Auto incrementing a number to a file in CATDV Worker

[Matthew Stamos]

The new worker has more bulk edit feature but not this one yet. Of course you could do this with the bulk edit tool in CatDV Pro Client. One thought I would toss in is using a couple date and time stamp variables as those would be unique numbers. $T for time and $D for date come to mind there are other variables that maybe useful that I am less familiar with in $u and $U. Maybe SqaureBox could chime in here and add some detail or alternative approaches.

[Dougal Matthews]

hi Gene

Firstly every file brought into catdv gets a unique id called a clip Id and the proxy is tide to this file by pathing so you already have a unique identifier set up in catdv and this can be set to be visilbe in your user views

you don’t say if you want to add the number as metadata or as a file name, either way you can use variables, as matt says there are a few options creating a custom string using date – time and you own characters or using unix style

eg
$u A long Unix timestamp that could be used to create a ‘unique’ filename

$U A unique name dervived from the current timestamp, shown as letters and digits

$D Current date as yyyymmdd, eg. 20081231

$M Current year and month as yyyy mm, eg. 2009 01

$T Current time as hhmmss, eg. 235959

see here for more details https://www.squarebox.com/using-variables/

to either append or replace the file name ( choose rename – expand variables on the conversion tab ) see image

or to add variables to metadata see this tutorial for a guide

https://www.squarebox.com/using-metadata-from-paths/

If you really do want to use a external sequential number you could create a text file called counter.txt read a value from this file, append this to a filename /metadata field using worker and then increment the counter by one ready for the next file, using shell scripting on a mac or batch scripting on a pc.

a good sysadmin should be able to knock this up for you fairly easily

i hope this helps you achieve your aims

good luck

dougal

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