Best way to publish multimedia family history?

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chess-p40
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Best way to publish multimedia family history?

#1

Post by chess-p40 »

With the help of many family members, I have a moderate amount (hundreds of names) of genealogy information that I wish to make available to family members (on both my paternal and maternal sides of my family, as well as my wife's family) with the least effort and investment of time as possible. My major challenge is that I wish to include multi-media files (digital and scanned photos, videos, audio files, Adobe Acrobat documents, etc) *and* link these files to the appropriate individuals in a family tree format so that names and basic genealogical dates, info, and relationships can be easily viewed and traversed, with some kind of indication when additional multi-media information is available. If more information is desired about a particular person, the viewer can drill down (so to speak) to read personal histories, view photos, hear funeral talks, watch home video clips, or see scans of original handwritten documents in Acrobat format, or link to a web page URL related to this person, and then easily return to the family tree view. I started out using Personal Ancestry File (PAF) but discovered that it does not support Acrobat documents or URL links. I am also having problems figuring out how to create a directory structure of PAF data files and linked multi-media files on a hard disk and then transfer all this data onto a CD or DVD and have the linked files still be accessible when the drive letter and possibly the directory structure names change when the files are transferred to CD/DVD. For that matter, I am not sure that CDs/DVDs are the best publishing vehicle. However, the complexity of doing something like this via Internet web pages seems very daunting.

A large amount of extended family genealogical information related to my paternal line has been uploaded and is stored on myfamily.com, but there seems to be no way to associate or link multiple items of information about the same person, other than very coarse categories dedicated for different branches of the family tree. There also appears to be no family tree structure to traverse from one related family member to another or generation to generation. It is just a big database, with some limited categories. I have not found this website's search engine to be very helpful in finding information.

Another family member has attempted to solve this same publishing dilemma by distributing a CD containing an initial version of a small subset of family members where the family tree format is manually recreated by naming directories and sub-directories after family members, with all related multi-media content contained within the associated directory or folder. While this is relatively easy to do for 2 or 3 generations, it becomes more daunting for each additional generation added, especially when these family relationships already exist in the genealogical software database. Another down side is that the standard genealogical information about each person would have to be manually exported or copied from individual fields within a program like PAF and then pasted into a text file within each directory where it would have to be manually maintained, which violates the fundamental database management rule of not storing the same information in more than one location.

Uncertainty as to the best way to publish this information has delayed progress for several years and I am anxious to move forward.

Does anyone know if a program with these programs now exists? If not, does anyone know whether such a program is not in the pipeline? Does anyone have any experience with PhPGedView?

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to accomplish these objectives?
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mkmurray
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#2

Post by mkmurray »

chess wrote:A large amount of extended family genealogical information related to my paternal line has been uploaded and is stored on myfamily.com...
There is an updated version of the service that has been released, and I wonder if the newer version may have some improvements to fit your needs? I think they call it version 2.0.
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ClarkeGJ
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Hosting of Rich Media

#3

Post by ClarkeGJ »

Many website are hosting rich family media. We at FamilySearch are working with some of them to keep and correlate their data with our New FamilySearch Family Tree. This way simple pedigree information can be correlated with photos, stories, etc. However, commercial offerings of this correlated data is still at least 9 months away.
Gordon Clarke
FamilySearch DevNet manager
The_Earl
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PHPGedView

#4

Post by The_Earl »

I have used PHPGedView. It is a nice program, and would probably fill your needs. I don't know how much hacking you want to do, but it would even be possible to put it on a CD or DVD with Apache from portableapps.com.
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greenwoodkl
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#5

Post by greenwoodkl »

Does anyone internal to FCH know if there are plans to integrate the Life Browser app in beta in FS Labs into the nFS? This would be a good combination to provide this sort of functionality.
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ClarkeGJ
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Life Browser

#6

Post by ClarkeGJ »

We have just released for a few temple districts the New FamilySearch. The Life Browser could be modified to use ActionScript 3 libraries to call the yet-to-be released New FamilySearch API. The we could make a Life Browser than can coordinate with the New FamilySearch. Any Flex developers interested in this?
Gordon Clarke
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Kughes-p40
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Publish Multimedia and Link to Individuals and Families

#7

Post by Kughes-p40 »

I use TNG (http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php), which is a PHP/MySQL database for my family history. You can upload gedcoms, search for names, show pedigrees, show LDS information, add photos, add Acrobat PDF files, audio and video, add Google maps (that links to individuals), link the media to individuals or families, and much, much more. You can have it password protected, or not, and control the level of access that anyone can have that registers for a user account -- to living people, LDS data, or even edit rights. I have mine password protected since most of the stuff (all the family slides I'm scanning and restoring) I'm putting up right now has living people involved. It is a great product and makes it possible for me to share my mountains of stuff with my family.
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mkmurray
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#8

Post by mkmurray »

Kughes wrote:I use TNG (http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php)...
We appreciate the suggestion. However, I must make it clear that this is a retail product that is not affiliated with the Church in anyway. Use at your own personal discretion.
scion-p40
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#9

Post by scion-p40 »

Legacy might meet your needs. Version 7 was just previewed at the BYU genealogy conference. There are 2 mailing lists (that I know of) that support it. One is the official Legacy User's Group, & the other is a yahoo group specifically for those interested in making web pages. The standard version is free to download & is also available to FHCs. It uses PAF files, so there is no need to make a PAF gedcom to upload into Legacy. See http://www.legacyfamilytree.com & uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/WUL

BTW, I have no connection to Legacy other than using the software.
damarisfish-p40
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#10

Post by damarisfish-p40 »

Have you looked at Passage Express? They are at a lot of Utah FH Conferences doing their demonstrations....
http://www.passageexpress.com/index.php
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