Duplicate Search / Merge for Media (links)

From what I assume is Ancestry downloads I’ve gotten a lot of duplicate media, and I’ve been able to clean up a lot of it using dup checkers for media. This leads to broken links that can be fixed, but that also means there are duplicate records in the media table.

So using the media browser I can manually repair the:

30953_148179-00040 (30953_148179-00040).jpg

filename to:

30953_148179-00040.jpg

and while it would be nice to have an easier was to edit the name list that’s a fairly large ask. What wouldn’t be as difficult would be to have a merge function that would merge all rows in the media table (and references of course) where the paths are exact duplicates (i.e. two rows pointing to the same image).

This would be a handy addition to the new Tools panel in RM9.

Media duplication certainly proliferated with the introduction of TreeShare. So the need for detection and correction has risen, too. It was posted to the RM7 wishlist and I developed an outboard procedure that could be used by the technically adept in the interim. Unfortunately, the wish remains unfulfilled and the outboard procedure may need to br changed for versions later than 7.5. Here’s the writeup:
https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/media-duplicates/

I looked at your script some months back, but fixing the filenames in the database was (and still is) the priority for me. Cleaning up the actual duplicate files (I’m using GraphicConverter) is necessary because my TNG websites are low on space for images.

The image browser in RM9 is easier to scan an update the filenames to make the duplicate search practical. I’m hoping the RM team looks into expanding the Tools panel to include several maintenance functions for more advanced users, and to make some capabilities only previously available to advanced users more accessible for general users. The logic would be nearly identical to other duplicate search/merge processes they already have.

Yes, filenames is another issue and one I had addressed early in the life of TreeShare.
https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/treeshare-rename-cryptic-filenames-for-citation-media/

Would that development had addressed the shortcomings of RM’s media management that have been identified over more than a decade. Is RM9 now up to RM7 in that regard? RM8 was not.