What files types are you working with?

I have started work on version 4.0 of Advanced Renamer. For this release I am more likely to redo implementations of larger modules. One thing I have been working on is the extraction of metadata from media files and documents. Until now Advanced Renamer has been reliant on third party libraries and ExifTool for this extraction. The problem is that these tools can be slow and not flexible enough. Instead I have implemented many file types myself, resulting in much better performance and a more bespoke implementation. I started with JPEGs and work my way through image, video, audio, and document formats and I am maybe 70-80% through the formats I like to support. It has been a fun learning experience. Let's just say that metadata can be a Wild West sometimes.

Since I don't get any statistics from the program, I don't know how the program is used, and I was wondering about which files types and metadata fields are actually in use. It would be a great help for me if you would write a reply to this post or send me an email, telling me about the file formats you use and the metadata you need to be available, or if you don't use the metadata at all. That way I can make sure these features are available when the first release of version 4.0 launches.

Reply to #1:

I have very simple file rename usage–the files I usually work with are the standard, jpeg, bitmaps, the occasional nef and other raw compilations (but the people I work for usually don't have that much sophistication, so mostly the others). Exiftool is overkill for the stuff I do with file renaming, it's much easier and faster to use ARen for any info needed. Everything else I work with is really better handled by PowerGREP and EditPad Pro for serious in-file search/replace regex, outside the scope of ARen.

The other files I use ARen for aren't really applicable. They usually just need gentle massaging, no pulling out internal stuff.

It sounds like you are enjoying yourself, Kim, good for you! A while back I made a list of things I'd like to see in Advanced Renamer, but I never got around to sending it to you. I'll try to dig it out and see if anything is still relevant.

Best,
DF

A lot of WAV files. It would be great if the metadata from the WAV would also include the BPM detected, bit depth, sample length in seconds. BPM detection is of course an analysis thing, the rest can be easily deducted.

Cherry on top would be detection of one shot wave forms (tapered) vs. rhytmic, but that is only to quickly rename samples that are small and therefor one shot.

Reply to #3:
BPM detected requires analysis of the actual data, which might be out of scope for Advanced Renamer. But if you know of any command line tools that can do it, I might be able to make an integration and extract the information through that. The rest shouldn't be a big problem.

I use mainly MP3/FLAC/WAV....lets just say multi-media. I am only just beginning to see all of the wonderful functions that are available with this program. I see that that was a very large hubbub about removing the TV show functionality, and I never even got a chance to look at what that functionality even did. I might go back an install an older version just to take a peek at it.

Thank you for a wonderful program!

A very minor quibble that I have is that when I start the program, it never starts maximized to the screen, I have to click the maximize button in upper right.

I also think I am still having some problems with items in lists (List Replace methods) disappearing, but I havent worked with that aspect of them for a while.

Reply to #4:
Thanks! Yeah BPM detect is not a showstopper usually I do a tap-tempo to verify the BPM anyway as it is hard in busy breaks to find the transients.

I'm typically working with .zip and .rar files. I'm not sure if this would be possible but if Advanced Renamer could look inside the archive file to get information that would be pretty cool.

For example a lot of my zips contain .txt files inside the .zip with metadata in them so some kind of method to add a line from the .txt file to the new file name. Another example would be to count the total files in the .zip and add the number to the file name.

Another nice thing to see would be the option to disable file analysis entirely. When adding a lot of .zip files from a NAS the analyzing step takes forever and often just hangs.