Family Historian User Group

I tried to include my first multimedia into FH today and ran into a problem.

I was adding a jpg picture to a source.  I went to the source and clicked on 'add media'.  I then clicked on 'insert from file' and pointed it to the file on my hard drive.  I told it to go ahead and copy the picture into the project and pointed it to a specific folder within the project that I wanted to save the file in.

Then a window popped up as follows:



If I click on the jpg file itself on my hard drive it looks fine.

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks!

ID:4648

It's possible your media name or project name are too long for the way your hard drive is formatted.

Try renaming your media to a shorter name and see it that fixes the problem.

If I click on the jpg file itself on my hard drive it looks fine.

Is this in the media folder for the project or the original folder?

I have some quite long path names and not yet had a problem eg:

D:_DataFamily TreeMillerMiller.fh_dataMediaCertificates and IndexesBirth and ChristeningCertificatesBirth Certificate for Catherine Walker (b1847).jpg

however I do things in a slightly different way.

I collect source documents (images, docs etc) in an 'ongoing research' set of folders outside of the FH project structure. Once I'm reasonably sure they are correct and I want to add them to FH I -

1. rename the file to a standard that I stick to.
2. move (or copy) the file, using windows explorer, into the relevant folder (I have a structured set of them) in the FH project area.
3. Either add a new source citation to an individual, or select an existing one, then open the properties window for the source (click on the yellow right triangle button at the bottom of the list of sources for that individual).
4. Select the ALL tab from that properties window.
5. Right click on the title of the source and select 'add multimedia object' + 'add link to new multimedia object record'
6. Then just fill in the object type and title, click on the empty file field, then the button on it's right to open the navigation window, and go find the multimedia file, select it and OK.
7. You can then return direct to the individual's property window by clicking the white left arrow toolbar button.

Maybe see if that works for you?

David

Bill,
If, as Jane suspects (and she's often right), the problem is related to the total length of your file and the length of the path to your selected folder within the project folder, you may find the following post useful:
http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cg ... y&num=3740

Jane said:
Try renaming your media to a shorter name and see it that fixes the problem.

Hi Jane,

The folder I put the media in is:

C:UsersBillDocumentsFamily Historian ProjectsHenshaw FamilyMediaDriftmier, Benjamin W Sr

The name of the file is:

Gravestone of Benjamin W Driftmier Sr.jpg

Is that too long? I don't seem to have any problem accessing the file in Picasa or in other image editing programs I have.

I tried naming the file to a.jpg and got the same error.

Jane said:
Is this in the media folder for the project or the original folder?

I don't have any problems accessing it in the original folder or in the media folder for the project.

Thanks

davidm_uk said:
Maybe see if that works for you?

Hi David,

I tried doing it the way you described and I didn't get any error windows popping up, but I don't see the media once it is linked in.

Here is what my ALL tab looks like:



The complete path is:

C:UsersBillDocumentsFamily Historian ProjectsHenshaw FamilyMediaDriftmier, Benjamin W SrGravestone of Benjamin W Driftmier Sr.jpg

When I go to the MULTIMEDIA tab, nothing shows up:



Thanks

PeterR said:
Bill,
If, as Jane suspects (and she's often right), the problem is related to the total length of your file and the length of the path to your selected folder within the project folder, you may find the following post useful:
http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cg ... y&num=3740

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply.

If I counted right, the complete path length including the file name is only 137 characters so I don't think I should be running into the 256 character limit.

Thanks!

As an experiment could you try renaming the file and putting it in the root of the media folder avoiding the ',' in the folder name. The other possibility might be the jpg is a jpg2000 file and not a true jpg.

If you look at the Tools/Work with External File links does the photo show as missing? I presume when you are looking at the file in Windows explorer you are looking at the copy in the Family Historian media folder?

It looks odd because on V4 using the media folder I would expect the link in Family Historian to be just
media/folder/file and not to have the full path in it.

Did you let FH copy the file in or did you copy it in direct?

Hi Bill,

Re your reply above to my post, in the first screen capture have you tried completing the fields for Format (set it to jpeg from the drop down list) and Title to see if that makes any difference?

As Jane says in her latest reply if it's actually a jpg2000 file it may cause a problem. If I specify a File type as .doc (by ignoring the drop down list and just typing doc into the field) it doesn't display in FH, but if I double click the empty thumbnail 'picture' that's shown in the multimedia tab of the source record then the file will open with Word. Try double clicking on that thumbnail and see what happens.

David.

Hi Jane,

I got it to work!!

I used tools/work with external file links to find and delete all existing links to any media.  I then used Windows Explorer to delete the existing media folders from the project. At this point FH was back to where it was before I tried to link in any pictures.  

Then I started over again and inserted a picture into the project and let FH copy it into a new folder within the Media folder.

Then I looked at the project in Windows Explorer and saw that the picture was copied into the following folder:

C:UsersBillDocumentsFamily Historian ProjectsHenshaw FamilyHenshaw Family.fh_dataMediaDriftmier, Benjamin W Sr

Note that before it was in the following folder:

C:UsersBillDocumentsFamily Historian ProjectsHenshaw FamilyMediaDriftmier, Benjamin W Sr

Somehow the first time around it got placed into a media folder in the main project folder, not in the fh_data folder under the main project folder.  Not sure how I managed to do that.  [oops]

In any case, it is now working fine.  FH isn't having any problems with the commas in the folder name or the long file name.

And you are right, if I look at the ALL tab, the path to the picture is just media/folder/file as you thought it would be.

Thanks again for all your help!

davidm_uk said:
Re your reply above to my post, in the first screen capture have you tried completing the fields for Format (set it to jpeg from the drop down list) and Title to see if that makes any difference?

Hi David,

As you can see from my response to Jane, I did get it to work.  Somehow I had managed to mess it up.

I tried what you said above, and that also worked.  I'm guessing that somehow FH didn't understand what type of file it was when I got it copied into the wrong location in the project.  In any case, those fields get updated automatically now when I go through ADD MEDIA and get the picture copied into the correct location.

Thanks for your help!

Hi Bill,

Glad you got it sorted. The added plus is that now you know your way around FH (and it's folder structure) more than you did before. I've learned as much about things on the PC by getting them wrong first time than I have from reading all the books, and they stay in the old memory (mine that is) a bit longer as well!

[smile][smile][smile]
David

Hi David

Isn't that the truth. Unfortunately I do much of my best learning that way. [smile]

Thanks again,