Batch renaming of MP3s

ralph76 · January 1, 2005, 2:12pm

Hello,

i'd like to rename a bunch of mp3s all with the same pattern. Here's an example:

01-what_you_waiting_for__320_lame_cbr.mp3

should become

01 - What You Waiting For.mp3

So, all _ should be replaced with blanks, "320 lame cbr" should be deleted and all words should start with upcast letters.

Is there any way to do this in one step with a button and not with multiple renaming operations?

Happy new year!!!
Ralph

JohnZeman · January 1, 2005, 3:32pm

I assume you didn't see my answer to this question from you in the DOpus yahoo forum, so I'll post it here again. You should temporarily move the mp3 files you want to process into a folder by themselves as the key to this button working is the repeated "select all" command it does before each step of the renaming process.

John

[DOpus.ButtonInfo]
Name=Multiple Renaming
Icon=84,9999999
Flags=2,0,0
Color=0,a0a0a0
Func1=select all
Func2=Rename PATTERN "320_lame_cbr" TO "" FINDREP
Func3=Go REFRESH
Func4=Select ALL
Func5=Rename PATTERN "" TO " " FINDREP
Func6=Go REFRESH
Func7=Select ALL
Func8=Rename PATTERN " .mp3" TO ".mp3" FINDREP=ext
Func9=Go REFRESH
Func10=Select ALL
Func11=Rename CASE=allwords

Func2 renames all "320_lame_cbr" to "_"

Func5 replaces all underscores with spaces

Func8 removes the resulting three spaces before the file extensions

And Func11 capitalizes all the words.

ralph76 · January 1, 2005, 4:23pm

thank you so much, you where right, i didn't get the answer...

just two small things for finishing the task:

Created the button and renamed one mp3 for testing. This is the result:

01-What You Waiting For .mp3

What else is to do replace "-" with " - " (blanks on both sides of "-" but only here between track number and track name) and deleting the two blanks at the end of the track name right before .mp3?

And how could i use this command only on selected files?

Regards,
Ralph

JohnZeman · January 1, 2005, 5:32pm

Below is the revised button where I added a regular expression at the end of it to put spaces on each side of the - behind the track number.

About the trailing space, I had one too many underscores in Func2 that resulted in the extra space before the file extension. You shouldn't have that problem now.

I don't know of a way this operation can be done on only the selected files. That's because we're changing the names of the files several times. In other words, as soon as the first file name is changed, the original selection is lost (the original file names no longer exist, they can't be re-selected). This could be done with an external script by generating an array of old names/new names to keep things in sync, but frankly IMO it would be more work than it's worth to write one.

See if the below button does what you want (other than working only on selected files).

John

[DOpus.ButtonInfo]
Name=Multiple Renaming
Icon=84,9999999
Flags=2,0,0
Color=0,a0a0a0
Func1=select all
Func2=Rename PATTERN "320_lame_cbr" TO "" FINDREP
Func3=Go REFRESH
Func4=Select ALL
Func5=Rename PATTERN "_" TO " " FINDREP
Func6=Go REFRESH
Func7=Select ALL
Func8=Rename PATTERN " .mp3" TO ".mp3" FINDREP=ext
Func9=Go REFRESH
Func10=Select ALL
Func11=Rename CASE=allwords
Func12=Go REFRESH
Func13=Select ALL
Func14=Rename PATTERN "^^([0-9]+)(-)(.*)" TO "\1 \2 \3" REGEXP

JohnZeman · January 1, 2005, 5:36pm

Oops. After posting my last I noticed the very last line in the button had an extra ^ in it. It still worked, but isn't good RegExp syntax. Try this instead.

John

[DOpus.ButtonInfo]
Name=Multiple Renaming
Icon=84,9999999
Flags=2,0,0
Color=0,a0a0a0
Func1=select all
Func2=Rename PATTERN "320_lame_cbr" TO "" FINDREP
Func3=Go REFRESH
Func4=Select ALL
Func5=Rename PATTERN "_" TO " " FINDREP
Func6=Go REFRESH
Func7=Select ALL
Func8=Rename PATTERN " .mp3" TO ".mp3" FINDREP=ext
Func9=Go REFRESH
Func10=Select ALL
Func11=Rename CASE=allwords
Func12=Go REFRESH
Func13=Select ALL
Func14=Rename PATTERN "^([0-9]+)(-)(.*)" TO "\1 \2 \3" REGEXP

JohnZeman · January 1, 2005, 6:10pm

I see one more problem in that button code and this one is not of my doing.

When I view the button code online I see the spaces in Func8 were truncated from 2 spaces to 1 (html scripts do that on web pages) So Func8 should really be:

Func8=Rename PATTERN "[SPACE][SPACE].mp3" TO "[SPACE].mp3" FINDREP=ext

where each [SPACE] should be changed to a real space.

John

JohnZeman · January 1, 2005, 6:18pm

Sigh... Good thing it's time for dinner here, my brain must be addled by the lack of food. I corrected one problem last time and introduced another. Func8 should be this:

Func8=Rename PATTERN "[SPACE][SPACE].mp3" TO ".mp3" FINDREP=ext

where each [SPACE] should be changed to a real space.

I'm logging off now to go fill my belly.

John

ralph76 · January 2, 2005, 3:24pm

Hope, you enjoyed your dinner.

Thanx again, that's what i call a christmas present. 1800 files renamed within a few seconds... amazing!!!

Regards,
Ralph

Littlex · January 3, 2005, 12:13pm

I an maybe a little late but for mp3 maintance i can recommend "Tag & Rename".

Leo · January 3, 2005, 12:55pm

In case it's useful, some other good tools are:

The Godfather
(free, extremely powerful, slightly confusing at first, my personal favourite)

MP3BookHelper
(also free, powerful, bit less confusing, although overall I prefer TGF)

qTag
(not free, but quite a nice interface, I bought this and did a lot of tagging with it and still use it sometimes but I probably wouldn't have bought it if I knew about TGF at the time)

Of course, try T&R as well! I just thought I'd throw in a few more suggestions.

Tag & Rename
(not free, seems to be the most popular tagger, looks very good but I haven't used it much personally)

ranma172 · June 23, 2006, 10:04pm

Thanks nudel for telling me about this thread.

I suppose there is no way to use @nodeselect and rename only selected files (due to the Go Refresh command).

I think maybe we can do this:

move selected files to a temporal folder
apply rename to all files on that folder
move files back to the original folder

I will try to do that but it's a little dirty.

By the way, I use Tag&Rename and it's really good for tagging and renaming based on tags. I also use Flash Renamer for renaming (not based on tags). I'll try TGF also.

However, I would like to use DOpus for fast renamings: select some files, rename them and go! I don't like to open Flash Renamer just to rename a couple of files now and then.

ranma172 · June 23, 2006, 10:23pm

I've tried the move-trick but it doesn't work:

Clipboard CUT Go PATH="C:\TemporalForRenaming" Clipboard PASTE Go REFRESH Select ALL Rename FINDREP PATTERN="_" TO=" " Go REFRESH Select ALL Rename CASE=allwords Go REFRESH Select ALL Clipboard CUT Go Back Clipboard PASTE

This code moves selected files and renames them, but doesn't move them back to the original folder. The lister returns to the original folder but the PASTE doesn't work; files are renamed but stay at "C:\TemporalForRenaming".

Do you know why? Any suggestion?

Thank you

Leo · June 23, 2006, 10:25pm

If you rename using a wildcard it will skip files that don't match the wildcard so in many cases doing a Select All and applying the rename to all files is fine. But you, of course, have to be careful and think about what's going to happen.

Personally, I don't use any multiple-rename buttons. Instead I have a three-button which does a few common renames, all with @nodeselect, and I simply click it three times with the different mouse buttons. Does the job well enough and it's still faster than any alternative (that I can be bothered to setup -- obviously I could write a C++ app to do Nudel's Super Custom Rename Operation, but that's not worth the effort ).