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Author Topic: Best way to copy sidecar file along with Video Files to a new drive  (Read 645 times)

mvandyke

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I'm trying to create a subset of my files (rate 3+ stars or a defined playlist) that are on my main system on another portable system (different computer and smaller HD).   Audio files work just fine as all of the tags and album art are written into the files themselves and are easily reimported back into JRiver.

What is the best way to get all the additional video files that I've rate 3, 4 or 5 stars (with their associated jpg and sidecar files) to another drive with the same exact directory structure naming convention which is required by directory structure data within the sidecar file?

All of the files are initially in F: - I would like to copy them (as defined above) to G: on the main system and then change the drive letter back to F: on the portable system and reimport the video files and associated sidecar files back into JRiver.

I've been working on this for a while and have not had much luck.  Any input would be appreciate.  I must be missing something because this process has been a challenge for me.
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jkauff

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Re: Best way to copy sidecar file along with Video Files to a new drive
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2021, 01:47:34 pm »

Doing a Find and Replace in the XML files is trivial--any programmer's text editor will let you load all the files and do a global replace.

There's probably an image editor that can do the same with the .jpg metadata, but someone else will have to chime in with a suggestion.

Doing a re-import a couple of times works too, of course, but it sounds like you're trying to avoid that.
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zybex

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Re: Best way to copy sidecar file along with Video Files to a new drive
« Reply #2 on: March 23, 2021, 02:24:17 pm »

The RMCF tool has an option to move all associated files, but apparently it's only available when moving files, not copying. There's also the Sync functions, but I don't know if they copy extra files (I don't use it)
You may need to build a .bat script to copy the folders... Excel can help with that:

- create the playlist with what you want, set it to details view
- add the column [Filename (path)]
- copy all, paste into Excel
- delete everything except the column with the Paths (leave it in column A)
- set B2 to =replace(A2, 1, 1, "G")
- set C2 to ="xcopy /i /s /y """&A2&"*.*"" """&B2&"*.*"""
- double click on the lower-right corner of B2 and C2 to replicate the formulas
- copy the C column, paste into Notepad or notepad++, save as dup.bat
- run it!
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mvandyke

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Re: Best way to copy sidecar file along with Video Files to a new drive
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2021, 09:38:16 am »

Yes, I thought it was "odd" that RMCF was not active for copying additional files when using the copy command but was active for move. 

I ran some test at home and will report back exactly what I found when I used the move command.  As I recall it was odd that some files did get copied (xml ) but all xml files in the directory were copied when only 3-4 files were selected and then no JPG got copied when using the move function for video files.

I'm away from home now and will be back in two days and try the batch file copying and report back exactly what I found.

Thanks for all your help
Matt
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