OT: Renaming - date format choices?

[Terry Pinnell]

I know that at least some here use various freeware renaming programs,
so maybe this post isn't too OT.

I'd appreciate learning what format others have chosen for renaming
photos please. Despite much experiment, I have still not settled on
anything consistent! In particular, with future sorting in mind, I
vary between making the major field the Date/Time Taken, or some
keyword about the subject. For example, my photo taken at 4:26pm
yesterday on a walk from a place called Exceat could be renamed from
DSC0005.jpg to
2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG or
Exceat-2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG

But, assuming I do settle on making Date/Time Taken the major sort,
there are so many formats possible for that. I've tried such formats
as
2005-07-17-09-16-26
2005-07-17 09.16.26
05-07-17 09.16.26 (that space can cause problems)
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16:26 (looks better but often the ':' screws up)
and many others. What do others use please?

 

[old jon]

I know that at least some here use various freeware renaming programs,
so maybe this post isn't too OT.

I'd appreciate learning what format others have chosen for renaming
photos please. Despite much experiment, I have still not settled on
anything consistent! In particular, with future sorting in mind, I
vary between making the major field the Date/Time Taken, or some
keyword about the subject. For example, my photo taken at 4:26pm
yesterday on a walk from a place called Exceat could be renamed from
DSC0005.jpg to
2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG or
Exceat-2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG

But, assuming I do settle on making Date/Time Taken the major sort,
there are so many formats possible for that. I've tried such formats
as
2005-07-17-09-16-26
2005-07-17 09.16.26
05-07-17 09.16.26 (that space can cause problems)
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16:26 (looks better but often the ':' screws up)
and many others. What do others use please?

One method, out of many. Better to start with location for cataloguing. Oh
boy, what have you started now. <g>.
exceat000.180705.16.26 = Location, Photo number (up to 999), Date (2digit,
day month year), Time (hr min). All looks neat to me.
best wishes..OJ

 

[Michael Salem]

I'd appreciate learning what format others have chosen for renaming
photos
2005-07-17-09-16-26
2005-07-17 09.16.26
05-07-17 09.16.26 (that space can cause problems)
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16.26
2005Jul17-16:26 (looks better but often the ':' screws up)
and many others. What do others use please?

It depends on your requirements. My requirements for timestamped files
are:

- must sort chronologically, so format must be numeric (07, not July),
with leading zeros, with year followed by month followed by day.

- the timestamp part of the name must be short, so the beginning of the
filename tells me what I need, even in displays which only show the
beginning of the filename.

- I don't like blanks in filenames as I sometimes use the command line.

To meet these requirements I would use yymmdd_hh:mm (or maybe without
the underline and/or the colon), followed optionally by descriptive text
and extension: 050718_15:26_Joe@Kate's_party.jpg. If you are bulk-
renaming a batch of photographs you could use a name for the batch, and
edit the text part of the name later: bulk rename to <yymmddhhmm_Mexico
trip.jpg, then change the text for each photograph manually,

If chronological sorting is not required, a date format which is quicker
to read but still very compact is 18Jl05; of course this is language-
dependent, but that rarely matters. Ja Fe Mr Ap My Jn Jl Au Se Oc No De.
This also overcomes the ambiguity with numeric dates: is 6/5/2005 6My or
5Jn?

HTH,

 

[Mark Carter]

2005-07-17-09-16-26
2005-07-17 09.16.26

Depending on your requirements, you may like to drop the time stamp.
After all, is it really important for you to know the hour, minute, AND
SECOND that a picture was taken?

Another suggestion would be to drop the date from the filename, too, and
store pictures in a dated folder (e.g. 0507 for July 2005 pictures). The
exact date is, presumably, not that important, but month and year are
useful to know. Of course YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

 

[Terry]

2005Jul17-16:26 (looks better but often the ':' screws up)

Colon is not a valid character for a filename in windows. The list of
invalid characters is: \ / : * ? " < > |

Terry

 

[Andreas Kaestner]

Terry Pinnell ([email protected]) schrieb/wrote:

I'd appreciate learning what format others have chosen for renaming
photos please. Despite much experiment, I have still not settled on
anything consistent! In particular, with future sorting in mind, I
vary between making the major field the Date/Time Taken, or some
keyword about the subject. For example, my photo taken at 4:26pm
yesterday on a walk from a place called Exceat could be renamed from
DSC0005.jpg to
2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG or
Exceat-2005-07-17-09-16-26-Exceat.JPG

I'd suggest yymmdd-hhmmss-text.jpg

 

[Terry Pinnell]

One method, out of many. Better to start with location for cataloguing. Oh
boy, what have you started now. <g>.
exceat000.180705.16.26 = Location, Photo number (up to 999), Date (2digit,
day month year), Time (hr min). All looks neat to me.
best wishes..OJ

Thanks. I agree that sometimes a format like that, with text first,
can often make it easier to find a particular photo. But more often
than not I'm now finding that date dominates. I suppose this is partly
because this year I started making family 'slideshow movies' in which
that was important.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

It depends on your requirements. My requirements for timestamped files
are:

- must sort chronologically, so format must be numeric (07, not July),
with leading zeros, with year followed by month followed by day.

- the timestamp part of the name must be short, so the beginning of the
filename tells me what I need, even in displays which only show the
beginning of the filename.

- I don't like blanks in filenames as I sometimes use the command line.

To meet these requirements I would use yymmdd_hh:mm (or maybe without
the underline and/or the colon), followed optionally by descriptive text
and extension: 050718_15:26_Joe@Kate's_party.jpg. If you are bulk-
renaming a batch of photographs you could use a name for the batch, and
edit the text part of the name later: bulk rename to <yymmddhhmm_Mexico
trip.jpg, then change the text for each photograph manually,

If chronological sorting is not required, a date format which is quicker
to read but still very compact is 18Jl05; of course this is language-
dependent, but that rarely matters. Ja Fe Mr Ap My Jn Jl Au Se Oc No De.
This also overcomes the ambiguity with numeric dates: is 6/5/2005 6My or
5Jn?

HTH,

Many thanks, very helpful. I think my requirements sound rather
similar, with date/time usually important. BTW, do you still sustain
that same format for photos *without* a Time Taken field? (Such as
lost EXIF, or old family scans, etc.)

Are you sure about that colon? Maybe you're not a Windows user? As
Terry says, Windows doesn't appear to accept it.

Given your strict chronological requirement, are you happy that your
1999 photos appear *after* 2001 etc?

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Colon is not a valid character for a filename in windows. The list of
invalid characters is: \ / : * ? " < > |

Terry

Yes, I've had Win XP reject my inadvertent use of colons.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Terry Pinnell ([email protected]) schrieb/wrote:


I'd suggest yymmdd-hhmmss-text.jpg

I like that, thanks. Whatever else I settle on, I reckon I'll
definitely drop the separators between each element. Much neater. BTW,
I see that, like me, you prefer '-' (minus signs), not underscores. To
me, they look neater. Am I missing something though? Is there some
technical objection to minus signs?

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Depending on your requirements, you may like to drop the time stamp.
After all, is it really important for you to know the hour, minute, AND
SECOND that a picture was taken?

Thanks. I agree, it does look unnecessarily fussy! I started doing it
only after the recent birth of my first grandchild. I was making a
'slideshow movie' from an enormous number of photos - both mine and my
son's - and timing became important to my tidy mind <g>. Its only
other advantage for me is that it guarantees uniqueness, no matter
what slips I make in my renaming, copying, etc.

Another suggestion would be to drop the date from the filename, too, and
store pictures in a dated folder (e.g. 0507 for July 2005 pictures). The
exact date is, presumably, not that important, but month and year are
useful to know. Of course YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

I sure would like to avoid the hassle of dates, but reckon I can't
avoid it and still stay organised! In fact, I wish I'd taken more care
in the past to record and preserve dates. That applies to both scans
of old family photos and my early digicam images, which I carelessly
edited with software that apparently had scant regard for EXIF data
;-(

 

[Michael Salem]

Terry Pinnell wrote in response to a posting of mine about file formats
for photographs (see earlier postings for full details):

Many thanks, very helpful.

My pleasure

I think my requirements sound rather
similar, with date/time usually important. BTW, do you still sustain
that same format for photos *without* a Time Taken field? (Such as
lost EXIF, or old family scans, etc.)

I don't actually use this date formatting for photographs, but for
various other purposes.

Are you sure about that colon?

Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure it's wrong. Sorry. I wasn't actually quoting the
precise format I use, but suggesting something useful, and typed without
thinking.

Given your strict chronological requirement, are you happy that your
1999 photos appear *after* 2001 etc?

Obviously, it's horses for courses. If you have photos from the previous
millennium, you have to adapt. If I had nothing before 1990, I might use
"&" or "+" (which alphanumerically precede "0") for the 1990s; e.g.,
&90718 for 18 July 1999; Or use 4-digit dates, clearer but a bit longer.
This also has the advantage that your family can use the codes without
trouble for the next 7996 years, as long as they can read the disc.

If you wanted to you could come up with weird and wonderful schemes for
classifying your files; for example you could have a few code letters,
with the first encoding country, the second type (landscape, local
people, family, nature macro, etc.), etc. then you could use command-
line commands such as "COPY ??????AF?N*.* D:\" to copy all your photos
taken in the US (A) of family members (F) at any type of venue (?) at
night (N) to CD. Obviously you'd also include descriptive text unless
you wanted to memorise the codes.

HTH,

 

[Michael Salem]

Terry Pinnell wrote, re a posting by Andreas Kaestner:

I see that, like me, you prefer '-' (minus signs), not underscores. To
me, they look neater. Am I missing something though? Is there some
technical objection to minus signs?

Technical objection of mainly historical importance. When writing
programs, "=" is an operation, and "_" is the only non-alphabetic
character allowed in variable names. Even spaces cause trouble. I think
that in some operating systems "-" was (is?) not allowed in file names.
So_people_got_used_to_writing_like_this.DOC.

 

[Susan Bugher]

I sure would like to avoid the hassle of dates, but reckon I can't
avoid it and still stay organised! In fact, I wish I'd taken more care
in the past to record and preserve dates. That applies to both scans
of old family photos and my early digicam images, which I carelessly
edited with software that apparently had scant regard for EXIF data
;-(

Are you using a renamer app to rename files by date from the EXIF data? It seems to me that takes
almost all the hassle out of this particular chore.

Susan
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[John Fitzsimons]

Terry Pinnell wrote:

Depending on your requirements, you may like to drop the time stamp.
After all, is it really important for you to know the hour, minute, AND
SECOND that a picture was taken?

Sure. If he takes more than one picture per second then he will end up
with two filenames the same.

Another suggestion would be to drop the date from the filename, too, and
store pictures in a dated folder (e.g. 0507 for July 2005 pictures). The
exact date is, presumably, not that important, but month and year are
useful to know. Of course YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

The problem with "dated" folders is that one may later do a
compilation and forget which pictures went in which folders.

Another option is a double save/rename.

(1) Save with date details and sort by date.
(2) Re-name.

Eg.

2005-07-17-09-16-05
2005-07-17 09-16-10
2005-07-17-09-16-20
2005-07-17 09-16-25
2005-07-17-09-16-30
2005-07-17 09-16-35

then...

05-07-17-01
05-07-17-02
05-07-17-03
05-07-17-04
05-07-17-05
05-07-17-06

Regards, John.
--
****************************************************
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/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Are you using a renamer app to rename files by date from the EXIF data? It seems to me that takes
almost all the hassle out of this particular chore.

Yes, usually with Jim Willsher's excellent Bulk Rename Utility. I
agree, that does make the task fairly painless. But there are
complications. For example, as I mentioned, some of 'my' photos are
actually downloaded copies of photos of my grandson taken by my son.
His naming structure is
playing_with_sand1-2005.07.18-01.06.23.jpg
and he assures me it's a restriction of his blog site if he wants to
use its 'automatic naming' facility. After using Save Image As, I have
to rename in my preferred 'date first' format. Assuming I've settled
on just one!

BTW, what date format do you use?

 

[Michael Salem]

...some of my photos ... naming structure is
playing_with_sand1-2005.07.18-01.06.23.jpg

If you have reasonable ability with simple programming you could write a
program or script to rename the photos to any form you want. Maybe there
is a scripting language to do this without too much trouble; I don't
know (awk.exe and sed.exe for Windows probably need too much learning).

The script would have to search through the name of each file to find
text of the form "-20nn.nn.nn-nn.nn.nn", where "n" means any numeric
character. Then pick out the year, month, etc., put them in the format
you want, and change the filename to begin with the date part and end
with the original text part. You could simplify this, for the next few
years, by seeking the string "-200".

Best wishes,

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Sure. If he takes more than one picture per second then he will end up
with two filenames the same.


The problem with "dated" folders is that one may later do a
compilation and forget which pictures went in which folders.

Another option is a double save/rename.

(1) Save with date details and sort by date.
(2) Re-name.

Eg.

2005-07-17-09-16-05
2005-07-17 09-16-10
2005-07-17-09-16-20
2005-07-17 09-16-25
2005-07-17-09-16-30
2005-07-17 09-16-35

then...

05-07-17-01
05-07-17-02
05-07-17-03
05-07-17-04
05-07-17-05
05-07-17-06

Regards, John.

Thanks. Your point about compilations is very relevant here. As
mentioned, I'm making some 'slide show movies' on DVD (with
soundtracks). The program I use (MemoriesOnTV) looks for the images
based on their *original* names and locations. So, a later revision
(or even just an attempt to write a copy DVD) fails if I've shifted or
renamed anything. All the more motivation to get myself a consistent
format and organisation technique!

As just a private user, not a professional, my current rate of
photo-taking is low, but the volume of photos on my HD is swelled by
past print scans. And now also by slide scans, following purchase of a
new scanner with an adapter. I still prefer to see *some* descriptive
text in my filenames, rather than a serial number.

At present the names are a mess. Here's a typical selection at random
from just one folder: D:\Docs\My Pictures\PHOTOS\Walks

15May03TurnersHill06.JPG
BlackRabbit2.jpg
2005-07-17-10-38-32-Exceat.JPG
5Sep04Ardingly (5).JPG

 

[Susan Bugher]

Yes, usually with Jim Willsher's excellent Bulk Rename Utility. I
agree, that does make the task fairly painless.

BTW, what date format do you use?

I had to make a change recently when I started using a card reader - that necessitated a change from
Cam4you (which I liked a lot) to Stamp:

Program: Cam4you
Author: Hans-David Alkenius
Ware: Donationware
http://jpegclub.org/cam4you/

Program: Stamp
Author: Tempest Solutions
Ware: (Freeware)
http://www.klingebiel.com/tempest/

I have an ancient (by digital standards) Canon camera that stores data in the CIFF format rather
than EXIF. Stamp is the only program I've found so far that can rename image files by date from the
CIFF data after I've downloaded them with the card reader. It has a choice of date formats (Cam4you
let me create my own) and IIRC I have to do a bit more renaming afterward to achieve this format:

20050521_195232.jpg (YearMonthDay_HourMinuteSecond.jpg)

I was using 2005-05-21_19-52-32.jpg (Year-Month-Day_Hour-Minute-Second.jpg). I think I like the new
format better now that I've started using it. It was very easy to remove the dashes (-) from older
file names - I think it would be harder to add them in. . .

My first cataloging effort was scanned photos (old family photos). Often I didn't know the year,
much less the month and day. For those I used the year (best guess) and a 3 digit number (unique
identifier): 1879_051.jpg That worked pretty well. FWIW - I wanted to use 8 digit names to ensure
compatibility with MAC OS (relative's computers). I think I'd be more inclined to use a format like
this if I was starting over: 1879xxxx_051.jpg (YearMonthDay_uniqueidentifier.jpg) IOW - show the
month and day when known - use x's for unknown.

Susan
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[thoss]

BTW, what date format do you use?

Compact, only three characters, YMD.

Taking them backwards, D is datecode, 1-9 followed by A-U
M is monthcode, 1-9 followed by XYZ
Y is yearcode, this year being obviously 5. If you need to extend back
to last century, the code could easily be extended to 2000 = Z, 1999 = Y
etc (though this would sort 20th century dates after 21st century ones).

I have been using this format since CP/M days as the file extension of
wordprocessing and other files, as CP/M did not date-stamp files.