Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[joetiii]

I had my WD MyBook Live hacked and all my music files were wiped off the primary drive. WD was able to recover the files on the mirror and they returned them to me on a external drive. As I am migrating them over to my new NAS I was hoping to rebuild my current library by simply renaming the Filename in MC28 from WD to new NAS. The problem I am having is that WD has added a number tagged to the end of most of the music file names. However, I am not so experienced in Library Tools to figure out a way to get the current Library filename to matchup to the mislabeled file. Anybody with experience knowhow? or am I stuck reimporting all the files and slogging thru 18,000 songs?

[blgentry]

If everything else is exactly as it should be: Folders, sub folders, jpegs, etc... and all that is wrong is some extra numbers at the end of each FILENAME, you might be able to rescue them.

I would think you would want to use a bulk renaming tool that could remove these.  I just did an experiment with some made  up filenames on my system and was able to remove trailing numbers in the file name using a renaming tool I have (for Mac) that understands regular expressions.

I've never used this tool (Bulk Rename), but I saw it recommended in a thread on SuperUser:

https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/

It has regex and looks quite powerful.  It's possible it could help you.  I HAVE NEVER USED IT.  It's just a suggestion for you to evaluate.

Good luck!
Brian.

[HPBEME]

I have used bulk rename utility a number of times of the years and can vouch for it.  And it is free to boot.

Incredibly powerful features to rename files in just about any way imaginable. It does take a bit of experimentation to see how it works... well I had to experiment a bit anyway to understand it.  It shows a preview of the new filename(s) before you commit to the change - that said, it is always best to start with a small sub-set to make sure you get the results you want.

I found BulkRenameUtility to work best, but here are a couple other free batch renaming utilities that you may like better:

Advanced Renamer   https://www.advancedrenamer.com/
Rename Master   http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/108/

Good Luck!

[JimH]

MC's renaming is quite powerful.  Read about Library Tools on the wiki.

[HPBEME]

Based on the OP description of the problem, I personally don't know how you would use MC's renaming tool to modify the names back to their original state.  Maybe it can be done somehow in combination with expressions?  Unfortunately, my expression knowledge/skills are remedial at best. I guess I figured with all the smart, expression using, folks on this forum (Matt, Marko, Zybex, and too many others to list), they would have chimed in by now on how to do it directly in MC if it could be done.  Maybe this post will incite them into action.  Otherwise, the free batch file renaming tools I posted links to are good alternatives.

[HPBEME]

I just thought of something... in your original post, you said "...WD has added a number tagged to the end of most of the music file names." Do you mean an actual tag in MC's database?  If so, just select all the files in MC and delete that specific tag - problem solved.  Re-import the files and all should be well (and re-importing does not take that long, even if you were generating a brand new MC Library database from scratch).  Figured I would throw that out there just in case.

BUT... I doubt that is what you meant.  The numbers were appended to the actual filename you see in the windows explorer file list, right?  If so, we are back to hoping one of the many smart folks on this forum can devise a way to properly rename it using MC, or you will have to use a 3rd party batch file-renaming software.  Or you can rename 18,000+ files manually. 

[joetiii]

Well I imported the FLA files into MC that were in WDs datafile and low and behold, all the information populated. Unfortunately, there are a lot of FLAC files that are in my Library that WD did not recover.

I also noted that in many cases, there are two copies of each file so I need to go through the Library, compare them in both bit rate and length of song to determine which one I need to keep. this will be a long process. I also discovered that some songs are not complete meaning that MC stops playing the song before the time bar at top of MC finishes. I am trying to see if I can convert the original file to FLAC and see if the song finishes. Otherwise I need to head over to EZ News and see if they have a copy of it on their server. oh well.

I am also having issues with APE files. These are the most corrupt in that most all of the songs play, but are not complete and are not labelled at all.

[joetiii]

I have used bulk rename utility a number of times of the years and can vouch for it.  And it is free to boot.

Incredibly powerful features to rename files in just about any way imaginable. It does take a bit of experimentation to see how it works... well I had to experiment a bit anyway to understand it.  It shows a preview of the new filename(s) before you commit to the change - that said, it is always best to start with a small sub-set to make sure you get the results you want.

I found BulkRenameUtility to work best, but here are a couple other free batch renaming utilities that you may like better:

Advanced Renamer   https://www.advancedrenamer.com/
Rename Master   http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/108/

Good Luck!

Thank You, I will check this out.

[joetiii]

  Or you can rename 18,000+ files manually. 

Looks like I will be busy for the next year. 

[Jamil]

Hopefully you have blocked your NAS from being remotely accessible on the Internet to prevent this in the future.  I don't know your NAS, but there are a number of ways to do this.