, but that is not the case. As an experiment, I freshly downloaded two probate images from Ancestry, and created media records using the files exactly as downloaded, without even changing the filename. Both files were *.jpg, but in FH one had been recorded as jpeg.

I checked the exif tags of both files, and they were identical

I know there is absolutely no difference between jpg and jpeg, and the shorter form was just a workaround to cope with the 3 character file extension of DOS and pre-95 Windows. It's a relatively trivial issue, as it would be simple to modify them all to the same format in a text editor if I wanted complete consistency, but it seems an odd behaviour. Have I missed something somewhere?

Strictly speaking, GEDCOM 5.5 1996 only allows the Format values: bmp | gif | jpeg | ole | pcx | tiff | wav
So FH usually prefers jpeg so I cannot explain why it got set to jpg.

However, things have moved on since 1996 and most products allow many more file extensions.
As you say, it does not really matter whether jpg or jpeg is used.

What is important is the Format value MUST closely match the media file extension, otherwise the Media record Type will be wrong and the file mishandled by FH.

I suspect it arises from subtle differences in how the original image file is encoded. For example, all my 1939 Register images are jpeg, as are all 1911 census and probate up to 1972. However, later probate entries (1973 on), which were made available on-line more recently, are all jpg! Parish Registers and pre-1911 census are an apparently random mix of the two.

I believe all 1939 Register and 1911 census scanning was done by FMP, so presumably with consistent settings, while earlier census and parish registers would have been scanned by numerous different organisations over the years with a wide variety of different equipment and settings.

It's a curiosity rather than anything that has real practical significance, but I'll report it as an apparent bug. I can't believe Calico Pie aren't aware of it already though, as it is very obvious on one of the main program windows.

Yes, interesting but does not explain why FH chose jpeg for one .jpg file and jpg for the other .jpg file in your example.

I reported a whole raft of Format problems as Multimedia FORMat Field Problems log #567826 in April 2014 when Beta testing FH V6.0 but nothing has improved. The FORM field does NOT even have to match the _FILE field file extension, but can cause havoc with handling the media file.