Editing GEDCOM (section)

===Multimedia===
The GEDCOM standard supports the inclusion of multimedia objects (for example, photos of individuals).<ref>GEDCOM Standard 5.5, p. 28.</ref>  Such multimedia objects can be either included in the GEDCOM file itself (called the "embedded form") or in an external file where the name of the external file is specified in the GEDCOM file (called the "linked form").  Embedding multimedia directly in the GEDCOM file makes transmission of data easier, in that all of the information (including the multimedia data) is in one file, but the resulting file can be enormous.  Linking multimedia keeps the size of the GEDCOM file under control, but then when transmitting the file, the multimedia objects must either be transmitted separately or archived together with the GEDCOM into one larger file.   Support for embedding media directly was dropped in the draft 5.5.1 standard.<ref>Draft GEDCOM Standard 5.5.1, p. 6.</ref>