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[FrankL]

Now that Movie files are included in Media Center it is neccessary to revise the "Fill Properties from Filename" function.  This is neccessary because the Media Center tag cannot be stored in most video files, so if for some reason your media library database gets cleared you will have to completely start from scratch to rebuild your media library tags for the videos.  For me that would be devastating since I have already spent way too much time organizing my videos in Media Center.

Here is the proposed improvement:
Say you have a directory that looks like this, where [Genre] etc is a variable standing for the foldername as well as the genre in the Media Center Library:
[Genre]\[Artist]1\[Album]\[Comment]
[Genre]\[Artist]2\[Album]
[Genre]\[Artist]3
ie there are three folders in the [Genre] folder

If I were to have to start from scratch in my Media Library, with a directory structure like this the most logical place to start would be with the "Fill Properties from Filename" function Only IF a small option was added.  

This option would be to start filling in the properties from the left side or highest part of the file tree (ie [Genre]) instead of starting at the lowest point (ie [Comment])

Example:
Filling from highest part of file tree when the command is "Directories        [Genre]\[Artist]\[Album]\[Comment]" and specifying to start the fill at [Genre] and go to the right for the next fill would give:

[Genre]\[Artist]1\[Album]\[Comment]
[Genre]\[Artist]2\[Album]
[Genre]\[Artist]3


Filling from lowest part of file tree (the way Media Center is set to do now) when the command is "Directories        [Genre]\[Artist]\[Album]\[Comment]" would give:

[Genre]\[Artist]1\[Album]\[Comment]
"a higher directory"\[Genre]\[Artist]2\[Album]
"a higher directory"\"a higher directory"\[Genre]\[Artist]3


Please ask me quesions about my somewhat confusing explanation of what I believe to be a very helpful improvement

[Matt]

What you're proposing is tricky because where do you start for the first field?  At c:\, c:\videos, c:\video\sports\ or where?

It's not for sure that all the files you've selected are in the same base directory either, so it gets ugly if you want people to be able to specify a base directory.

Is there some workaround?

Thanks!

[FrankL]

Good point.

Do you think though that there would be a way for the option to only be available if you specify the base directory as "\sports\" and all of the files that you selected fall under the "\sports\" directory.

Having this would probably take up some extra CPU power to scan to see if everything selected falls in the "\sports\" directory and would be unneccessary in most cases because most people would like to use the "Fill Properties from Filename" tool the way it is now

So to get rid of the uneccessary scanning maybe the new fuction could be listed in "Library Tools" right underneath "Fill Properties from Filename" as "Fill Properties from Filename Backwards" instead of an option from the "Fill Properties from Filename" dialog.

[FrankL]

Also I have found an error in the current "Rename Files from Properties" function.  If I were to set it to rename according to [Genre]\[Artist]\[Album]\[Comment] it would go through it all ok but sometimes it would show up as Genre\Artist\Album\\filename in the media Library if there was nothing in the [comment] field.  

This does not mess up the windows directory but is still kind of weird