Family Historian User Group

I have a piece of WWII video from the Imperial War Museum which features my father demonstrating how to put out an incendiary bomb with a sandbag! Absolutely priceless! I'd like to attach it in some way to him in my tree so it is there for easy viewing in the future.

I looked at the knowledge base and think it should be possible but when I tried to select it as a file to attach, it just opened it in a media player on my laptop and started to play it. When I looked in the folder that I was selecting, there was an array of files and I have no idea which I need to attach to my tree.



Is there a way or am I trying to do something which is not possible?

These are files associated with DVD disks. The main video file is the large VTS_01_1.vob file. I suspect that FH won't play it in that form, but the easiest thing to do is copy just that file to somewhere on your hard disk and give it a more meaningful name, with .mpg as the file extension (e.g. Father and his incendiary bomb.mpg). You may get a Windows warning about changing the filetype, but you can ignore that - .vob files are just .mpg files anyway.

Then attach it into your project as you would an image file. Only you know exactly how you organise your files, so it's difficult to give exact advice about where to copy it to, but one option is directly into your project Media folder. If you prefer to keep media outside your project and just have file links, remember to ensure they are fully backed up.

I would be tempted to convert the file to a more compact and modern format, such as H264/mp4, but I don't know if FH has been updated to play those directly, and it is not essential.

Ask again if you run into problems and need further advice.

FH cannot 'render' anything except image files. So anything else (HTML, TXT, DOCX, PDF, Audio, Video) can be linked to a Media record but must be 'rendered' by using the Open in Editor/Player button or double-clicking the icon in the Media window. That will invoke the default application associated with that type of file.
See FHUG KB Adding Photographs and Other Media under Adding Other Media.

It sounds like there is some KB housekeeping to do, as I was guided by this KB page on Multimedia File Formats that indicates that there are preferred formats such as .mpg that FH can handle internally. That's clearly not correct, so it can go on the to-do list to correct.

I don't think there is much wrong with that page. It is simply saying you can attach any type of file and identifies the commands that provide different file type filters, but not that FH can handle them internally.

The only significant change is that the Introduction phrase "FH can only handle some of the formats internally" should say "FH can only handle image file formats internally", i.e. the ones in the Add > Pictures... list.

Thank you. That all sounds a bit complicated for me so I think I will just grab a screenshot or two from the video to attach to the tree with a note about where the DVD is kept and the references for the original source at the Imperial War Museum.

Thanks for your advice.

the Introduction phrase "FH can only handle some of the formats internally" should say "FH can only handle image file formats internally"

Exactly - it is a significant error right at the top of the page that carries through to the linking contents page, and that is what I will fix.