A Friend's XP Problem?

[James]

I have a question that a friend of mine asked me about and I am turning to the great minds here to see if they have a suggestion or solution. He is using XP, but this may happen with Vista too, I am not sure.

"As you most likely know, in Windows Explorer (I am still using XP) there is an option when renaming a bunch of files in a folder to give them all the same name with a numeric suffix.

For instance Vacation 2005
Vacation 2005 (01)
Vacation 2005 (02)
Vacation 2005 (03)
etc

This is done by renaming the first file in the bunch, pressing function key F2 and hitting enter. I use this method a lot when naming photos (jpg files) in a folder. With the new DVD players you can then display the photos in the folder as a slide show. It works very nicely.

However, there is a problem unique to this process. The jpgs are all in the order they should be and in the correct sequence, just as the pictures were taken day by day. The DVD, however, will play the files in the following sequence:

Vacation 2005
Vacation 2005 (01)
Vacation 2005 (10)
Vacation 2005 (100)
Vacation 2005 (101)
I
I
I
Vacation 2005 (109)
Vacation 2005 (11)
Vacation 2005 (110)
I
I
I
Vacation 2005 (119)
Vacation 2005 (12)
etc

The only solution I know is to rename all the files as follows

Vacation 2005 (AA)
Vacation 2005 (AB)
Vacation 2005 (AC)
I
I
I
Vacation 2005 (AZ)
Vacation 2005 (BA)
Vacation 2005 (BB)
etc

As you can imagine, this renaming is quite a job. There must be lots of people that use their newer DVD players to view photos (jpgs) in a folder and they must have a similar problem. Or is there an other solution?"

Any ideas anyone?

[venkatarangan]

sometime back when I had the same problem I googled for "file renaming" or "Batch file renaming" and found some tools that did this. I don't remember the exact URL or tool that I used

[James]

Thanks for the tip, and welcome to the WVC forums!

[seti]

James if you go to here www.computeractive.co.uk and do a search on them there is a free tool that does it in XP, or if you look in tutorials on that site there is a step by step guide. I thought I still had the magazine with it in still, but I don't because of using Vista. Both these things are about 3 years old from what I can remember. Sorry Cant help more
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/

[James]

Thanks seti! I found these in a search there; any of them sound familiar?
Computeractive - search
"ReNamer 5.40" sounds like it may do the job.

[seti]

Thanks seti! I found these in a search there; any of them sound familiar?
Computeractive - search
"ReNamer 5.40" sounds like it may do the job.

Yes that does sound familiar James. Hope it does the job

[HappyAndyK]

An MVP collegue of mine has this to suggest :

"A quick dirty solution as well as guide for future naming is to keep the length of the serial always the same 00001, 00005 and 00010 will sort correctly and playback correctly

Otherwise if he is a coder then a simple app could easily number / re-number files for him in date time order as he mentions that they are in time sequence

Ashok. "

Hope that helps one way or the other

[James]

Thanks! I will pass on all these suggestions to him.