Xfce Forum

Beluga

Member

Registered: 2019-05-28

Posts: 1

Thunar Bulk Rename

Hi,
I have a lot of .jpg (EXIF) pictures that come with fancy names: SAM_nnn.jpg, IMG_nnn.jpg, DSCN_nnn.jpg, etc...
Depending the way the cameras are configured, I often find names conflicts: for instance, several IMG_005.jpg, (resp. SAM, DSCN, etc...) when the sequence is reinitialized every day, or the SD card was formatted.
For many years I manually renamed the files using the date the picture was taken followed by an order sequence: YYYYmmdd-nnn.jpg . But this process is tedious and may induce many errors when processing files from various directories.
I was advised to use ExifTools, but I still have not succeeded.
A long time user of Linux Mint/Mate, I decided to try XFCE.There I found an application Thunar / Bulk Rename that took me close of my wishes.
But only close to!
I only found the option 'Insert' Date and Time, but not 'Replace by' Date and Time. Hence, the best I could achieve is YYYYnndd-HHMMSSIMG-nnn.jpg., and I still have to manually remove the seven last characters of the name.
So, this is a suggestion to the developpers that already did a great work: if, when you develop this idea, your work will have been outstanding.
Thank you in advance.

sebvaillancourt

Member

Registered: 2019-07-01

Posts: 2

Re: Thunar Bulk Rename

Hi Beluga, I agree that this is an inconvenience. In the meantime I would suggest passing the files through another rename routine. Set it to "remove characters" and tweak around... If you know your format, you can for example set it to remove everything from the 10th character from the left to the 0th character from the left. That will only keep the first 10 characters.

Cheers!