Change file names

[Allan White]

Anders, I really like “NameChanger” for renaming Mac files in the finder, it’s simple & free. Probably not a bad idea to do so before importing.

– Allan White, Video Producer, Luis Palau Assoc.

Quad 3Ghz Mac Pro, 10GB RAM, X1900 GPU, XSAN, CatDV Server

[Anders Teigen]

Thanks for the tip.
We finished earlier today. This is how we did it.

1. I created a simple renaming tool in automator and removed all instances of ampersand (“&”) in the media file names.
2. In CatDV: we filtered the catalog and found all the corresponding entries. They were now offline because the renaming of files.
3. Selected the entries, did update media directories. Had to manually connect to each media file. Now The media files were correct, and the mediaPath in CatDV was correct. But the Name still had the ampersand.
4. Exported a Final Cut Pro XML of the selection
5. Imported XML in to FCP, selected all clips, made a rename > clip to match file.
6. Exported XML back to CatDV, and pasted the all correct entries in to the master catalog.

What have we learned of this? Never ever ever put an ampersand (&) in a filename, stay away from special unicode characters and characters like norwegian “æ”, “ø”, or “å” – and avoid whitespace while we’re at it. And even if most editors may know this very well, it doesn’t follow that the loggers or self-logging directors do – so set up a naming standard at the outset of shooting a new film. I prefer Date_Location_incremental for file based media. Tape_Location_incremental for tape based. Everything else in other columns. This for documentary work, fiction may want to do something else. Good night, and good luck!