Another "How do I".. Thanks in advance.

[Reinfinity]

I feel like an idiot asking this question but for the life of me, I can't figure out this one simple thing. After seeing how helpful everyone is here, I decided to quit killing myself trying to figure it out myself and just ask.

I have several thousand karaoke .mpg movie files. The filenames are listed in the following formats:

1. <Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name>.mpg
2. <Title> - <Artist or Artist LAST Name>, <Artist First Name>.mpg
3. <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name> - <Title>.mpg
4. <Artist or Artist LAST Name>, <Artist First Name> - <Title>.mpg

I would like for all files to be:
<Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name>
How can I do this?
How can I at least get all of the files containing commas to one area where I can work with them alone?
Thank you so much for your help in advance.

[Stefan]

Hi Reinfinity, welcome!

Don't be afraid to ask... no one can know all
(but you could modify your subject of this threat to something like "HowTo rearrange parts of file name")


But unfortunately this seams impossible since you need an common pattern to match <Artist Names etc.>
or an common sign to split the file name into parts. The same to match the comas.

At least, if all of your files contain only ONE dash "-" to separate the <Title> and NO additional dashes
in the artist name etc., we can add least reorder all Titles to the begin of the name.

If there is no common structure to your file names (as it likes to be) we can't do something automatically
Then all i can hope for you is to get an rainy summer... If you add an separator, which is not found in Title and Artist,
like "space dash space" between each name part manually, we can reorder in an second step this parts with BRU:

1. <Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> - <Artist Last Name>.mpg
2. <Title> - <Artist or Artist LAST Name> - <Artist First Name>.mpg
3. <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> - <Artist Last Name> - <Title>.mpg
4. <Artist or Artist LAST Name> - <Artist First Name> - <Title>.mpg

But then we can't still distinguish between Artist FIRST and LAST Name without human interaction.
to rearrange
<Title> - <Artist or Artist LAST Name> - <Artist First Name>.mpg
to
<Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> - <Artist Last Name>.mpg

I feel like an idiot asking this question but for the life of me, I can't figure out this one simple thing.
After seeing how helpful everyone is here, I decided to quit killing myself trying to figure it out myself and just ask.

I have several thousand karaoke .mpg movie files. The filenames are listed in the following formats:

1. <Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name>.mpg
2. <Title> - <Artist or Artist LAST Name>, <Artist First Name>.mpg
3. <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name> - <Title>.mpg
4. <Artist or Artist LAST Name>, <Artist First Name> - <Title>.mpg

I would like for all files to be:
<Title> - <Artist or Artist FIRST Name> <Artist Last Name>
How can I do this?
How can I at least get all of the files containing commas to one area where I can work with them alone?
Thank you so much for your help in advance.