1: It's useful to rename your digital photographs to something like this: yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss. It creates a 'unique' number as a filename, so long as you don't take more then 1 picture per second. That's where the problem starts: any modern Digital SLR can take between 2.5 and 8.5 frames per second, and the high end models have buffers of up to 50 images, something especially sports photographers take advantage of. This creates problems when you rename as described above. TC kindly notifies/shows you the conflicting files, but it's a royal pain to do something about this manually.
Because of this, people do various things to work around the problem:
- add a 4 digit counter (that's 4 digits extra for the odd chance there's 8 conflicting filenames, and the odd chance you shoot more then 999 pictures per day/session)
- add the last digit of the original filename (which is a somewhat random number without much meaning)
What I like to suggest is this: Multiple Rename should allow you to add an extra modifier that only kicks in with conflicting files. Example: _[C]
What you'd get is something like this (for a burst of 5 photographs at 8 fps that overlap 2 seconds):
2006-23-11_094532
2006-23-11_094841
2006-23-11_095215_1
2006-23-11_095215_2
2006-23-11_095215_3
2006-23-11_095216_1
2006-23-11_095216_2
2006-23-11_095233
Etc.
This way, you only add an extra modifier when it's actually needed, and it's easy to identify photographs that were shot in a burst, instead of adding a counter/modifier that's only usefull 1% of the time.
2: Then there's another very common issue: most Digital SLR's have the option to shoot JPG and RAW files simultaniously (RAW file is the unprocessed data straight off the sensor, for postprocessing purposes, and comes in different extensions depending on the brand (.NEF, .CR2, etc)) High end DSLR's have the ability to record voice memo's which are attached a photograph by the same file name as well.
The problem you get with renaming (and as I described above, it's nearly impossible to avoid using a counter of some sort), is that these files become separated after the rename.
DSC_0123.jpg -> 001.jpg
DSC_0123.raw -> 002.raw
DSC_0123.wav-> 003.wav
DSC_0124.jpg -> 004.jpg
etc.
They're still next to eachother in the list, but because of the different file name you lose the ability to link files based on their name.
What I'd like to suggest, is a way to ignore files with identical names and different extensions, and to treat them as one, so that after renaming these files keep the same filename when there's a counter added.
There are image browsers that can do this I believe, but most apps with rename capabilities can't do this.
3: It would be nice to have more then one undo after performing several rename actions. (I know, it's for the stupid people amongst us, and it's something I could have used in the past
)'Undoing' is also a bit unnatural IMO, because you have to select 1 or more files before you can open the Multiple Rename tool, before you can actually Undo. Perhaps it should be possible to open the Multiple Rename tool even without files selected?
4: I think it'd be great if TC had built in functionality of what is now a plugin called AddTime ( i think the name was?). This is very usefull for people who didn't have the clock of their digital camera set properly, especially when you rename your files using date and time! I've needed it myself once, and there are plenty people out there who could use this, but simply wouldn't know such a plugin existed even if they had TC.
