* Duplicate Media and the Check for Unlinked Media

[MFriend]

Hi Folks:

I'm trying to clean up duplicate media after importing from FTM. I ran the "Check for Possible Duplicate Media" and went through the process of merging about 130 or so pairs (meaning I believe that there should be 130 or so less media in the folder after running the other plugin "Check for unlinked Media".

The "Duplicate Media" plugin seems to have worked ok: when I run it now it no longer finds any duplicates. All of the media are in the FH 7 project folder. The "Check for unlinked Media" does not find anything (tried listing, tried deleting, it finds nothing). I went to the FH plugin site and re-downloaded the plugins to make sure I had the latest.

I also did an export (gedcom) and import into a new FH project. The dupes must have been removed from the FH database because when I imported into the new project, the dupes (I assume because they were not linked) did not get imported. So I guess my question is: Is the latest version of the "Check for Unlinked Media" working correctly with the latest version of FH 7 (7.02).

Thanks,
Matthew

[tatewise]

If you check the Plugin Store then it shows both those Plugins are compatible with all FH versions.

Your clean-up process is exactly correct, but should not have been necessary if FH had done a better job.
Like many products, FTM prefers to use Local Media Objects instead of Media Records.
(I can explain the difference in more detail if you are interested.)
Whereas FH preferably supports Media Records, and FH V7 now pops up a Validation message that strongly encourages those Local Media Objects to be converted to Media Records and the Project import GEDCOM process unconditionally performs a similar conversion silently.

However, the conversion process is imperfect. Until a recent update, the Title was omitted in the conversion.
If several Local Media Objects all link to the same Media file then duplicate files with (n) suffixes are created.
If several Local Media Objects would convert to identical Media Records that merging is not performed.
I think this is what you have experienced and needed to fix.

If you think FH should do a better job then please report the above issues to CP via http://www.calico-pie.com/osticket/open.php especially as they affect many more than FTM imports.