Batch rename bizarrely adds unwanted "_1" suffix! Grrrrrr.

[wprasek]

The more I use iView, the more frustrated I become with its many bugs and unexplained crashes. Now I find that when renaming any number of files (eg. search for "wall" and replace with "great wall"), files that should be skipped (eg. don't contain "wall") are in fact given a "_1" suffix. 

Auuuurrrrrgh. Why???

Anyone else experience this problem?
My setup - iView MediaPro v3.13, win xp SP2.

[jimHere]

I've never seen that (although I'm on an Apple machine).

-- Jim

[peterkrogh]

Warren,
Well, you probably know how I feel about naming schemes like this - I think you're asking for trouble right from the start.

My practice in renaming is to select images for rename that fit a particular criteria. I only send images into the Batch Rename that I actually intend to rename.  My guess is that this is as-designed behavior.

In fact, I would expect that this is  a pretty reasonable outcome when the user asks the program to rename files using an impossible parameter. You could have some kind of conditional UI built into the rename dialog (How do I handle errors?), but that's not in there, and I'm not sure using it would be any more satisfying than simply doing a sort before initiating the rename.

Peter

[billseymour]

Adding my two cents: I have not encountered anything like this in four months of using iView, and this activity includes batch renaming files as I finally settled on my naming convention. (ie, changing my two initial abbreviation _ws_ to _wcs_ across several thousand files, etc).

I'd suggest taking a sample of files you are having problems with, and making two 'test' folders of them. One folder remains unchanged (the 'control' in the experiment), and then apply your rename effort to the second folder. This way, you can see if there are problems in the modified folder, and can also check file-by-file against the 'control' folder to figure out what happened.

Reading between the lines, I wonder if you might be trying to do a 'too complex, too tricky' batch name change, and iView, faced with a naming convention problem, tries to _1 its way out of the problem.

If I have a complex batch rename to do, I tend to break it down into steps. So I might make 2 batch 'runs', first applying the step 1 change, and then running step 2 change.

Finally, I would echo what others have said about naming and DAM- keep file naming simple, with an emphasis on chronological sequence (this allows you to fill the 'buckets' chronologically), and use keywording as your way to put all the 'find my photo' clues into each file. Remember that if you use a program like iView, you can 'synch annotate' (write the keyword info back to the file), so your hard work always stays with the files even if you later change DAM applications.

Bill__1  (dang it...)

[wprasek]

FWIW, I am already naming all my files in a consistent format with a unique ID for every single image in the format YYMMDD-HHMMSSxy where "x" is a sequential number to differentiate multiple shots taken in the same second (camera in burst mode), and "y" is an alphabetical character (a-z) to designate whether the file is the first version (a), a derivative eg cross processed or black & white etc (b, c, d etc) or the RAW untouched version (z).

After that code I insert "-wprasek-" as a URL "breadcrumb" so ppl obtaining my images can always hopefully find my website (www.wprasek.com), and only *THEN* do I add several descriptive "keywords" in order to improve my google image search results, and also anyone searching thru my images using eg Windows explorer/ Mac Finder wihtout the benefit of an IPTC-aware app.

So yep I'm fully aware of the critical need for a unique ID for every single image, and have been painstakingly renaming 30,000+ images to fit this format, and for 22,000 so far, have also added copyright & contact info, geotags, IPTC location/city/region/country/ISO country code, IPTC scenes, keywords, ratings, colours, etc...!

But I'm at a loss why iView wouldn't just SKIP files which don't meet the requested renaming criteria. Why change them when no change has been requested? Anyway as Peter says, now I have to (waste my time) selecting the exact files which need batch renaming rather than a whole directory.

I still feel this is yet another limitation of a program now getting very, very long in the tooth. Fingers crossed that MS finally pulls its finger out, but i'm not hopeful... :-(

Warren Prasek
www.wprasek.com

[MikeCaine]

I had this same problem a while go on my Mac using 3.2.2.

I can't remember the specifics but I ended up in a right mess and eventually went back to a previous backup of my catalog and renamed the files outside outside of IVMP before reimporting them.

Mike