Preventing RH8 from importing AVI videos

[EuroMatt]

My colleague and I have a collection of training videos (AVIs) stored on a server and a webhelp manual published to another folder on the same server.  When we add hyperlinks to these vidoes in our manual, RoboHelp insists on copying the files from the server to our local drives. These AVIs are then duplicated when we generate and publish the webhelp.  Aside from the problem of it creating lots of redundant duplicates, it also means if a video is updated on the server, the manual is still pointing to its own, outdated copy - even if you regenerate.

In the thread javascript:;, Captiv8r mentioned that RoboHelp likes videos file to be in the same folder as the page using them, but is there any way to make it simply link to them, rather than downloading them into the project?

[MergeThis]

Actually, you should be doing the job for RH, not the other way around.

For example, if your output will be pointing to any external (external to the RH project) file, you should be copying the server-side file to an identical relative location on your local machine. Then:

1. Create the link to the file.
2. Reopen the link to check that RH has created the relative link.
3. Delete the external file.

Note that once the relative path to the external file has been established, the file is no longer needed on your machine. All that must be done is to establish the link exactly as it will appear in the output.

Good luck,

Leon

[EuroMatt]

I see what you're saying. On my local machine I should have a comparable folder structure to that of the webhelp and video server, so that my video links look something like this: ..\..\..\TrainingVideos\Exercise1.avi rather than \\mediaserver\TrainingVideos\Exercise1.avi?

[MergeThis]

Amen, brother.

Matter of fact, that's how we work a 42-project merged project with RoboSource Control. To link to a file in an "external" project, we Get the file (and its parent folder, of course) and point the link to that now-active-on-the-local-machine file.

Good luck,

Leon