Return to doc.sitecore.com

Media Conversion Tool - Installation, Configuration and User Guide

Introduction

The Media Conversion Tool allows you to convert media between a hard drive location and a Sitecore database, and vice versa. With this module you can select files and set the storage type to either a hard drive location or a Sitecore database.

All media items in sitecore are stored in one of two ways:

  1. As a file on a hard drive.
  2. As a blob field in the database

These methods of storage both have positive and negative characteristics and in different cases either method can be more appropriate than the other. With the help of The Media Conversion Tool it is possible to convert a part or all of the media content to whichever storage method is more appropriate.

Installation

The Media Conversion Tool is distributed as a standard Sitecore package; hence in order to start using it, you should install the package. Please, refer to the Installing Modules and Packages article if you are not familiar with the Sitecore standard Packager tool.

Configuration

The following data should be added to the <controlSources> section of web.config:

<controlSources>

………..

  <source mode="on" namespace="Sitecore.Modules.MediaConversionTool.Controls" assembly="MediaConversionTool" prefix="MCT" />

  <source mode="on" namespace="Sitecore.Modules.MediaConversionTool" folder="/sitecore modules/media conversion tool" deep="true" />

</controlSources>

User Guide

The UI consist only of a main and a progress page. On the main page you can select the items to be processed and define the conversion target which is a file or a database. By default only administrators and users who are in the Sitecore Client Developers role have access to this module. Click Ok when you have finished selecting the items you wish to process and you will the progress page which will show a progress bar. After the conversion process has finished you can return to the main page or exit.