File naming convention in iTunes

[pmod]

I have some TV shows that were already in mp4. They worked great in
iTunes - I had set the show, season and episode numbers manually. I
was thinking that I'd enjoy having the extra metadata, so I removed
one season of one show and am readding it with iFlicks.

The problem is the filenames - the filenames used to be very useful,
like "TV Show Name S01E02.mp4" - but now the file names are simply "02
Episode Name.mov"

That means that in the single folder, it will be impossible in Finder
to see or select specific shows.

Can we get meaningful filenames? Perhaps they could look like
"ShowName EpName S01E01.mov"

Thanks.

[Chad Bailey]

I had a similar problem where I imported but I wanted to reimport. The problem you're describing is iTunes's fault, not iFlicks. (If you look at your music folders, the files are named the same way.) The best workaround I found was to use a free utility called Name Mangler ( http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/ ) to rename the files. I created a folder structure with show names at the top level and season numbers inside each show folder, then i dragged the episodes out, one season at a time, into the respective folders. From there, I used Name Mangler to prepend "[Show Name] - S[Season #]E" to the beginning of each file. That's the syntax that iFlicks will recognize. I'm sure there's a way to automate the Show Name - Season Number problem, but for my needs it was quicker to just do it by hand.

-chad

[Jendrik Bertram]

Hi Chad,

you are right. The only way to set the filenames of videos manually is to disallow iTunes to organize the library. This causes more work for the users and, in my opinion, is only useful in some rare cases.

Name Mangler seems like a great tool and should really prove useful to rename the files for reimport. I don't have any ideas for a simpler solution to get around the problem.

Cheers,

Jendrik

[pmod]

I know having iTunes manage the library means that it does
occasionally change filenames, but the filenames that I had never
changed - even after updating their information in iTunes.

I use Better Finder Rename, which is fantastic - but going through
another manual step isn't ideal :(

On Jun 1, 4:20 pm, Jendrik Bertram <jend...@iflicksapp.com> wrote:
> Hi Chad,
>
> you are right. The only way to set the filenames of videos manually is  
> to disallow iTunes to organize the library. This causes more work for  
> the users and, in my opinion, is only useful in some rare cases.
> Name Mangler seems like a great tool and should really prove useful to  
> rename the files for reimport. I don't have any ideas for a simpler  
> solution to get around the problem.
>
> Cheers,
> Jendrik
>
> On 01.06.2009, at 20:21, Chad Bailey wrote:
>
> > I had a similar problem where I imported but I wanted to reimport.  
> > The problem you're describing is iTunes's fault, not iFlicks. (If  
> > you look at your music folders, the files are named the same way.)  
> > The best workaround I found was to use a free utility called Name  

> > Mangler (http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/) to rename the  

[Jendrik Bertram]

On 01.06.2009, at 22:27, pmod wrote:

>
> I know having iTunes manage the library means that it does
> occasionally change filenames, but the filenames that I had never
> changed - even after updating their information in iTunes.

I am not sure what you are trying to say with, but iTunes changes the
filenames of all files imported. It always sets a filename similar to
the "Name" field. If you change this, iTunes will also rename the file.

[Moo]

Hi Jendrik.

> I am not sure what you are trying to say with, but iTunes changes the
> filenames of all files imported. It always sets a filename similar to
> the "Name" field. If you change this, iTunes will also rename the file.

I don't believe that pmod was implying anything -- he was just
explaining what happens. To be honest, I'm in the same boat as pmod.
If I name a file "Mary had a little lamb.m4v" and DRAG it into iTunes,
then the filename will remain as that regardless of how I now markup
the file with metadata.

I'm running:
Mac Pro Quad-Core / 6GB RAM / OS X 10.5.7
iTunes 8.2 (23)

I, too, wondered how or why the files are renaming. Seems odd to me
seeing it doesn't happen normally on my system, nor on pmod's (as it
appears).

[Jendrik Bertram]

Hi,

I finally got around to give this a try.
I can drag files to iTunes, so that they keep the name. This worked
for me once with a m4v file, but as soon as I changed some of the
metadata it was renamed.
There is no way to take advantage of this behavior in iFlicks, since
it has no control which filenames iTunes uses.

The only thing I can offer you is the following:

1. iFlicks converts and tags a video as needed and saves it to a
predefined location
2. it creates a filesystem link (or reference file, if the video is on
located on a different HD)
3. iFlicks adds the filesystem link to iTunes

That way you can have a video file in a location you can choose and
which won't be renamed. On the downside, you can not delete the video
from iTunes.

Let me know what you think. Is it worth to implement this just to get
around iTunes renaming files?

Jendrik

[Matthew Muir]

Hi Jendrik. This is one for pmod - I don't care what filename exists.

Regards