Manual (v7):p102-p107. Manual (v6):p99-p103
For a Win Mac CD with Win/OS9/OSX browsers, here's the folder layout I use - the CD is the contents of 'this is your root folder':
With theCollect feature in v6/v7 and the Burn To disc feature introdudced in v7, Portfolio takes most of the drudgery out of the task. However, if you want the CD to Autoplay on Windows OS you'll need to do a little extra work.
The Desktop version of the Portfolio client has no support or scripting, which means it is a two pass process to update the paths on the Catalogues.
First, burn a CD in your intended format using only the original files in the same folders as for the finished product. Importantly, the CD's volume name or 'label' must also be exactly the same as you will use for the final CD. Test you can read the CD properly. Now open the hard disk version of the Catalogue to be used on the CD and with the new CD in the CD drive, update all the paths to use the CD locations.
The second stage is to rebuild the CD but this time with all the assets on it, browsers, Catalogue(s), etc. Previewing will now call the originals as you've just set the paths to correctly point to files on the CD and not hard disk.
Once you've tested the second CD, you can throw away the first one.
The v5 Network version of the Portfolio client has the added benefit of supporting scripting. Scripting is described in more detail elsewhere in the FAQ but here you will use one of the pre-made scripts that ships with Portfolio v5. The scripts are not installed by default. The Scripts menu is only visible when you have a catalogue open in the client. If you see no such menu, you need to install the scripting extras package found on your installation CD or downloaded from the Extensis downloads site.
The script you use is the "Change Path" script. It will be listed as this (or a similar sounding EXE filename) in the Scripts menu. The menu will look something like the one below:
The script operates across all records in the Catalogue so don't worry about selecting files beforehand. If you are totally new to scripts I'd suggest you do a quick test run with a copy of the Catalogue as you can potentially make a big mess with this seemingly innocuous tool. Open the script and you see this:
In the top box you put the entire section of the path you wish to change including the Drive letter or volume name. In the example below we are changing the path of all records pointing to the D:\CD Staging\Content\Photos\ folder (and its sub-folders). We are replacing the top string with the path segment \Content\Photos\ on the CD with the volume label "DEMOCD":
Note the differing syntax for 'attaching' the CD label to the folders - you just put a backslash (\) after the label, then the top level folder name and proceed as before. From experience, you get fewer problems if both strings end with a complete folder name terminated with a backslash. If you want to change "...\My pix\" to "...\Your pix\" don't use "...\My" and "...\Yours" as you can get unexpected results (here "..." represents the rest of the preceding path you put in).
When you are ready, click the 'Go' button (or 'Close' to cancel back to Portfolio). When running, the script gives very little feedback. If no records in the Catalogue match your 'find' text string - normally due to a typo - you get this:
Otherwise, the script runs through the Catalogue updating the fields. With a large number of records this can take some time - be patient! At the end of the run you get this message:
..of course the number of changed records will vary from run to run. It is worth noting this figure as a quick cross check. If you expected 250 records to be updated and the script ending reports 120 something has most likely not gone as expected. This neatly leads to the next point - do check a few specimen paths before carrying on with the CD burn. You obviously can't check a preview as you don't have a CD yet but open a new gallery and display the path field data, checking it is changed as you expected.
There is an alternative method that can be done on a Mac using Toast. Once you have created your temporary disk partition in Toast and given it a name, drag and drop your image files and catalogue into the partition. Then open the catalogue residing on the partition in Portfolio. Now drag and drop the image folder from the Toast partition into the Portfolio catalogue window. Choose the option to Update Unconditionally but in the 'Update' options UNCHECK extract thumbnails, UNCHECK regenerate thumbnails and UNCHECK extract keywords and descriptions (you may lose all your keywords if you don't! ). Once Portfolio has updated all the items, close Portfolio, then burn your CD.
If all this leaves you a little queasy and looking for something 'simpler', you can always try the two pass method that users of the Network version are forced to employ as they have no access to scripts. It is described here. Otherwise, move on to Autorun and other multi-OS CD considerations.
Question: Setting up a CD Catalogue - Preparing the catalogue [FAQ00183.htm]
Last Update:- 01 June 2006
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