jgreen, park,
my understanding was that what was being asked for was a single rule that allowed for selecting a whole bunch of files and saying:
if [album rating]=2 move it to drive 'a' and if it's equal to or greater than 3, move it to drive 'b'
for this, you'd need an if(isequal(...),,) expression. you cannot use expressions in the base path field, so as far as I can see, it's not possible right now.
Naturally, it would be simple enough to manually select all the [album rating]=2 albums and apply a rename from properties to those, then select all the 3 and overs, and apply different rename from props rules to those too.
Much simpler if we could just select a bunch of files and have the rename from props tools work from expressions, making all the appropriate choices for us.
I keep most of video files, 99% of my image files and all of my audio files on one drive. Regardless of what files I'm working on, I select them all, launch rename from properties and click the OK button. The expressions take care of placing the files in their correct directories depending on file type etc.
These two expressions took me forever and a day to work out, involving copious helpings of trial and error, but having got them working, I feel it was time well spent. What would be cool here would be a way to set a "default" for rename from props, then have a hotkey combo that applies those defaults, bypassing the need to load the dialogue and click the OK button
The base path is set as the drive root:
The directory expression:
IF(IsEqual([media type],audio,1),if(isequal([album],Assorted Tracks),My Music\[album],if(isempty([disc #],1),My Music\[file type]\[album artist (auto)]\[Album],My Music\[file type]\[album artist (auto)]\[Album]\Disc [disc #])),IF(IsEqual([media type],image,1),IF(IsEqual([genre],album art,1),My Music\[genre],My Pictures\MC\[date (year)]\[date (month)]),Movies\[genre])
and the filename expression:
IF(IsEqual([media type],audio,1),If(IsEqual([album artist (auto)], /(Multiple Artists/), 1),[track #] - [artist] - [name],[track #] - [name]),IF(IsEqual([media type],image,1),IF(IsEqual([genre],album art,1),[album artist (auto)] - [album] /([keywords]/) ~ [dimensions],[date (filename friendly)]),IF(IsEqual([genre],Music Video,1),[artist] - [name],[name]))
For those rare occasions where I'm dealing with files that will go to a different drive, I have to change things around. If we could use an expression in the base path field, then I for one, would be all set, just needing a single set of rename from properties rules to cover all my filenaming needs.
from the questions park was asking, I somehow figured he was aiming for a similar kind of solution. either way, it still offered the chance to talk about expressions in the base path field. hopefully, the ability will be put in place someday.
-marko.