The Rename dialog in Directory Opus lets you store presets which you can re-use to perform common rename tasks. It's also possible to import and export these presets to share them with other people.
Listed below are some rename presets that I find useful.
I've included the regular expressions and wildcards here in case they are helpful examples for people new to regular expressions.
If you just want to use the presets and don't care how they work then you don't need to type them into Opus. Instead, I've attached a zip file with each preset saved as a .orp file.
To load a preset into your Rename dialog, make sure the dialog is in Advanced mode, then select Import... from the File menu. That loads the preset from disk but only temporarily. To add it to your personal list of presets, click the Add button above the list on the right and give it a name.
Here's what all the presets in this post do:
Add - after number -- Regexp ([0-9]+) (.*) to \1 - \2
03 Survivalism.wma -->
03 - Survivalism.wma
Add 1. Prefix -- Wildcard * to 1.*
06 - The Fragile.wma -->
1.06 - The Fragile.wma
Add 2. Prefix -- Wildcard * to 2.*
09 - The Big Come Down.wma -->
2.09 - The Big Come Down.wma
Count Files -- Regexp (.*)\.(.*) to [#].\2
hello.jpg, there.jpg, etc. -->
0001.jpg, 0002.jpg, etc.
Make Safe Name -- Regexp (.*)([^-0-9a-zA-Z._]+)(.*)# to \1_\3
Replaces all "unsafe" characters with underscores, so the filename is suitable for putting on a web server, for example. Everything except letters, numbers and '-' '_' and '.' will be replaced with '_'.
MCE Episode Rename -- Regexp .*(..)_(..)_(200.)_(..)_(..)_(..).dvr-ms to \3-\2-\1 - \4-\5.dvr-ms
Used for sorting TV shows recorded with Media Center. Just keeps the date and time, in a nicer format, since I put the shows' names in their parent folders. Easily modified if you want to keep the titles, though.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart_More 4_25_04_2007_00_26_03.dvr-ms -->
2007-04-25 - 00-26.dvr-ms
Move to Artist Subdir -- Regexp ^([^-]+) - (.+)$ to \1\\\2
The Sanderson Pitch - Dive (album version).mp3 -->
The Sanderson Pitch\Dive (album version).mp3
Move to Letter Subdir -- Regexp (.)(.+) to \1\\\1\2
Shooting Time -- Wildcard * to Birthday Party\{shootingtime|D#dd-MMM-yyyy} - {shootingtime|T#hh.mm} - [#].jpg
(Opus 11 and earlier: Turn on Enable file information fields.)
Inserts the EXIF shooting-time value into the names of photos. The "Birthday Party" part can be changed when the preset is used to create whatever subdirectory you want for the images, or removed completely if you don't want to move them as part of the rename.
Remove everything up to and including the first _ in each filename:
Old name: [^_]+_(.+)
New name: \1
Type: Regular Expressions
Remove the first 3 characters from the start of a filename:
Old name: ...(.+)
New name: \1
Type: Regular Expressions
In the last example the number of dots before the first bracket define how many characters to remove, so if you want to remove 4 characters you'd use ....(.+) instead, and so on.
You have to use a rename script for that, unless you can think up a way to do your rename using a single expression (which is often hard/impossible).
There's an example VBScript script in the forums that you can modify to suit your needs so the only thing you have to learn is VBScript's slightly different regular expression syntax.
Insert text just before extension...
Old name: (.*)(\..*)
New name: \1_your_text\2
Type: Regular Expressions
Insert text after x characters...
Old name: (...)(.+)
New name: \1_your_text\2
Type: Regular Expressions
The number of dots under the first bracket define how many characters to keep before your text, so if you want to keep 4 characters you'd use (....)(.+) instead, and so on.
With Opus 12 you can simplify this slightly, as the ignore extension option means you don't have to worry about preserving the last dot. As a bonus, it now works properly with folder names:
Old Name: (.*)(([^0-9])\.|\.([^0-9]))(.*)#
New Name: \1\3 \4\5
Type: Regular Expressions Ignore Extensions
You could probably also simplify it using regex asserts, or using a script, but the above works fine as-is.
Add spaces around dash (-) characters and collapse multiple spaces:
Another solution by Zippo from the same thread. Here's how he described it: This flanks '-' characters with a space character on each side if the space character does not already exist. Additionally, multiple space characters are reduced to only one.
(Note that there are two spaces near the end of the Old Name string.)
Old Name: (.*)(([^ ])(-)|(-)([^ ])| )(.*)#
New Name: \1\5\3 \4\6\7
Type: Regular Expressions
Wow! I can't believe I didn't' stumble on this post before. These presets are incredibly useful!
I have tried to tweak a couple of them to suit my needs. For the "Swap Artists" preset, I changed it so that it would just swap words between a dash (as long as there is only one dash). So for example, if I have a book named "Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland.pdf" it would change it to "Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll.pdf". So I tried the following:
Regexp (.+) - (.+) to \2 - \1
It works, but the problem is that the extension is also swapped, so that it results in:
"Alice in Wonderland.pdf - Lewis Carroll"
Is there anyway for me to change the code so that I can avoid swapping the extension?
Just in case anyone else is interested, solution can be found here:
(2017: Also note that with Opus 12 you can just turn on ignore extension to avoid having to worry about the file extension when changing the rest of the name.)
Set the mode to Regular Expressions + Find And Replace.
For Old Name, enter [...]+ where ... are whichever characters you want to replace or coalesce. (Remember regex rules: If you want to include a - character within [...] it has to be the first character, to avoid asking for a range like [A-Z]. Sometimes special characters need escaping with a \ as well.)
For New Name, enter the character(s) you want to replace the matches with. (Space or underscore or whatever you want.)
To find and replace hidden Unicode (UTF-8) characters in filenames, use the regular Expression \uXXXX where "XXXX" is the Unicode identifier. A good resource to lookup UTF-8 codes is https://www.compart.com/en/unicode.
See this forum post for a more thorough discussion on using Unicode with Dopus renaming and scripting.
Understand ?
It matches right to left.
Count parenthesis left to right with sub-parenthesis numbered after the enclosing parenthesis.
Pay attention to Null results in the TO= .
Run, Run, Run !
I'd be happy to explain it .
It was an accidental discovery one morning before I left for work as a Chef in a Health Care Facility.
I simply wanted to solve these problems and kind of stumbled upon the answer.
Well, at least it will beat Chat GPT's answers.
I enjoy these because they are elegant solutions.
To me that's a good thing.
And historically elegance is a good French Mathematical Thing.
We can't help you unless you tell us what's actually going wrong. You've made six posts in this thread so far and only one of them had any actual information, and even that was just a command without any detail of what goes wrong or with which filenames.
There is no need be short with me sir!
When I sent the first post my keyboard was playing up and I unwittingly sent it without the result.
I replied to you with the mistakenly omitted result "code]"
I then answered the cryptic comment from the other chap.
I then posted that it was working but I have since discovered that it only works intermittently. Therefore I am asking for help again.
I don't like being spoken to like an idiot
Thankyou !
I have never been called a Chap .
It kind of feels good.
It is time for me to bow out of this section of this thread.
I am American English, not British English.
I can get into trouble with British English almost as easily as I can get in trouble in German, only I let down my guard too easily with the UK.
Ignore Extensions
