I’m following this pattern of attaching Media to Citations and to Facts, for all of the reasons mentioned above. My question (hope) is, there must be an easier way to attach multiple Medias.
Here’s my scenario…I create a Fact, add a Citation, and drop Media on the Citation. Easy-peasy, especially when I’ve got a several media files to drop (multi-page artifact). However, to then add the Media to the Fact, I need to click Add Media one by one, searching for the names of the Media files I added when doing the Citation. I cannot multi-select the media files I want to add to the Fact. I don’t think I should drop the media files again as this will probably create duplicate media entries.
Actually, the drop does not produce duplicates. It’s very surprising that it doesn’t, but it doesn’t. Just to confirm it for yourself, try it once and then look in the main Media tab for that file (use the search box in the main Media tab). The media file should have one instance and two uses after the second drop.
DragNDrop method does not appear to have created duplicates – sometimes other methods can create duplicates (which can be hard to identify an straighten on in RM UI))
I failed to mention (and should have mentioned) that the Add New Media tool does actually produce duplicates. This has to be either a bug or else a poor design choice.
I knew that the Add New Media tool produces duplicates before I knew that the Drop New Media tool does not. For that reason, I was (pleasantly) surprised to discover that the Drop New Media tool does not produce duplicates.
yes this seems to have been what I have also found. I suspect the reason may have been to support either different notes or media titles at one point. However, I agree is poor design in that it basically impossible to figure which “MediaID” is linked to which one etc. (within RM UI).
One thing I discovered is that media that is embedded into a citation on Ancestry.com doesn’t come over when you sync with RM with either the fact or the citation – I will always have to return to Ancestry.com to view it. Census records are a good example. This is supposed to make Ancestry.com stickier for subscribers. (It does sync media in the Gallery, but not in the citations themselves.)
Call me paranoid, but who knows what business strategies Amazon.com will employ in the future. Before I retired, I was in the b2b media business and heavily involved with content management. As a general rule of thumb, we always advised clients to not build their business strategy exclusively on social media platforms for the simple reason that somebody else owns that platform and can change ownership and/or business policies that could put your own content management strategies at risk.
I view my tree facts and properly sourced citations as “my content” – and that means that I want to guarantee that I will always have access to my content – including images – through my personal database, which is on RM. So now, I download the media from Ancestry.com (or whatever site provides it), and upload it into both a fact and the citation in RM.
I totally agree with the overall thrust of your message about having your own copy of image files rather than relying on links to Web sites. But I don’t understand why you are not seeing media files come over from Ancestry into RM via TreeShare. It seems to work fine for me.
I confess that normally I don’t use TreeShare to bring media files from Ancestry into RM because I want to bring the media files into RM manually. But periodically I do test the TreeShare process to make sure I still understand how it works. So here was my most recent test.
I created a new (private) Ancestry tree containing just two people (well, it turned into four people before I was done).
The two people were Alva Peters who was born in 1870 in Tennessee and who died in 1942 in Tennessee, as well as his wife Sallie Cole who also was born in 1870 in Tennessee and who died in 1942 in Tennessee.
There were immediately a bunch of Ancestry hints - the shaky leaf hints you see in Ancestry. I was not doing any of this work at this point in RM.
I chose to approve the hint for their 1920 census entry. This added a 1920 Residence fact for each of them and it added the image of the 1920 census entry as a source for the Residence fact. It also added the two youngest of their children who were still living with them in 1920 and who were not yet married. That’s why I ended up with four people in the tree instead of two.
I created a new RM9 database by importing this four person tree from Ancestry. The image of the 1920 census entry came into RM just fine. The image was linked to the citation that TreeShare created from the Source in Ancestry
Therefore, the image is on my local hard disk. To see the image from within RM9, I do not have to go to Ancestry to see it because it is already on my hard disk and the image on my hard disk is already linked into RM9.
This has been my understanding of TreeShare from its inception and I have never seen the scenario I just described fail to bring over media files from Ancestry into RM. What is different about your scenario?
It seems to be working correctly for me now. I’m not sure why it wasn’t before, though. I will say that it has made me pay extra close attention to all the media images going back and forth.
Wow, this group is a great help. I wondering about this method of attaching media to the fact as well as to citation. After a quick search I found this thread and again I’ve learned more in 5 minutes than I will be able to rectify in 5 months adding all the media files I have so neatly stored away in citation to the actual fact! I have often wondered why I had to drill down into the citation to see the media file rather than having it upfront at the fact level. Thanks to all for the help. I also do agree that it would be nice to have the media files sorted by the date we can attach to each media file attachment, rather than having to sorth them all manually.