Rootsmagic Media Gallery - (a critical look)

The Media Gallery is a new feature which was introduced with the release of Rootsmagic 4 and it's a great concept. Most users will realize that the main problem with any new feature is that is only really gets developed to it's full potential once users start to use it and there are a number of items starting to repeat on the Rootsmagic user forum which deserve highlighting.

Firstly an overview in the screen shot to the left of some of the fundamental thoughts which come immediately to mind when using the Rootsmagic Media Gallery.

The gallery is great if you only have a small number of media attachments but once your collection grows you soon find the difficulties working within the present structure. I will outline my thoughts below in more detail on where this could work better especially with large collections of images and scans.

Many years ago I worked with two other researchers on a one name study and collectively we were building a large collection of document scans. We soon realized that we were duplicating lots of images due to slightly different naming conventions or more likely just a freehand undisciplined approach to naming files. We were forced to stop and rethink our whole approach to file naming and agree a format we could all adhere to.

We did agree and whilst is may not be perfect is has served me well for the last ten years. The naming convention achieved sorting and also some categorization for searching. Once I combined this into my own folder structure I had the virtual filing cabinet which I very much needed. A couple of examples of the file structure we chose are below with a brief explanation :-

smith-john,1900-jan-29-(b)  - (birth registration document)
smith-john,fellows-margaret,1920-feb-14-(m)    - (marriage registration document)
smith-john,1970-sep-12-(obit)    - (copy of obituary)

The structure is quite simple but the key is that many searchable components exist within the file name. Also placing like documents into specific surname or document type folders achieves a useful grouping through Windows Explorer sort on the file name grouping duplicates for easy recognition.

Enhancement #1 - Help deal with Media Gallery duplication
Providing some user file naming convention is in place it would be very useful if when the surname or whatever suits the file naming convention was typed, Rootsmagic Media Gallery moved directly to that alpha level within it's current file catalogue. This would help greatly in reducing file duplication where the user is tempted just to add the file again due to the difficulty in finding the existing entry.

Another way to keep the gallery accurate would be a small utility behind a menu option to reconcile the Media Gallery so duplicate entries are effectively merged. This can be achieved now through exporting the complete file to gedcom and importing it again but it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Enhancement #2 - Target the Fix broken links utility scope
A small utility was introduced after Rootsmagic 4 release which searched for files which had moved location and restored the broken media links. This was a very welcome utility but at present it searches the complete computer and in my case finds various duplicates in archive folders on other drives. Several forum posts have already suggested that we need the scope of the Fix broken Links search to be user targeted. Very simple enhancement, just bring up the folder select dialogue and the user can select whatever drive letter they wish, a folder (in my case ...my documents\genealogy), My Computer or My network Places for that matter.

Enhancement #3 - Show additional file information
Rootsmagic Media Gallery currently has a load of free space in the right hand pane labeled "Media Properties". The only information this currently holds in the main Media Gallery view is the path and filename. This pane does hold further caption information in the Media Album view like caption etc but could display important and useful information about the actual file in Media Gallery view.

There is room for a lot of development here which could also evolve to the finding or certain files by metadata but for now I would be happy to see the simplest information like Title, Subject, Tags, Comments etc. which are already available in through Windows and file properties. Further development could take this a stage further to editing the image properties from within Rootsmagic to assist in the maintenance of a quality media collection. Once meaningful metadata is contained in image files this can also be used to find files with a particular focus not contained within the file name itself.

As media galleries grow users will need more information to find files than the best thought out file naming convention can ever hold so I believe it is important that genealogy programs develop in tune with modern image handling techniques to provide whatever help is needed and ease the difficulties of managing large image libraries.

Enhancement #4 - Show me what it not linked to RM

After dealing with all these files which are linked to your Rootsmagic database what about all those files which are on your hard drive in your media folders which are not linked, we might as well call them orphans. Rootsmagic needs to be like the librarian for your media collection and unless a file is linked then there is no reference to it within RM. Also I believe all electronic documents available should be linked to there respective individuals in some way to provide a complete reference. In other words when you are researching John Smith, all the documents pertaining to John Smith should be immediately available.

Believe it or not this is relatively simple to achieve, Rootsmagic already has a table (list) of what media files are currently linked to the database so comparing this table to what files are in a user specified folder on the hard drive is a simple task. Say you have the folders on your hard drive as Smith > Births etc., running this proposed utility and selecting Smith > Births as the target folder would produce a list of files in that folder which are not currently linked to Rootsmagic. This would effectively provide users with a To-Do list of files which need to be linked and help make the database complete, the goal being no files being unlinked. This type of utility within RM would be a big wish for me as in the modern world new images and files come to me much quicker than I can ever hope to link them to Rootsmagic.

The images to the left are from a utility developed by another RM user which analyses both the gedcom file and the selected folders on the users hard drive and makes a comparison highlighting anomalies in different colours. Because this is an external program working on the gedcom file is it easy to use side by side with RM making the necessary corrections as you go.

Enhancement #5 - Add the option to Fit Height & Width on View/Edit menu

When the View/Edit button is clicked or any image in the Media Gallery is double clicked you enter the Edit Media window from where you can perform some simple image tasks. Bigger tasks should really be handled externally in a program specifically designed for the task, after all Image Editing programs do not do genealogy.

When I enter this window it is invariably to View the Media and Rootsmagic could help here with a couple of fairly standard options like Fit Width and Fit Height. Not all images are a nice easy 6:4 format and long portrait images like newspaper columns and long landscape images like certifications are very common and need to be catered for.

The other shortcoming I would highlight here is the lack of cursor control for scrolling the image with the arrow keys and this has also been mentioned on the Rootsmagic Forum. The final pretty standard image functionality would be the "hand" on image where the image can be clicked and dragged to the desired position with the mouse.