How to batch rename "YYYY-MM-DD - HH.MM.SS - Name - Sequence" in bridge

[zaerdy]

Hi there,

I want to rename a whole lot of videos in a very specific scheme in Adobe Bridge CC.

The scheme goes like:

YYYY-MM-DD - HH.MM.SS - Name - 001

The only place where I got a problem is with the HH.MM.SS part. I can choose HHMMSS, but cannot enter HH, MM or SS seperatly, and I really want the dot to separate them. I can do that in Lightroom but Bridge is much more interesting to work with in terms of organizing and renaming videos (like detail view instead of thumbnails, for instance). I'm sure there's a way to do this.

Thanks in advance for any constructive advice

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

For a 100% only Bridge workflow, I think that this will require the renaming to be performed in two passes:

1st Pass = Basic Rename

2nd Pass = String Substitution using a RegEx find/replace

For a single step workflow, I would recommend using the free ExifTool application

[zaerdy]

The first option seems more complicated than with Lightroom so it's out of the way.

For the second, I never used ExifTool. Can I batch rename with that?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Sure, you can recursively batch re-name, however you will need to use some code. There is a forum which can help you search for a previous answer or ask a new one…

[zaerdy]

Ok. As someone who never coded a single line, would you recommend it to me or should I stick with using Lightroom?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Depends on your pain! :]

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Somebody with better RegEx than I can probably do the 2nd pass regular expression rename in a single step… I had to break down the RegEx into two steps… so three steps in total:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

All of these batch rename search/replace commands can be saved as a preset.

So select all files in Bridge and run three separate rename presets… Or use Lightroom… Or some other software for renaming, there are many of them out there.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

OK, for the record, I figured out the regular expression to combine step 2 & 3 into a single step!

Step 1

+

Step 2

(?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d\d)

+

Step 3

(?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d\d\.\d\d)

_____________

The new combined regex pattern would be:

Step 1

+

(NEW) Step 2

(?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d{2})|(?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d{4})

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

I also belatedly saw the obvious… Rather than combining the two separate regex patterns into a single regex pattern, I could have just used the GUI to combine the two separate regex patterns together!

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Which of course leads me to the holy grail – a combined single step batch rename as originally requested!

or using the combined regex (?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d{2})|(?<=\d{8}\s-\s\d{4}) for the same result:

So, who needs Lightroom now?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

I found an error in my previous example, the OP required the year-month-day pattern to be delimited with hyphens, where as my original example did not show this.

I have corrected this and posted a blog entry here:

Prepression: Bridge vs. Lightroom Batch Rename Comparison

The regex should read as:

(?<=\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}\s-\s\d{2})|(?<=\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}\s-\s\d{4})

Addendum:

Another regular expression that achieves the same result:

Find = (^.+?\s-\s.{2})(.{2})(.{2})(.+)

Replace = $1.$2.$3$4