Ancestry Media Download EXCLUSIVE

The 5.5 version had support for encoding multimedia in hexadecimal form as part of the file. (See Appendix E) But that feature was eliminated in the defacto 5.5.1 standard. It made HUGE files that were too unmanageable for the data storage media of the time.

I had cause to upload an archived Tree to Ancestry.

Everything went fine, except that the media items which had been in the Ancestry Gallery for various Profiles were missing.

I downloaded the Tree back to my PC and the Gallery items were all there in the downloaded media folder.

Ancestry Media Download

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Many people use the database on their computer as the master file, upload that to ancestry for hints with or without media but manually add any new finds to the computer file not to ancestry. Then you can sync up and not mess up your master file. It sounds like you worked mainly in the ancestry website and only recently started using a genealogy program on your computer which may change how best to work.

I bit the bullet and upgraded to RM8.

I loaded my Tree into RM8, converted it to the new format, and fixed the broken links to the media (only 308 media items found rather than 311 in the Media folder, but I can live with that).

I converted my archived Tree to RM8 format - 308 media items all linked correctly.

Uploaded it to Ancestry - everything looked great, even the profile pictures were in place.

Downloaded it back to RM8.

And there are 250 media items.

Though the user created items (such as photographs) are all there now.

Similar problem when uploading any but a tiny tree to ancestry from RM8 if media are included. RM8 seems to time out, give meaningless error messages and generally be useless. Long running bug with no apparent interest in a fix.

Have begun playing with it. My question relates to the tree sharing feature and Media. Media all loaded fine - loaded to one file - my personal preference is to separate out the media by type - but that is not my question.

Do you happen to know if there is a way to merge duplicate media? In the one I just did, the census record was attached to 3 people in the same family, each with their own fact in ancestry. I know have 3 copies of the same media in my RM file. (Maybe the guide will say how to prevent it in the first place

Yep, I managed to synch my ancestry tree with Family Tree Maker on my laptop. All the media files got copied to a local folder as part of this synch, so I was then able to FTP the entire contents of this folder to my TNG site. As the references to individual files were in the GEDCOM, all the links to individuals remained, however TNG did redirect some of the links from the photos subfolder to documents, histories, headstones photo's etc. This tended to be based on the file extensions of the attachents (.jpg, .pdf, .docx etc.), but was easy to re-organise.

In order to answer your question, I need to clarify how data exists on ancestry.com. There are two major categories of Media type data on Ancestry: stuff you upload to your tree, and stuff you attach to your tree.

Stuff you upload goes into your personal Media Gallery (eg. Photos, Stories, Audio, Video). Stuff you attach to your tree is saved and cataloged in a central location so that anyone can link to a single copy of it.

This extension downloads stuff from your personal Media Gallery. I believe you are asking if it can be modified to download stuff you have merely linked to.

Technically yes, it probably could be. Here is why it will not be. In order to find a list of all such linked items it would have to open up every single record in your tree, from a time perspective that is just not feasible, no user would be interested it sitting through something that was doing that unless they had a really small tree.

The other reason this is a bad idea is that linked data is not your data, it could be removed or changed at anytime, you have no control over it. I have a standard in my trees of taking a screen shot of census records and uploading them to my personal media gallery which this extension can then download and backup. Once I do this the data is mine, Ancestry.com cannot randomly change the data, or lock me out of it if they want to start charging me to see that particular census record in the future.

Does that answer your question and possibly give a solution?

thank you Jereme! I downloaded over 850 images in less than one hour saving them as tmp files. It doesn't seem to be able to download stories as easily but perhaps I am missing a step. When it downloads stories it also saves them as tmp files but I can't open them. Am I missing something? thanks for all your work and for sharing your extension to ancestry users

I just published an update that works on .ca for me. It should also allow the .co.uk to work which was not working before.

it looks like any of the ancestry websites can be logged into with your normal username and password. So a user of a different domain can always log into the .com version to use this extension. It looks like the .com version would show up in your native language.

I appreciate the offer, however this script is not targeted at a school audience or the ChromeOS. Most people doing significant ancestry research are using traditional desktop computers where they can store all their research.

Yes, it is normal for the script to download those .csv files. They are used to store meta data about the files being downloaded that I am unable to put in the filename of the file itself during download.

The main purpose for this script is simply to allow me to backup my ancestry files on my Windows computer. I just released it in case anyone else had the same need.

I download the app today. I am on media files, and hit download. It copied the first picture in csv file and only the first picture. csv is all text...how do I get it to continue on the next picture and how do I get it in something other than csv? thanks

I just updated my Chrome, and I am now seeing the same issue. It is redirecting to the first image instead of downloading it.

It is possible this is a Chrome issue, or an ancestry issue, you could try rolling back to an earlier version of Chrome, which does not sound fun.

Otherwise, as soon as I get time I will try to figure out the issue and fix it.

If you are a javascript developer, all Chrome extensions get downloaded to your computer upon install, which gives you the source code, and you can modify and re-package the extension on your own.

It looks like ancestry.com has made two recent changes to their site. The first change is that they started using a separate subdomain to serve up their images. This breaks the javascript i was using.

However, in doing this change, they also seem to have broken their own site. Clicking on the image in ancestry.com no longer brings it up for me.

I think we are going to have to wait until they fix their site and things settle down to see if there is going to be an option to bring my plugin back to life.

.au is probably not one of the supported domains. Currently ancestry.com has changed their structure taking advantage of a new security protocol introduced into Chrome which breaks this extension.

I have not had time to find a successful hack around this. At the moment it looks like it really will have to be a hack to reduce browser security if I am ever able to get it working again.

Hi, Jereme,

I've just downloaded your extension and followed the instructions for downloading photos from ancestry.com. When I click on "Download Media" (after having navigated to the ancestry.com media photos page), nothing happens. Any ideas?

Hi - great extension. Unfortunately I'm having same problem that it always starts downloading on page 1 of the photos even after pre-selecting a later page. Also, the csv file shows 24 files for the page but only the first 13 files actually download then it moves on to next page. I am on extension version 0.131 and tried logging into both ancestry.co.uk and ancestry.com (same behaviour). Thanks in advance for any help.

Screen scraping is a pretty general term, it sounds like you need to refine your search better. As long as your "save as" activity is targeted at the ancestry media files that this extension says it was made for, then it should do exactly what you are doing only in an automated mass fashion.

The definition of screen scraping is not limited to screen capture programs, in fact the term is typically not used for such programs. Screen scraping deals much more with parsing and combing through unstructured data on a website and taking actions based on it.

"screen scraping" = "the action of using a computer program to copy data from a website."

If someone who actually knows, uses and likes the extension came up with a good description that would appeal to its user base. I would be interested in that.

That would be AMAZING as an upgrade!!!!!!!! I managed to successfully use your Chrome extension to download all of the media on my Ancestry account. And I was able to find this page in regards to the data GRAMPS required ( -project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_4.2_Wiki_Manual_-_Manage_Family_Trees:_CSV_Import_and_Export). But unfortunately, that's about maxing out my skills. THANK YOU, for all that you've done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i have no indication other than "stop downloading" that media is being downloaded, when i first hit the download button, i saw in bottom right corner caching, connecting to facebook and then nothing. i see now download indication from download in chrome, nor was i asked where to put the download. i am using chrome on mac os mojave. thanks

Reading through this blog I am still not up to speed on what has been achieved. Obviously media is stored on my local PC. Fine. If I do this will I then be able to upload this stored data automatically into Legacy9. I am trying to have my family trees in my possession rather than being tied to Ancestry.com. Just wondering what the second stage in this process would be if I hitch my wagon to Legacy9 rather than ancestry.com. ff782bc1db