How do you do bulk renaming of long filenames in Windows? (Or get Nero to use them?)

Factual Questions
1

I download a lot of (public domain) radio programs from usenet, and recently I’ve been having a lot of trouble with filenames that are too freaking long.

The thing is, the naming conventions that a lot of the OTR groups use generate absurdly long filenames. Typically, something like “Full Series Name/Network/Original Air Date/Episode Number/Episode name/Encoding bitrate”.

For me, this is untidy- especially when we’re talking about a file format that has adequate tags for all that extra information. When I reorganize my files, I typically make a folder with the series name, and rename all the individual files so that they reflect only the episode number and name.

eg;

Scarlet Queen USAFRN 1947-12-24 (25)The 15Th Llama and the Wise Guy from the East.mp3

should be renamed to something like

25-The 15Th Llama and the Wise Guy from the East.mp3

…which is still too long, but not completely overboard.

I used to be able to do this in a DOS window, like

REN Scarlet?Queen???*.mp3 *.mp3, but for some reason Windows Me doesn’t seem to like long filenames in the CLI, unless I’m missing something, as far as it’s concerned the files are named SCARL~01.MP3 etc and that’s that.

This means that if I want to rename the files, I have to do them all one at a time with Windows’ GUI-- a royal pain in the butt, especially as there are typically hundreds of shows in a series.

Lately I don’t have the option of being lazy about it, because Nero insists on truncating filenames when I burn to CD, and I can’t seem to find the setting to change this. So if I don’t take the time to rename all the files, they’ll all automatically be renamed, leaving only the redundant part of the filename, eg:

Scarlet Queen USAFRN1.mp3
Scarlet Queen USAFRN2.mp3

This is especially disastrous since the numbering that Nero assigns seems to be based on the file creation date or something, so serial programs will be rearranged in random order. Aargh! Of course, having a folder of files named “Inner Sanctum1.mp3” etc, isn’t particularly useful, either.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to easily rename whole directories of files, since I typically play my .mp3 discs on a variety of stand-alone players, and they don’t all deal with crazy-ass filenames in predictable ways.

Short of that, I’d like to know how to get Nero to grit its teeth and write a disc with lots of illegal filenames on it, so I can at least get the stuff off my hard drive and organize it properly later.

I’m using Nero V5 and Windows Me.

Any help is appreciated!

2

I have a http:\www.winbatch.com script that I wrote that processes entire directory trees to shorten MP3 names, cos if they’re longer than 64 chars they won’t go on CDROMs. This is the Joliet naming standard. Ain’t nothing Nero can do about it.

Unfortunately you either need winbatch or persuade me to take the time to compile it into a stand-alone application. :slight_smile:

3

What I use for my MP3 naming needs is a nice program called MP3-Tag Studio. It can make ID3 tags from filenames, make filenames from ID3 tags, mass set tags, and a bunch of other handy things. It’s basically freeware (with some ads that are installed as part of the program, but are not updated and the program is not and is never crippled) with a registration fee of about $20. It might be a good place to start.

4

I usually use 1-4a Rename for batch renaming - small file - you can preview your changes - and very easy to use.

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

5

Hey, thanks all!

(Prepares to compare.)

6

I’ve used a great little utility called Flash Renamer to rename well over 10,000 files. I’ve tried a lot of renaming apps over the past few years and Flash Renamer has outshone them all. Well worth a look…

http://www.rlvision.com/flashren/about.asp