Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

[donworth]

Can someone who has done this explain the steps to me?

Up to now I have manually added all my photos and such to TNG, but I thought I would try a more automated approach with Reunion 10 on one of my smaller trees to see how it works.

I have several questions about it:

- Do I have to resize (reduce resolution) of my photos before I send them to TNG?
- I presume I have to independently transfer (FTP) all the media files into some folder on TNG and the GED only provides the matching file names to TNG? Which folder do I transfer them into? /Photos (I have COLLECTION FOLDER marked now - should I use MULTIMEDIA FOLDER instead?)
- How do the Headstone, Document, Photo, etc. designations get set in TNG for the new images? Or can you even do this for anything but photos?
- Do the captions come across too? How does the mapping work with TNG's TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and OWNER/SOURCE etc. fields?
- If you have a photo attached to more than one person in Reunion, does it map correctly in TNG to multiple people? Does DEFAULT PHOTO get transferred?
- Does anything else useful in the media map to TNG (eg. Geocode data, image map, etc.)?
- Anything else I need to know?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me with this! Hope this isn't too much to ask!

Don

[theKiwi]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Read this page

http://tng.lythgoes.net/wiki/index.php?title=Media_-_Import

I wrote in the TNG Wiki and see what questions you have after digesting that and post them here.

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

That's a wonderful writeup! Thanks, Roger. It's going to take me some time and experimenting to digest tho. Hopefully I can figure it out and won't need to bother you again. :-)

Don

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Roger - I presume the photos you have stored on your local machine are copies of the original scans that have been reduced in resolution before they go to TNG? It doesn't look like anything in this process will reduce the resolution. I'm scanning at 600dpi which produces a pretty large file for web storage. I guess that means that the media links in Reunion are pointing to the smaller copies, not the original scans?
Don

[theKiwi]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Roger - I presume the photos you have stored on your local machine are copies of the original scans that have been reduced in resolution before they go to TNG? It doesn't look like anything in this process will reduce the resolution. I'm scanning at 600dpi which produces a pretty large file for web storage. I guess that means that the media links in Reunion are pointing to the smaller copies, not the original scans?

Yes, the set of folders that are shown in the screenshots in that writeup do NOT hold the original files - whether they're scans of photos, or downloaded documents like census images or birth records etc. Those are stored in a separate place on my Mac in a different hierarchy.

Those folders shown in the writeup contain images that are resized for web display, and in the case of for example the census forms, my "kiwi highlighter" has been applied to them too - e.g.

http://lisaandroger.com/genealogy/showmedia.php?mediaID=368

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Very nice! Thanks, Roger.

[harringg]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Roger - I presume the photos you have stored on your local machine are copies of the original scans that have been reduced in resolution before they go to TNG? It doesn't look like anything in this process will reduce the resolution. I'm scanning at 600dpi which produces a pretty large file for web storage. I guess that means that the media links in Reunion are pointing to the smaller copies, not the original scans?
Don

I use TNG too (in part due to Roger's endorsement in other threads here). I use Photoshop Lightroom as my media organizer and have a preset to export as web size images.

I have OS 10.7 and in Preview (included with the OS), you can open a batch of images at once, select them all in the sidebar of Preview. You can then choose File>Export Selected Images...> and then you can choose a smaller size image without the need for a third-party image application. I mention 10.7 because I don't know if Preview in 10.6 can do the same, I would think it could, but am not sure.

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Thanks! Actually, I have CS3 Photoshop, so I think I can set up a batch command to resize them probably. Haven't fiddled with that in a while tho.

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Roger,

I've been reading your writeup and had a question for you.

I upload my GED to TNG pretty regularly and right now it's a fairly quick and automated process. I don't have to deal with any individual records/files at all. In looking at your writeup, it sounded like you have to go in and correct the collection membership (eg. headstones, etc.) for individual media files. Or is there a way to find them all and change them all at once?

Don

[theKiwi]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Roger,
I upload my GED to TNG pretty regularly and right now it's a fairly quick and automated process. I don't have to deal with any individual records/files at all. In looking at your writeup, it sounded like you have to go in and correct the collection membership (eg. headstones, etc.) for individual media files. Or is there a way to find them all and change them all at once?

Photos and Documents (as long as you've identified the documents in TNG as being documents) are handled automatically by TNG on import.

At each import, even of a full GEDCOM file, only the new items are added - media that already exists in TNG is left alone.

The only concern is as you note with Headstones, or other "odd ball" things you might have set up on TNG - e.g. a separate collection for Census Records - these would import as Photos and Documents respectively, so you have to change them once - the first time it's imported.

So to make that easy, I have a convention I use for the Title of a Headstone photo in Reunion - I start the Title with "Headstone of ". Then it's easy in TNG Admin to do a search for

Photos with a title containing Headstone

Once they're all found, you can with a few clicks transfer them all the the Headstones collection.

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Transferring media from Reunion to TNG

Thanks, Roger. I guess I didn't realized that a full GEDCOM import that replaced all existing data would not clobber existing media - but now that I think about it, I've been manually adding media for years and it never gets clobbered. I guess as long as the media links for existing stuff don't create another link I'm fine.