Batch delete & move text around in Windows
Hello new boy here.
I have searched on this forum but not been able to recognise what I am looking for. I bet it’s there but I can’t see it, sorry.
Basically I need to batch delete numbers and move some text around in Windows file names. I can’t find a software way of doing this with music taggers or rippers (anyone know?) so it looks like I will need to use Windows.
I’m ripping CDs to flac files. I can see the files in the CD folders using Windows Explorer with a standard Windows 7 laptop. At the moment I don’t want to do anything with the music or any tags that are referred to in point 7. below, it is just the file names.
Ordinarily the music tracks can stay in their CD/album format but when it comes to Singles that just happen to be on random compilation CDs, that won’t work. There are many with 4 or 5 instances of the same track but pre-selecting the wanted tracks and ripping only those would be far too mind-blowing.
So, getting all the tracks together into alphabetical order (ideally by song title) would make it easier for me to identify the unwanted tracks and delete them. But, as you would expect, the track file names show the track numbers e.g. 05_Buddy_Holly_-_That'll_Be_The_Day.flac.
The least I need to do is batch delete ALL the number prefixes like 05_ or 5, up to about 30 per CD but what would be even better would be to invert the file names so they show the song title first e.g. That'll_Be_The_Day_-_Buddy_Holly.flac, (I’ve placed ‘_-_’ between artist and song but that’s not essential).
As far as I understand it, none of these changes affect how the music is viewed on the player.
Here’s how I see it being worked:
1. Rip the umpteen CDs in full with the tracks all auto-identified like the example above.
2. Move all the resulting music files from their ‘CD’ folder to a single Window’s folder.
3. Remove the track number pre-fixes (01_, 02_ or 1, 2 etc.) and if possible change the file names so that the titles appear at the beginning.
4. Use Sort in Windows folders so that the tracks fall into alphabetical order by artist or better still by song title.
5. Delete all repeats (except versions by other artists) now grouped together.
6. Select the remaining flac files and place these in folders called: Singles A to F, Singles G to L, etc. with about 25 tracks on each (or one giant ‘album’ with all the singles on it).
7. Use something to name/tag the final collection/s so they are identified with their new ‘albums’ (using dBpoweramp or mp3tag?) rather than their original CDs and are number-tag them in their new play-order. The players will still ‘see’ the artist and hopefully the tracks will be searchable.
8. Move the results back to the music store.
Sorry this is such long post but I have tried to make it so I’m not wasting your time with half a story. Even so I bet I have forgotten something obvious. I really hope you can help with steps 3 and 4 and if there’s a genius out there who knows about the other stuff, that would be great.
Do you think Bulk Rename Utility can help with this and if yes, what steps should I take? The codes and formula look a bit daunting.
Thanks,
Dave