keeping my photos in the media folder?

[reggoboy]

Hi folks,

Today I ran the Multimedia Report after I noticed some odd things, and it showed that recently added photos were not in the normal media folder. They were still pointing to the desktop or whatever folder the image was in when I dragged it into the Reunion app. The recent work was done on the Mac app (not iPhone), but I move between two Macs using Dropbox. Not sure if the latter is relevant.

Anyway, under Settings > Folders > Multimedia, "Other folder..." is selected and the value looked right, although the full path does not fit in the window, and the window is not resizable, so I couldn't confirm. But when I "Choose Other Folder", it doesn't open up to the right place, making me think that it was pointing to something that didn't exist anymore?? I did reselect the correct folder just in case, and now when I press the button, it takes me right there.

But what does this setting do? My hope was that it would MOVE any imported multimedia to that location, so everything stays in the right place. But I am confirming that even imports done now, with that value reset, are just linking to their current location (usually the desktop), rather than being consolidated to the media folder I have specified. Can someone clarify what this button does?

Any in any case, is there a way to tell Reunion to always move (or at least copy) linked multimedia to the specified folder so it's all together? Otherwise, if it's in a folder that's not in my dropbox, then when I open on the other Mac, the media links are dead.

Thirdly, is there a way to consolidate existing media into this folder? I saw a feature under Reports > Multimedia Usage > [select] > Hammer > "Copy files to new folder". But whatever that does, it does NOT change the link to point to the new folder. What I want is a single button that finds everything that's not in Folder X and just moves it to Folder X while updating all Links. Is there a tool for that?

Thanks!!

Dave

[reggoboy]

No takers?

[dwkiefer]

I'm not aware of a way to have Reunion move media files. The multimedia setting under folder preferences allows you to choose which folder's contents will be shown when you use the "Add" button to add multimedia items.

[reggoboy]

Thanks for the reply.

The Reunion Mobile app already handles this perfectly: any media you add ends up in the Reunion library, no matter where it comes from. But the Mac app leaves pointers to your original location, even though that location may often be the desktop, some temp folder, or a friend's thumb drive that will returned to them (and break your media). Leaving media files all over random directories and drives is a great way to break your Reunion library, especially after a Mac upgrade, changing drives, etc.

Apple's Music app has a feature to handle precisely this problem, and it's been there probably for 2 decades at this point: it will consolidate your music library by finding all the random song locations that you have "linked" to your music library, and move/copy those files into the core music library folder, so everything is in one place. This is also essentially if you ever want to move it (which you will, at some point), such as to an external drive.

I guess I thought Reunion already had this, but maybe I'm wrong. It's certainly better than nothing that there's a report to show us where the files are linked to, so we can fix them by hand.