CCC5.5 Link manager (After Effects, InDesign, Premiere Pro)
- Mathias Mattson (MHM)
All the DAM assets used in InDesign documents are linked, and their overview can be seen in the Links panel. Up-to-date links are displayed as a blue icon attached to the image on the page.
The assets used in InDesign remain in the Digizuite DAM and will be available to other people as links when the document is sent to them. It is therefore not necessary for the users to send their documents together with all the images used in them. The recipient needs access to the DAM, however, to gain the ability to update links.
When opening a document in InDesign, the system checks all the links to the DAM. If the asset has been replaced in the DAM or the assets are missing on the user's local hard disk, the system will show a notice with a prompt. The connector will prompt you with the option to direct you to the link manager to relink the missing links.
The link manager handles the management of assets. The link manager can be accessed from the menu under the link manager.
The following message will be displayed in case no assets or files are added to the InDesign document:
If the user inserts assets/files into the InDesign document, clicking the refresh button will result in it showing the inserted assets/files in the list.
In the link manager, the user can see the table with all the inserted assets in the InDesign document.
The link manager contains the following elements:
A refresh button to refresh the page in case of a change. Every time a new asset is inserted in the InDesign document while the link manager is open, the refresh button has to be clicked to update the table
A dropdown to handle the multi-selection of assets in the table
A table to display all the inserted assets in the InDesign document
Each table row has the following information:
“Asset” - the asset name and the image of the asset
“Ext.” - extension
“Quality” - the quality of a specific asset can be changed
“Status” - the current status of the link.
Status
The status column can have 4 different states as displayed in the screenshot above. The user can hover the mouse pointer over each icon to display the description of the state.
The status column shows if a link is broken and if the asset is a local asset, meaning it will check if the specific path of the asset can be located on your computer.
The available status types:
a checkmark icon indicates that the link is both locally linked and DAM linked, i.e. everything is working correctly
a link icon indicates that the link is broken, which means that the local path on the user’s computer cannot be found, which can be fixed by simply relinking the link, as the asset had already been uploaded to the DAM
an upload icon indicates that the link is a local asset that can be uploaded to the DAM
a warning icon indicates that the link cannot be found from the local path on the user’s computer. This means that in order to fix this, the user needs to manually find the asset and replace it in InDesign document in order to achieve the download status.
Selecting assets
The table allows for the ability to select assets. They can be selected in two ways:
By manually clicking the asset in the first column of the table
By using the dropdown, where there are three options available:
Select all assets
Select all assets which have broken links
Select all assets which are local assets
Relinking, Uploading, Changing the quality
Depending on which assets have been selected, the buttons at the bottom of the page will change accordingly (see image below)
There are 5 states assets can be in:
Green checkmark - No issues: Change quality will appear
Yellow link - Local asset deleted: Relink and Change quality will appear
Yellow clock - DAM Center asset has a newer version: Relink and Change quality will appear
Red arrow - The asset exists on your computer, but not on the DAM Center: Upload
Red warning - The asset exists neither locally nor on the DAM Center: No button - the system cannot help you resolve this state
Relinking broken links
Select the assets with yellow links and/or yellow clocks, and press Relink.
When the assets with broken links have been linked again, the following prompt will appear:
Your link manager will refresh to reflect your changes:
Uploading an asset
Uploading assets can be done in two ways, i.e. by:
Manually selecting the assets with the upload icon
Using the dropdown to select all the assets that are local assets.
When one of the options has been selected, the Upload button becomes available.
If the InDesign document is not saved before clicking the Upload button, the following dialog will appear:
Two cases can occur when uploading an asset to the DAM:
The asset does not already exist in the DAM and it will be uploaded
The asset already exists in the DAM and a dialog concerning duplicates will be prompted.
The duplicates dialog contains the following elements:
A preview of the file the user is trying to upload and its path
All the duplicates which are already in the DAM
Button to choose the action for the specific asset
The number of assets that the user tried to upload, exists in the DAM.
The user has two options when clicking the Choose action button:
Upload as a new asset
Relink existing assets.
If the user wants to upload the asset as a new asset in the DAM, the Upload as a new asset button should be selected.
The next step is to click Next in order to handle the next asset in the queue.
If the user wants to relink the current asset with an asset in the DAM, the Relink existing asset button should be selected.
The next step is to select which duplicate asset should be relinked. The first duplicate asset will always be selected after the button is clicked.
The user can use the scrollbar or mouse scroll to browse through all the duplicates matching the specific asset.
Once the specific duplicate asset has been chosen to be relinked, the user can click the Next button.
Once all the assets in the queue have been processed, a dialog will display the number of assets that are being downloaded and relinked, as well as which asset is currently being processed.
When all the assets are downloaded and relinked, the following dialog will be prompted:
When the Close button is clicked, the table is automatically updated.
Changing the quality of an asset
Relinking broken links can be done in two ways, i.e. by:
Manually clicking on the text in the Quality column on a specific asset
Selecting all the assets that the user wants to change the asset quality on and then clicking the Change quality button at the bottom of the connector panel.
The dialog for clicking a specific asset will display the currently selected quality and all of the possible qualities the asset can be changed to.
For files bigger than ~5 MB or if the utilized upload speed is slow, it might take 1-2 minutes before the newly generated qualities are available for use in the DACCC.
If a quality option is not downloaded for the specific asset, then it will be downloaded and the asset quality will be changed automatically. Otherwise, it will be changed automatically.
The dialog for clicking the change quality button will display all the possible qualities that the assets can be changed to and automatically update them.
Link Manager Behavior in the different Adobe Products
After Effects
When files are inserted from the CCC then they are imported as a FootageItem
Files inside a Composition or a Folder will not be displayed inside the Link Manager
Premiere Pro
Files inside a Composition or a Folder will not be displayed inside the Link Manager