Ability to change Item Date (Date Taken)

[Snowmoon]

First of all I'd like to say a huge thank you to the author of BRU, which has literally saved me hundreds of hours of time when it comes to bulk renaming. There is just one thing I'd like to request. My life would be complete if the "Change File Timestamps" option will allow me to change the Date Taken for images and the Media Created property for videos. Apologies if this has already been requested. I did search for possible posts but didn't find any.

So here's my work flow. Say I have a bunch of photos (all jpgs) and videos (mostly .mov and .mp4) I've taken for a particular month. I want to rename all of them in one hit, sorted by the date/time the photo/video is taken, in this format:

yyyy-mm-dd-xx.ext where xx starts from 01 and increases by 1, then resets to 01 for a different date. ie:

2024-01-06-01.jpg
2024-01-06-02.mov
2024-01-06-03.jpg
2024-01-10-01.jpg
2024-01-10-02.jpg
2024-01-15-01.jpg
2024-01-15-02.jpg
2024-01-15-03.mp4
2024-01-15-04.jpg
... etc

This is all working great for me at the moment if:
(1) for photos, the Date Taken property is present
(2) for videos, the Media Created property is present

(1) and (2) above will then appear under the "Item Date" column in BRU. I sort the Item Date column in ascending order, apply my renaming options, click the Rename button and all files are renamed how I would like them. Magic!

The problem is that often, especially when trawling through old photos and videos, (1) and (2) can be blank or incorrect. I also can't' rely on Date Created because that usually doesn't reflect the correct date/time. This is no big deal. I can usually do some digging to find out when the photo/video was originally taken. The problem is that on Windows 11, it's not possible set the time element for the Date Taken or Media Created property. I can change the date, but not the time. So, photos/videos are frequently out of time sequence.

At the moment, I'm using a separate utility BulkFileChanger by Nirsoft, which allows me to change the date/time for Date Taken (photos) and Item Date (videos). It also has a sequence mode where I can tell it to, for example, add 1 minute to the time element of each photo in bulk. This is very handy and saves a lot of time when I'm dealing with multiple files.

It will be great if the same functionality is available in Change File Timestamps in BRU, so that I can do everything inside BRU. I envision that I can then run the Change File Timestamps option on the files that need it, then followed by the renaming process that I currently use.

Thank you!

[Admin]

Hi! In the new version 4, there is a new option :
Exif Date Taken (Original) / Item Date set to Created or Modified Date.
Did you try that new option?

[Snowmoon]

That option does not work for me because:
(1) The Created or Modified Date are often incorrect, especially for old photos that have been edited and/or transferred from one machine to another over the years. I'd need a way to manually adjust the date and time, same as the "Fixed" option you have for changing Date Created / Date Modified / Date Accessed on the same dialog.
(2) I believe videos do not have Exif data available in BRU. For videos, I need to change the Media Created property, again using the "Fixed" option.

The Date Taken (photos) and Media Created (videos) date/time is what appears under the Item Date columnn in BRU. This then allows me to sort according to that column and bulk rename photos AND videos in one hit.

Thank you.

[Admin]

Hi,
You could change modified / created / Item date all at the same time for JPG files but nor sure if that also works for videos.
E.g. set modified to a fixed value and set the item date to the modified timestamp that is fixed.

[Snowmoon]

Thanks. Good point about setting Date Modified to a fixed value, then setting Item Date to Modified. I can confirm that it works for images, but doesn't work for videos.

Also, would be great to be able to increment each timestamp by a certain amount. For example, increment by 1 minute for each image in bulk. This way, images can be ordered in the correct sequence, rather than all having the exact same timestamp. Thanks.

[Admin]

Incrementing by X seconds each timestamp would be a useful function to have. I have added this to the list of additions to consider for the futrure.
Regarding video files, the property is "Media Created"?

[Snowmoon]

Indeed, for videos, the property corresponding to Item Date is Media Created.

Also, thanks for considerating adding the functionality to increment each file by a certain seconds/minutes etc. That would be extremely helpful.

Thank you again.