I maintain descriptions for a lot of my files in various folders, created using a program I wrote that creates Descript.ion files. This has worked well but now I would like to use the NTFS Comments system but I do not want to add all my descriptions manually.
Opus can do a LOT of things so is there a way I can read a Descript.ion file and apply the description to the file itself?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Bob Gregory
I'm not sure if there is an NTFS Comments standard, or at least one that's really used anymore. (I think the Windows shell team gave up on the idea some time ago.)
Opus can store descriptions using the descript.ion format or using it's own NTFS metadata method. (The latter isn't used by anything else, that I know of, but isn't encrypted or private either. We can provide details if needed, e.g. to adapt your program to write formats in that system.)
I don't know of a simple way to make Opus convert comments from one system to the other. There's just a switch in Preferences which decides which system you want to use. A script or program could convert them, but would have to parse either the decript.ion files or write the NTFS data itself. (Parsing the descript.ion files is probably easier.)
Thanks Leo. I was hoping there was a "command line way" to use the "Set Description" function if I were to use the descriptions from the descript.ion file.
You can set descriptions via commands using Opus's SetAttr command and SETDESCRIPTION argument.
https://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus12/index.html#!Documents/SetAttr.htm
How many files do you need to convert? The best way might depend on if it's a huge or smaller number.
Thousands. I'm pretty proficient in VB so I could read the descript.ion file and retrieve the description but I would have to shell to a command to run the SetAttr command. Would I use DopusRt? Could you supply an example?
Doing it using VBScript (or JScript) running inside Opus would be best, since then you can avoid DOousRT.exe.
(Running the commands via DOpusRT.exe would work, but it's asynchronous, so if there are a lot of files you might run into problems if too many commands get queued up or are running in parallel. On the other hand, scripts inside Opus can run commands synchronously.)
If you click the "Opus Manual" menu at the top right of the forum, it has links to the pages about scripting in the middle. The Command object is what lets you run Opus commands.
The first post here has what is probably a good example, where it updates the Focal Length field on files:
Thanks Leo. I will look into that. As always awesome support from you guys.
Bob Gregory