Studios with Multiple Photographers File Naming Conventions?

[andycollings]

In switching over a dam based workflow, I'm debating renaming my 85000 existing filenames with the studioname_YYYYMMDD_0123.DNG naming convention. The problem I will have with that is that then I'll have many, many instances of identical filenames because several photographers photographed weddings on the same day.
Even though I could embed the customer/jobname into each file's metadata and therefore do a "jobname 0123" search and then get the file, I think there's too much of a risk of an employee forgetting to do that and just searching for YYYYMMDD 0123 and getting the wrong file. So, it seems like the right thing to do is to name the files studioname_YYYYMMDD_ac_0123.DNG to ad the photographer's initials.
Anyone else in the same boat and what have you done? Thanks.

Andy

[peterkrogh]

Andy,
I agree with your assessment - in your case, I'd suggest that you add either the photographer or the wedding couple's id to the filename.

the most important rule is to not have multiple files with the same name.
Peter

[andycollings]

In thinking about this more, I'm leaning towards the following naming convention:
acp_{iptcyear4}{iptcmonth0}{iptcday0}_{ih24}{imin}{isec}_{filenamebase:-4,4}

This would yield filenames such as:
acp_20080202_150130_8800.CR2
(25 characters)

And a master file could be:
acp_20080202_150130_8800_maac.tif (w "ma" to denote master and "ac" for the worker's id)
(30 characters)

The thing that's nice is that there's virtually no chance that a filename could ever be duplicated, even with 10 cameras being used at the same time.
It would allow me to ingest multiple cards simultaneously in Photo Mechanic and still set a final filename at the point of ingesting.


My original idea of putting the photographer's initials into the filename uses up precious filename characters with information that's better suited to metadata.

Anyone see potential pitfalls? I do see that it will make the filename a bit confusing for the wedding clients since their jobs will have as many as 6 cameras and therefore the filennumber ending in 887 could have been shot before the filennumber ending in 221 etc. But I'm not sure it's going to matter that much to them. As long as their files, prints, webgalleries etc always line up in order by shoot sequence, whether I create the subsequent subset or they do, I don't think it matters. They would just need to understand that at the very least their filename is 11 characters long.

Andy

[peterkrogh]

Andy,
What's the need to put the worker's id in the filename, as opposed to metadta?
Peter

[andycollings]

Ah, yes. I'm still trying to make this transition away from metadata-based filenames! What is the recommended field for the worker's id in the metadata?
Andy

[peterkrogh]

What do you mean by the "worker"?  The person who adjusts the image?  Makes master files?
Peter

[andycollings]

I mean the person transforming the DNG into a layered tif-type file. I'll know based on file location whether a DNG has been adjusted so I don't think it's necessary to notate that status in the file name. But that leads me to another question, actually: does it make sense to have my DNG files also carry some kind of status code at the end of the file so that all my files (DNGs, TIFs, JPEGs) have the same number of characters. Something like:
acp_20080202_150130_8800_arcr.DNG (signifying something like "adjusted raw client ready". I'm not into it solely because of the neatness factor but because that way any text operations on filenames could be performed on any file regardless of the stage it's at with the same script, rather than needing to be careful of variations in filename number of characters.
Andy

[peterkrogh]

Andy,
I'd probably put the worker's name in metadata, rather than the file name.

As to name length, I can't remember this being an issue I have encountered, but I can imagine that some scripts might have a problem at some point.

I'm not too keen on using filenames to denote processing status in general (other than appending some kind of modifier to master derivatives) - seems like a lot of extra work that can be handled by setting up a workflow folder system.

Peter