Preparing a Taxonomy for Import into Mediagraph

Mediagraph Support

This discussion started as a conversation on Slack, but it is going to be relevant to other Mediagraph account admins, so we are trying to move it here. I will try keeping it in the original posts. as I transfer. PK

From Brian:
Before I start moving too many files from Lightroom into MediaGraph, I’m making an effort to clean up my Lightroom Keyword List.  It’s a complete mess with random keywords floating around everywhere.  My goal is to import the .txt file I use for photomechanic into Lightroom so that I have a neatly organized keyword tree.  (I may consider taking PhotoMechanic out of my workflow with the introduction of MediaGraph).  The problem I’m running into is that Lightroom won’t accept my list for some reason.  I’ve run into an issue with my .txt keyword list.  Lightroom is telling me that my .txt file contains corrupt data.  Some google searching has led me to discover that this may be because there are commas being used on the list.  I ran some tests with and without the use of commas and it looks to be true. If so, I’m looking for suggestions on what to use instead of commas.  Another important aspect to this is that I want to be sure that whatever I use will also be readable by MediaGraph when I import the same list into it.  Perhaps it’s as simple as replacing all commas with semicolons.  Please advise.

P.S. If possible, it could be helpful if you could share an example of a .txt keyword file that you know works perfectly between Lightroom and MediaGraph.  Thank you.

Here is a link to that document.

Comments

2 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Mediagraph Support
    From PK

    Brian, this is a good thing to do at this point.
    Yes, it makes sense that LR is rejecting commas in the list, since commas are generally treated as keyword separators in many software packages. We do allow them. Note that colons and semicolons are also frequently treated as separators. I would use a dash instead.I looked through your list and have some other suggestions. It looks like commas are used mostly in two ways. - one is to put the specific content before the general content so it alphabetizes like: “Education and Communication, College of” and the other is to group synonyms. “Career Services, Career Development”. Both of these can be eliminated in Mediagraph if you like.The alphabetization issue is less of an issue with MG for several reasons. The first is that the term is much more discoverable in MG when searching for a term in the middle of the phrase. If you search  “Education and Com” or “Communication” in the general search box you would see the result “College of Education and Communication”.
    The second is that the visible taxonomy would allow users to navigate to the list of Colleges pretty easily.As to the synonyms, we support synonyms in keywords, and this is compatible with Lightroom’s support. I don’t know about Photomechanic. However, I think that as part of a general cleanup, you may want to do this:
    1. Remove synonyms from the PM list.
    2. You can add them to the keyword in Lightroom, or skip that step and just add them in MG. If you have a list of the ones you stripped out, it would only take a few minutes to do this.
    Some other notes:
    • I can do a trial import to an empty MG account to verify your full list before you import it to your account. That’s how I found all the duplicate keywords.
    • We support stemming, so there is no need for singular and plural.
    • This list was written for the photographer to use when keywording files. It’s not exactly how I would configure it for general users to discover content.
    • the Colleges should probably be a top-level item, since that’s going to be one of the most popular categories to filter by. Don’t hide it in Academics.
    • Other good top level items include People, Locations. Athletics, Administration, Events an maybe “General Keywords” or some such.
    • Department/Office seems to include both administrative departments and academic departments (which are at least somewhat duplicative of the Colleges branch).
    • And keep in mind that you can rearrange the tag tree branches once it is imported into MG, and decide that you can remove any of it you like from the tree, while keeping the keywords visible to users.
    And one final thing. Keeping multiple applications in sync is really difficult, if not impossible over time. You’ll end up adding new keywords in MG that won’t be in LR. That’s unavoidable as you get taggers and other admins working in MG, use the visibility settings, and as you gather files from different sources than your LR catalog. And there are some real limitations that LR has in keeping a keyword tree in sync with anything,  including other Lightroom instances. . So don’t drive yourself too crazy thinking you need perfect matches between PM, LR and MG.I’m happy to chat about this if you have questions or just want to bounce ideas off.Lastly, I’d like to move this conversation to the brand new Forum on Zendesk, our Help application. This discussion will be helpful to other accounts who are looking to do similar modifications to workflow. Are you okay with that?  If so, I’ll send an invitation to the forums.
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  • Comment author
    Mediagraph Support

    From Brian

    Thanks for the thorough reply, Peter.  I must run now, but I will review your suggestions and recommendations soon.  And yes, please share with Zendesk.

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