Batch file renaming
In the past year I imported images using "Current Month" instead of "Image Month" as part of the file name. I would like to rename all imported files, but the batch file renaming tool does not seem to allow for a mask for the selection, nor to use templates for building a new file name.
Is the an other trick? Maybe renaming the files in the OS and syncing afterwards?
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How would you sync a renamed file that C1 (whether catalog or session) would not recogonise if it was named using a tool directly in the OS File system?
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Batch rename has 2 modes.
Assuming you are renaming from the original source files (not a later "output file" of some kind) you should be able to redefine the original naming convention you used and substitute the "Image Month" file for the "Current Month" field used previously. That would use the Token system. "Text and tokens".
The alternative is a "find and replace" option which is basically the sort of thing a generic OS based tool would use.
This method will allow the change of a string of text within an existing file name and change it to something else.
It may be quite simple if, for example, you have the month name of "January" in the text and want to change to "December" for a set of selected images.
However if you are using a numeric date format in the file name and the rest of the name also uses numbers there ae opportunities for unexpected changes unless some care is taken. Sometimes multiple steps may be needed to achieve the optimum desired result.
If you need to use the "Find and Replace" approach but are struggling to see how that might work for you just post a couple of representative examples of the start names and the required names and I will see what I can come up with as suggestions.
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@SFA I used the standard file names from my camera and prefixed those with the date.
2020-08-16_DSC_0122.nef
2020-08-15_DSC_0121.nef
2020-08-29_DSC_0120.nef
2020-08-27_DSC_0119.nef
By choosing the wrong "Month" token the all have the import instead of the image month in the file name.
If you have a replacement scheme please tell me. The token "Original Filename" seems to produce empty values during batch renaming.
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The camera date will be represented by the "Image Year", "Image Month", etc. Tokens.
The "Image Name" token should give you the DSC_xxxx.nef part.
So "Image Year (YYYY)"-"Image Month(MM)"-"Image day of Month(dd)"_"Image Name".
Seems likely to be what you need.
In theory you could just use "Image Date" but so far as I recall to get the YYYY-MM-dd format option you have to use the full date with a time shown as well . So splitting the tokens as suggested seems like the best option.
Additional note:
You could also change the date using the find and replace option but that might require a little more pre-planning and some selections for images by their "Image Date" from the camera (if that was correct) and maybe allowances for Time Zones for images taken when travelling. (If such accuracy was a requirement).
However the basic idea for the change is quite simple.
For example search with "2020-08-27" and change to "2020-07-27".
That said the chances are that year may be correct but Month AND date would be wrong. But it you use the C1 built in date filter options selecting the images and see what would need to be adjusted should not be too tricky in theory
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Thank you, this gets me half way there. "Image name" holds the current filename. So the suggested renaming options gives me 2020-07-27-2020-08-27_DSC_0119.nef as a result.
A search and replace to remove the faulty dates first is an elaborate option since I have to do over a years images and maybe even more.
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Hi,
For general file renaming purposes, the software called Bulk Rename Utility, available at https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/, is a very useful and powerful tool.
Best regards,
Lars
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@A Vissers
Aggh. True, sorry. What I meant to write was that at some point in the process you need to remove the "wrong" date from the existing name using the "Find and replace" option.
You could do that before the token rename or, perhaps better just in case removing the date from the name might result in some duplicates, do it as a second pass AFTER renaming.
So in your name example
2020-07-27-2020-08-27_DSC_0119.nef
use the Find and replace option to select
-2020-08-27_ as the "find" target
and replace it with _ (underscore)
You should see in the sample result section that it will give you
2020-07-27_DSC_0119.nef
Which I think is the date you require.
There are other approaches to this concept that will work to simply eliminate the unwanted "date" characters but this way, using the "_" in the "Find" character string as part of the deletion even though then re-applying it, can provide a somewhat more robust identification of the "Find" text in a large batch of images when precision is required.
For example in this case it would ensure that if any images had accidentally been selected for which the date part of the name was in fact correct in a first pass the "correction" would work for them as well by specifically selecting only the original "date" part of the name.
In your immediate use case that is not so important but working out something that is generally full proof to catch all examples without the possibility of causing additional issues or the need to visually check everything is good operational practice.
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@lars nilsson
There are indeed a number of very powerful renaming tools around but in this case where the files and their associated edit data files already exist within Capture One it is necessary to use the 1 renaming tool to ensure that all related files and references to them are also updated as part of the renaming.
I would not expect an external renaming application to be able to achieve all of that. It would, however, have great potential BEFORE the image files were imported to Capture One (or any other editor/DAM application.)
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