Thursday, October 27, 2011

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 12: How Big a Book Can It Make?

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I made a four generation Ancestral Families Book using Family Tree Maker 2012 in earlier posts - see Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 10: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 1  and Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 11: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 2.

I wondered how big a book of this nature that I could make, and how long it would take, and how large the resulting book files would be.  Here are the results of my project:

I used the same Book format in a seven generation book and a ten generation book as I used in the four generation book.  Note that the Endnotes were not included in the Book pages (as reported in Post 2).

1)  Four-generation book project:

*  Number of pedigree chart (four generations on each page) pages: 1
*  Number of "Ahnentafel Report" pages: 33 (including Endnotes)
*  Number of index pages:  1
*  Time to create "Ahnentafel Report:"  20 seconds
*  File Size of PDF Book:  3,089 kb
*  File size of  RTF Book: 25,151 kb

2)  Seven generation book project:

* Number of pedigree chart (four generations on each page) pages: 8
* Number of "Ahnentafel Report" pages: 155 (including Endnotes)
* Number of index pages:  7
* Time to create "Ahnentafel Report:"  2 minutes
*  Time to create Index:  4 minutes
* File Size of PDF Book:  5,513 kb  (not including Endnotes)
* File size of RTF Book: not done

3)  Ten generation Book project:

* Number of pedigree chart (four generations on each page) pages: 57
* Number of "Ahnentafel Report" pages: 884 (including Endnotes)
* Number of index pages: (not enough memory to do this task)
* Time to create "Ahnentafel Report:"  8 minutes
* Time to create Index:  (not created)
* File Size of PDF Book:  18,554 kb (not including Ahnentafel Report or Index)
* File size of RTF Book: not done

In the ten generation Book project, the exported PDF file included only the Title Page, Table of contents, Media Item, Pedigree Charts, and Index (for the Pedigree Charts only).  There was apparently not enough memory to include the 884 page Ahnentafel Report and the Index that included that report. 

I decided to create a nine generation Book project, with these results:

* Number of pedigree chart (four generations on each page) pages: 57
* Number of "Ahnentafel Report" pages: 451 (including Endnotes)
* Number of index pages: 24 pages
*  Time to create chart:  30 seconds
* Time to create "Ahnentafel Report:"  3 minutes
* Time to create Index:  27 minutes
*  Time to create Table of Contents:  11 minutes (before stopping)

This Book gave me the "Note enough memory to do this task" message during creation of the Table of Contents.  However, it showed me the Table of Contents after the message.  When I tried to Export the file to PDF, the Book contained only the Title Page and the Table of Contents.  A Preview of the Book took minutes to tell me that the program was Not Responding and I cancelled the work. 

Frankly, this is a major disappointment to me.  I have over 13 generations of known ancestors in several of my ancestral lines and I wanted to make books for each of my grandparents.  I do have quite a few Notes that I want to include, and have many more pages of Notes to enter into my database.  Apparently, a Book project with over 400 pages (my approximation) is not quickly or easily created using Family Tree Maker 2012, at least with my computer memory (4 gb total memory, about 1.7 gb available memory, and FTM 2012 was using up to 700 mb to run during this process, and used 100% of my CPU).  

I may use RootsMagic 4 to create a similar book for comparison purposes, and to see if it can handle my book creation requirements. 

Please note that I am not trying to bash Family Tree Maker 2012 in these reports.  I have done similar tests and reviews on many other genealogy software programs describing my experiences and expressing my opinions.  I am trying to explore the software, find things that I like, and things that need improvement, in hopes of finding the "perfect software" for my needs, and to provide counsel to my readers and society colleagues.   I think I understand how difficult it is to create software that is as complex as the genealogy programs are with all of the features expected and desired by the software users, and I'm frequently awestruck by the products.

See all posts in this series at Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 Compendium.

1 comment:

VacaGrammy said...

I can appreciate your attempt to do a many generation book, perhaps you should do more than one (a series??). I started putting together one for one of my lines(maternal) but without all the families (just a few generations) it showed over 700 pages! Definately do not want to write another WAR & PEACE length book! have given up for awhile... need to put more "meat on the bones" of my relative stories!