Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

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Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

Postby SjB » Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:05 pm

Firstly, thank you for such an excellent and time saving application Jim and Paolo. Photography is my hobby, and with multiple digital cameras used in typical shoots it's great to have such an easy way of renaming files to "date taken in YYYYMMDDHH24MISS" format, thus keeping them in correct playback order on even the most basic slideshow utilities used by friends and family.

I do though have a question about something I have been unable to resolve for myself; given that I use the above file name format and can shoot at up to four frames per second it is common that I end up with dupicate names. I currently solve these by manual action afterwards but it would be great to add a _N (where N= counter) suffix *ONLY* where more than one photo was taken within the same second. Ideally I would like to keep the names of all other files "pure" by not adding a suffix.

If this isn't possible to do, I would like to add a _1 suffix to all files apart from the duplicates; these would then get _2, _3 or _4 accordingly.

Possible, something for the wish list, or something for my continued manual action, please?


Grateful thanks,
Steve

(Have been using v2.1.0.10 and today upgraded to v2.7.0.4)
SjB
 
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Re: Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

Postby jimwillsher » Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:40 am

Hi Steve,

You can already do exactly that, using the Prevent Duplicates tickbox. It will attempt a rename, but if it fails it will add _1 and try again, then _2 and try again (all the way to 99).

It's a shame that the EXIF fields do not hld millisecond resolution.


Jim
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Re: Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

Postby SjB » Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:14 am

...and so it does! Thanks Jim :-)

For info in case it helps tweaking in a future release; the reason I didn't discover this is because having selected Prevent Duplicates, duplicate renames were still shown in the selected file pane. It was only when actually running the rename action (after your helpful reply) that I saw that a uniqueness suffix is actually appended to the renamed files to prevent duplication. If the suffixing can be shown during selection, that would be terrific and put the icing on what is already a very tasty cake!

Thanks again,
Steve
SjB
 
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Re: Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

Postby jimwillsher » Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:10 pm

It's been asked for before, but it's far too complex to code. For example, a given filename might only cause duplicates as a result of an earlier renaming operation.

Take filenames:

A.txt
B.txt
C.txt

and you choose to change A to D and C to D. As the rename operation commences you will get

D.txt
B.txt
C.txt

followed by an attempt to change C.txt to D.txt which will fail. But BRU doesn't know that until the rename operation commences - especially if you have also enabled options such as "rename in reverse order" etc. You've also got the issue that another file could appear in the folder since you refreshed the folder.

So, BRU attempts the rename, and if the rename fails it looks to see why. If the reason was "file already exists" in then attempts the "retry" routines.

Hope this helps.


Jim
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Re: Renaming photographs taken in the same second of time

Postby SjB » Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:31 pm

Thanks, Jim. I thought of scenarios like these before writing and concluded (without having any idea how the utility is actually coded!) that they could be solved using arrays to facilitate dummy updates. In your example therefore, the displayed results in column New Name would be:

D.txt
B.txt
D_1.txt

If duplicates were then too subtle to see, they could perhaps be highlighted in colour, and per your valid observation, if a new file was added to the folder in the mean time a warning could be given on pressing rename (because the original file names are known in an array which can then be compared against)

Not to worry though; this is all far from essential functionality so if deemed too complex or to be inefficient with huge volumes, absolutely no problem. It's still a great utility that I am grateful to have the benefit of.


Steve
SjB
 
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