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[Jaguu]

Would it be possible to add the following two features to "Clean File Properties":

Add prefix (add a prefix to all selected values)
Sample values:  yyyy, xxxx, zzzz
New values: aaaa_yyyy, aaaa_xxxx, aaaa_zzzz

Add a postfix (add a postfix to all selected values)
Sample values: yyyy, xxxx, zzzz
New values: yyyy-aaaa, xxxx-aaaa, zzzz-aaaa,

Another place to add it could be "Search Replace". Better would be to have support for regular expressions in "Search Replace"

[hit_ny]

are you able to work around this using expressions ?

[Jaguu]

Well, I managed to solve the problem by using "Fill Properties from filename", but it's a real workaround. Would be quite easy to have it in "Clean File Properties" or "Search Replace".
Don't think it would be a great thing to implement.

[KingSparta]

Actually At One Time I Thought "Clean" MC Moved The Leading "A"

"A Man With A Crooked Stick Walked A Crooked Mile"

Would Become

"Man With A Crooked Stick Walked A Crooked Mile, A"

Not Sure Why It Is Not.

Better would be to have support for regular expressions in "Search Replace"

Yes It Would

Pre-pend And Append Also Have Been Talked About.

[marko]

King, I'm surprised you didn't mention Replace Master?

or has that project been permanently shelved now?

[Quixote]

The Ultimate Solution would be a "Fill Property from Properties" that way you can do most anything with prepending and appending.  It can look like the "File Filename from Properties" dialog but with a dropdown to select the Property that will be edited.

Here's an example for if you need Name property to be Quotation Marks around Name and Track #:

Select Name from a dropdown:

Property Value = "[Name] - [Track #]"

This would solve a lot o my problems.

[KingSparta]

or has that project been permanently shelved now?

No, I Need To Re Work It, To Make It More User Friendly (To Include My Self)

I Am However Working On Another Project That Takes Up Most Of My Free Time In Research (For Old Radio Shows). Trying To Retag, Reformat, Complete Tags Along With Finding Correct Show Information For Some Shows. I Currently Have A Flash Player Loadup A XML Play List For Each Month Of The Year (That I Am Still Working On) On My SpartaOTR.Com We Site So Users Can Listen For Free Some Of The Old Radio Shows. Vist SpartaOTR.Com And Go To The Listening Room. You Can Click On Last Month And Next Month To Get A New Show List, The Player Opens Up When you Enter A Page.

The Files Are In FLV format

[johnnyboy]

I'd also love a more powerful search and replace type tool.

I often find myself wanting to remove the first x chars from a field. Or want to split a field into two other fields (sometimes track names will be  [track # - trackName] and I want to split it into two fields.
Other times I want to add on something to all tracks before the name or after it too.

[glynor]

I too would really LOVE a pre/post pend tool.  I think it'd be more appropriate in the Find and Replace tool.

This is constantly one of the more annoying (and time consuming) parts of my tagging tasks!

[KingSparta]

This is constantly one of the more annoying (and time consuming) parts of my tagging tasks!

I hear you.

To Help Speed Things Up

I Import Only One Folder, in A Temp Library Then Do Editing.

If I Would Edit The Same Files With 240,000 Files in The Library (No Matter Where) It Is Painfully Slow Just Moving From one Field to The Other (Even With No Changing Of The Field). With Only Lets Say 100 Files in The Whole Library It Is Quick As A Flash.

[glynor]

To Help Speed Things Up

I Import Only One Folder, in A Temp Library Then Do Editing.

That's not quite what I mean by slow....

For example, when naming TV show episodes in my database, I use this format for the [Name] field: [Season #]e[Episode #] - [Episode Name].  That's a simple (and somewhat standard really) method of naming the files so that they sort properly in my various view schemes and all I need to do is sort by name.

Now, say I've just finished ripping/recording/encoding the entire series of HBO's "The Wire" (actually, I'm just almost done -- about 7 episodes left).  Quite often, I have files that are named similarly, but not quite right.  For example, those Wire episodes are currently named like this:

The Wire-10-(Misgivings)-2006-11-21-0
The Wire-12-(That's Got His Own)-2006-12-03-1

There's currently no effective way to batch rename these files, I have to manually select each file, click to edit the tag, select the text that's wrong and type in the info I want.  That's no big deal if there's only one or two, but when I have a few hundred to do, it quickly becomes tiresome.  It's easy to get the other tags to show up how I want ... I already have the files marked with:

Artist = "The Wire"
Album = "Season 4"
Track # = Episode Number (which is easily done once the files are tagged with the Season, I just use the Fill Track Number from List Order tool)

Why can't I put in a Find and Replace that searches for:

The Wire-*-(<name string>)

(where the * matches any character or characters and the <name string> extracts what it finds in that pattern).  And tell it to automatically reformat them to:

04e10 - Misgivings

Which is what I want?

I know that it's possible to do things like this with Regular Expressions (though it might be hard to code it -- and it might end up looking like a line of Perl).

Either way, just the ability to add a prefix or suffix to a batch of files all in one fell swoop would save tons of time.  I can't tell you how often I've had a set of 20-30 files all named (in the [Name] tag, not the Filename):

01 - Boys of Summer
02 - Soft Eyes
03 - Home Room
(etc, etc, etc)

and I want them to be:

4e01 - Boys of Summer
4e02 - Soft Eyes
4e03 - Home Room

Currently, if there's nothing to "Find" (because you want the text added to the beginning or end or middle of what's already there), you can't use the Find and Replace tool and you have to do it manually!!

[KingSparta]

I Was Attempting To Do Something Like That (And Other Things) In A Plug-In That I Removed From My Site.

[skeeterfood]

Couldn't you just use Rename File from Properties:
04e[Track #] - [Name]

Assuming you have Name filled out with the Episode Name.

-John

[glynor]

No... I'm trying to fill the [Name] tag, not the file name.  If we had the functionality of the Rename File From Properties tool applied to tags, then yes, that would work.  We don't though.

(I edited the above post to be more clear.  In that entire post, I was referring to the [Name] tag, not the filename.  I thought it was clear from my comments at the beginning but after re-reading it it wasn't perfectly clear.)

Generally, my file names are (until I fix them using Rename Files from Properties from within MC) utterly useless (things like I listed above with the date recorded and whatnot).

[skeeterfood]

OK, then for the files you listed:
The Wire-10-(Misgivings)-2006-11-21-0.mpg
The Wire-12-(That's Got His Own)-2006-12-03-1.mpg

How about:

Use Fill Properties from Filename:
[Artist]-[Track #]-([Name])-


-John

Edit: Nevermind, you want [Name] to be 04e10 - Misgivings....

[glynor]

That works if they all match.  They don't always.

What if they're named:

628555-999438gbh.mpg
628556-999438gbh.mpg
628557-999438gbh.mpg

Sometimes that's the case.  (Those are actual filenames that I have on my system right now -- they're serialized by the recording application I use at work.)

And ... right, as you realized, that doesn't help fill the [Name] tag with the contents of other fields.

[Jaguu]

01 - Boys of Summer
02 - Soft Eyes
03 - Home Room
(etc, etc, etc)

and I want them to be:

4e01 - Boys of Summer
4e02 - Soft Eyes
4e03 - Home Room

Exactly, this is the main reason for the need of a prefix / postfix feature. It's a case that shows up quite often when tagging.

[glynor]

Exactly, this is the main reason for the need of a prefix / postfix feature. It's a case that shows up quite often when tagging.

Right, and to be clear...

While the ability to define some sort of Regular Expressions in the Find/Replace Properties tool would be super-keen, and I think an extremely valuable addition to MC's functionality (especially if it were also possible to set up in an automated fashion via Otto or something), I'm certainly not demanding this as an "all or nothing" solution.  That would help a lot but...

Simple Prepend/Postpend options (I call them "pend" not "fix") would help immensely, and would solve a lot of what annoys me about tagging in MC.

It's a question of "this is extremely annoying" (lack of pre/postpend options) vs. "this would be extremely cool" (regex in Find/Replace and Otto able to do automatic Fill Properties from Filename searches).

[park]

I'd like the ability to "remove all numbers" from a tag field.

Eg: I often have to manually delete track numbers from the beginning of the "name" field.

[glynor]

I'd like the ability to "remove all numbers" from a tag field.

Eg: I often have to manually delete track numbers from the beginning of the "name" field.

That's true!  Actually, it'd probably be more useful to just have a Trim(x,y) type function (where x=number of characters to delete and y=number of characters from leftmost character in string to start).  And like I said, real expression support would allow you to do this (or to search for any string "pattern")...

Sometimes those files are called "03. Some stupidly tagged track" or "07 - Alternate type stupidly tagged track".  Being able to just trim 4 characters off of the left site (in the case of the former) would be perfect!  Plus, if you could do Find and Replace type searches on the existing data to extract information (so you could copy those track numbers to the proper field before deleting it from [Name])...

Something like:

Code: [Select]

Search [Name] and Find & Replace with: {[Track #]##}. [Name]
Where:

• the curly brackets {} tell it to fill the tag in the given tag identifier with whatever comes after the tag identifier inside the brackets.
• the # characters in the {} match any numeric character (but not alpha chars).  The # in [Track #] would be ignored because it's part of the field identifier.
• [Name] is able to "fill itself based on the given pattern" (so that in the above example the ". " wouldn't get included in the new [Name] field.

Or where if you just wanted to trim off 3 characters from the left of the existing name field, and then take the result and dump it back into the [Name] field you could do:

Code: [Select]

Search [Name] and Find & Replace with: Trim([Name],3,1)
I'm of course, just making up rules and methods as I go.  I know there is a real RegEx "language" that this could be based on (rather than my mess of made up gobbldegook)...