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Multimedia Tab

Multimedia

Create gallery pages to showcase the multimedia files referenced in your GEDCOM file. Multimedia includes image, sound, video, and document files. You can generate four different types of galleries: Individuals, Families, Citations, and Bibliography.

If your genealogy program does not include multimedia when you export a GEDCOM file, you cannot take advantage of multimedia galleries. Check the documentation for your program to determine if it exports GEDCOM files that contain multimedia references. In some programs, you must enable a specific option to export multimedia.

Tab Meaning
Gallery Enable multimedia gallery processing.
Individuals Each individual can have a multimedia gallery. It can contain items from their "scrapbook" as well as items associated with the facts about the individual.
Families Family multimedia galleries can contain items from a family-level "scrapbook" and items associated with family-level facts.
Citations A gallery for source citations includes multimedia items associated with all footnotes on a given Family page. These are items defined at the source detail level.
Bibliography A gallery for a bibliography includes multimedia items associated with all source records. These are items defined at the source level.
Thumbnails Gallery pages show a collection of small thumbnail images.
Slides A slide page shows a larger view of a single thumbnail image.
Icons Display icons on the Index pages to indicate an individual has an associated multimedia gallery.
Portraits Display portraits of individuals or families directly on your family group sheets.

Multimedia File Processing

Your multimedia files can be very large in size, up to several Megabytes. If visitors to your website use a dial-up Internet connection, the delay to download large images can be significant. Even with high-speed broadband connections, some visitors may not be interested in viewing large files. Therefore GED-GEN automatically creates smaller, lower-resolution images of your image files to use as thumbnail images and slide page images.

Note

When you enable multimedia galleries, GED-GEN will take significantly longer to generate your web pages.

Converting and copying large images and files requires more processing time. Consequently GED-GEN will be slower in generating your web pages if you enable multimedia galleries. You will see each multimedia file name on the status dialog as it is processed.

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or website hosting service may limit the amount of space for your website. If you have several Megabytes of multimedia files, you may exceed your provider's space or bandwidth restrictions. The GED-GEN log file will indicate the total number and size of your multimedia files.

If you are making a CD-ROM or DVD containing your family group sheets and multimedia, you may have ample space.

Here are some suggestions to reduce the total size of multimedia items on your website.

Note

As with web pages, GED-GEN may overwrite identically named multimedia files. However, it will never delete multimedia files in the destination folder. Suppose you remove multimedia items from your scrapbooks after you generated your web pages, and you now re-generate your web pages. The multimedia items you removed may still exist in the destination folder even though they are no longer referenced.

You should carefully delete unused files in your destination folder to reduce the size of your website. Make a back-up copy first, before you delete any files.