Vivify: The GEDCOM Birth Date Estimator

Bring your ancestors to life today, with Vivify.

Vivify: The GEDCOM Birth Date Estimator will estimate a birth date for every person found missing one in your database. Vivify works by running your GEDCOM file through a battery of recursive, multipass, deep scanning algorithms designed to make the most accurate estimate possible.

Vivify is now available to the public as a free web service. Vivify uses the same GEDCOM Parser that is used by VGedX, my 100% compatible GEDCOM validator. Vivify, however, supports a special expanded GEDCOM dictionary that will recognize numerous vendor specific events and date formats giving it a distinct advantage over vendor specific birth date estimators, and makes it usable by virtually anyone with an exported GEDCOM file.

Vivify generates a report listing all persons for whom it was able to calculate an approximate birth date, and includes for auditing purposes the list of events it used to determine the date it estimated.

Vivify has several configurable options and parameters that can be adjusted to fine-tune your results.

Force Using Closest Estimate will signal Vivify to assign the closest estimated birth date calculated when conflicting dates prevent it from establishing a clean estimate. This will result in less than accurate estimates and should only be used when want all persons to be resolved regardless of their accuracy.

Assume Flourishing For All Vendor Specific Event Types allows you to specify that any events of an unknown event type that occur while a person is living also occurred while the person was flourishing. This is useful if you've added new event types to your database. Do not check this option if you use these new event types for children.

Export Updated GEDCOM File Vivify now supports adding the birth date estimates to your database, and exporting the updated database to a GEDCOM file. When selected, the resulting GEDCOM file will automatically be presented for download, and then deleted after. Users who choose this option will need to verify for themselves that the resulting GEDCOM file meets their needs. The easiest way to do this is to view the differences between your original and the downloaded file to make sure no other changes have been made. Besides adding the estimated birth dates, Vivify will also make corrections to line lengths as a normal course of exporting a GEDCOM file. Users should always retain their original file as a backup. The exported file is available "AS IS", no warranty or guarantee is provided.

Maximum Child Baptism Age is the maximum age at which a person was baptized or christened as a child. Adult christenings are not considered in this context.

Minimum Marriage Age is the minimum age that a person could have been married. Betrothals and Contracts are not considered in this context.

Maximum Wife's Marriage Age is the maximum age at which a woman could have been married.

Maximum Age Between Spouses is the maximum number of years of age between spouses.

Minimum Child Bearing Age and Maximum Child Bearing Age are the range of ages within which a woman could bear children.

Minimum Flourishing Age and Maximum Flourishing Age are the range of ages that a person is considered to be an adult and would be found containing adult attributes and events such as Nobility Title or Occupation.

Maximum Age (Life Span) is the maximum age at death of a person.

Maximum Event Age Error is the maximum error expected between an event and their known age. A common phenomenon in genealogical records results in persons being listed at the time of an event with an age that is not accurate. Making this value too narrow may prevent Vivify from being able to resolve conflicting dates preventing it from establishing an clean estimate.

Vivify supports saving and restoring your configuration options when signed in. Processing is relatively fast, however, it could take several minutes to process large or complex databases.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to chime in using the form provided below, and pleeeeease, for the love of saki, take a moment and give Vivify an honest >> review <<.

Happy Vivificating!
Tim Forsythe