crop filename after a certain character

[DonRumata]

Hi,

After a slow start I finally managed to construct my own set of commands to rename my movies and pictures. Thanks a lot for this great tool!

Now I came across a tricky problem I could use some help with, if possible.

I have folders with movies named like "description_of_movie 01.12.2010 640x480", date and resolution have been added with picasa when renaming the files for the first time. Now I would like to change that to something like "$createdate_$imagesize_description_of_movie".

That means, I would like to crop the original filename before the first blank that was created with picasa. I do not have blanks in the description string! After that I would be able to use something like

exiftool -ext 3gp -ext avi '-filename<${createdate}_${imagesize}_%f.%e' -d "%Y-%m-%d_%H_%M_%S" ./


Is cropping possible? If you see any other workaround to avoid manually cropping the filenames I would be happy, too, of course!

Many thanks

Don

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Don,

Try this:

exiftool '-filename<${createdate}_${imagesize}_${filename;s/ .*//}.%e' -d "%Y-%m-%d_%H_%M_%S" DIR

where DIR is the name of the directory with the images.    Here I have used single quotes because you did, which are for Mac/Linux.  Windows people would use double quotes.

- Phil

[DonRumata]

Wow, that was quick, and it worked! Thanks!

If I may bother you again, how does that command work? I found some examples for these advanced substring modifications on your application page, I cannot give you the direct link, so I pasted it below so that you know which part of the documentation I refer to.

However, I am still very confused by the syntax of these substring modifications. Is there a walkthrough somewhere step by step for newbies, or could you explain just how your command works so that I might be able to construct my own set of commands?

Again, I am very very grateful for your tool and your help. All other GUI image tools I tried came not even close to this flexibility.

Best regards

Don

--- pasted from http://www.exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html

A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%' character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional value after a decimal point. For example:

    Input File Name     Format Specifier    Output File Name
    ----------------    ----------------    ----------------
    Picture-123.jpg     %7f.txt             Picture.txt
    Picture-123.jpg     %-.4f.out           Picture.out
    Picture-123.jpg     %7f.%-3f            Picture.123
    Picture-123a.jpg    Meta%-3.1f.txt      Meta123.txt

For %d, the field width/position specifiers may be applied to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For example:

    Source Dir     Format   Result       Notes
    ------------   ------   ----------   ------------------
    pics/2012/02   %2:d     pics/2012/   take top 2 levels
    pics/2012/02   %-:1d    pics/2012/   up one directory level
    pics/2012/02   %:1d     2012/02/     ignore top level
    pics/2012/02   %1:1d    2012/        take 1 level after top
    /Users/phil    %:2d     phil/        ignore top 2 levels

(Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute path is used as in the last example above.)

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Don,

The substring feature for %d, %f and %e (documented under the -w option) was not what I was using here.

I was using the "advanced formatting feature" (documented under the -p option, and referenced from the -tagsFromFile option).  This formatting can be applied to any tag, not just the file name, and is applicable when copying tags with "<", and when using the -p and -if options.

The specifics of the advanced formatting feature are not discussed in detail because any Perl expression may be used.

- Phil

[DonRumata]

Many thanks again, so I will have to learn some Perl syntax :-)

Don