File Renamer (Video)

[painface]

i'm sure everyone is familiar with mp3Releaser and now CDTag but i have been trying to find a program along the same line as those to apps but for video formats.. i have found renamers, one file at a time not what i'm looking for, it'd be awesome to find an app to rename file, tag, create nfo and svf just like CDTag. i ask because i rip a lot episodic dvds for a stand alone divx player i have but i would like this app for backing up purposes. i actually found the perfect program that is closest to what i'm looking for but it doesn't have an installer and i'm to much of a n00b to figure it out but here's the link if anyone can lay it out in layman's terms for me. any input and suggestions would be greatly appreciated

http://www.infinicode.org/code/pyrenamer/install.php
just realized this program is a linux application.

[Ranguvar]

That's the kind of automation I was never able to get right under Windows... some odd shareware apps here and there, but most are crap piles.

This sort of thing could be done fairly easily in a shell script like Bash or ZSH (Linux terminals are also simple programming languages). Windows has a competitor... sort of... called PowerShell, check it out. In fact, Python, while more complex than you need, would also be able to handle such things.

Since the app you mentioned specifically is written in Python (interpreted language = good for cross-platform), it shouldn't be too hard to run in Windows - the Python interpreter is cross-platform. In fact, here you go: http://www.infinicode.org/blog/2007/04/26/pyrenamer-under-windows/

The link to the Windows beta appears to be dead. This may be because there is no Windows patch needed anymore.

Also, newer versions of the libraries they link may be available/necessary.

So, choices:
1.) Try odd shareware apps.
2.) Switch to Linux, and enjoy a sane OS ;)
3.) Try learning PowerShell (likely best bet for Windows).
4.) Use a Linux environment inside Windows - cygwin, MSYS, or a virtual machine.
5.) Try getting pyrenamer to work on Windows.
6.) Try learning Python (more complex than PowerShell, but unlike PowerShell, it's more likely to help you in the future - it's cross-platform, and a very popular and nifty programming language in its own right).

Hope that helped!

[painface]

Thank you very much Ranguvar the choices you point out are a bit overwhelming but i will definitely look into and try them all till i find a comfortable nitch.

[Maccara]

If no ready apps are found, scripting probably is the way to go, and there are plenty of possibilities for that on windows too - even though csh/zsh/sh are not available out of the box.

I usually get away with powershell or perl (activestate has a ready install packages for perl for windows) for quick jobs, but prefer perl myself. (I've tried powershell and it seems to have quite nice possibilities too, but why learn something new :))

You might try powergui for powershell (powergui.org) - it might make it simpler (but I have not tried it myself so can't say anything definite about that).

[Ranguvar]

Hey, if you do try Linux, give this a shot, looks kickass, might do what you want: http://www.linux.com/feature/154910 and http://www.linux.com/feature/127174

Oh, turns out they run on Winblows too! Enjoy :D

[blah789]

This may be a tad more than what you'd like, but I use xnview (a freeware image browser) for my renaming purposes (even for non-images). In browser mode, click edit, select all, then choose tools, batch rename.
You have tons of options. The simplest is blah### where the # are numbers and you can pick which number to start with and by how much it steps. You can also insert all kind of fancy stuff in the file name like dates and/or times (accessed, modified, create), strings from exif data, etc.
I think irfanview may also be able to do this. Not sure though.

[das_ei]

If you're interested in renaming tv shows, my program Series Renamer (http://seriesrenamer.wordpress.com) may be what you want ;)

[johnthedj]

Wow, you guys need to get Tag And Rename, At least for Mp4,Mpeg 2, VCD files. I use that to rename those kinds of files. Tag and rename at http://www.softpointer.com It started out to be the only renamer I could find to do VQF files. VQF was also called TwinVQ and was the True MP4 codec made by Yamaha And AT&T. Now the AAC files are from that original code. Tag and Rename became a mp3 renamer because mp3 was more widely accepted and Yamaha dropped their support and got out of the codec business all together. VQF was so much better than AAC is now. VQF was one tenth of a mp3 at the same sound quailty. I think that mp3pro codec made the 2 companies abandon the VQF. Result of a renamer that was built to handle VQf is a swiss army renamer for mpeg related files. I've never tried it on AVI file types. If you have to copy the files and rename the extention to .mp4 try that and see what happens.

[Ranguvar]

Why buy something when a shell script is fun to hack up, easily moddable, fast, multi-platform... ;)

[Sharktooth]

may be interesting... : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143626

[das_ei]

Yes, I posted a link 3 posts above :)

[Sharktooth]

oops... i missed it :)

[mousemurder]

ranguvar, do you have a shell script that you worked on, if so can you please post the code (im just curious to see what programs it would call, ... )

[Ranguvar]

Nope, sorry - I've been doing it manually, as I don't download many movies. A music organizer I might create soon to help learn Bash, but not video.

Shouldn't be too bad though... perhaps access IMDb... this (http://www.gtkfiles.org/app.php/imdb-thumbnailer) is a bash script that I haven't looked at, but may be useful for learning how to easily parse info from IMDb. Oh, and http://www.imdb.com/interfaces is promising. Lastly, the book Wicked Cool Shell Scripts apparently has a script to search IMDb.

[das_ei]

You can check my config files for search urls and regular expressions too ;)
But it's optimized for tv shows, so some work might be needed. And of course it needs to be adjusted for the language syntax.