Hi! I need go through my media one at a time now because none of the episode matching that happens automatically seems to be working. What I need to to be able to do is pick a specific episode from a series which I want one or more files renamed to match. I can't seem to find a clear way to do that. I would love to load a set of files which represent all of the media and supporting files for a particular episode, and then select a single episode from the "Episodes" browser and then apply it to all of the files that I have sitting in "Rename". The files would effectively be moved and renamed according to my predefined format (which is {Plex}). This is easy to do, right? I am not figuring out what sort of fu this requires though. Can you help?
One complication... there are subtitles in other languages and it is possible that your automatic matching won't work for them. Is there an easy way to manually specific the language so they are renamed appropriately? (This is not a big deal- honestly I probably don't need the Polish subtitles... but someone might, right?)
Please let me know, thanks.
Dealing with "One Offs"
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
0.
Do you have example file paths I could use for testing? Nobody else seems to have that particular use case.
1.
There's probably a smarter way to go about it though, such as pre-processing files, to help auto-detection along in a second pass.
2.
e.g. poor mans language detection:
Do you have example file paths I could use for testing? Nobody else seems to have that particular use case.
1.
This use case is not well supported. You'll have to rename one file / episode at a time. You can do this quite rapidly though by pasting the same episode information via Command+V after hitting Rename.
There's probably a smarter way to go about it though, such as pre-processing files, to help auto-detection along in a second pass.2.
There's lots of format trickery you can do. How do you know which subtitle file is Polish? Based on filename? By looking at the text content?DarfNader wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 18:32 One complication... there are subtitles in other languages and it is possible that your automatic matching won't work for them. Is there an easy way to manually specific the language so they are renamed appropriately? (This is not a big deal- honestly I probably don't need the Polish subtitles... but someone might, right?)
e.g. poor mans language detection:
Code: Select all
f.subtitle && f.text.matchAll(/the|most|common|words|in|polish/).size() > 100) ? 'pol' : nullRe: Dealing with "One Offs"
It's not that relevant. The are named very poorly but I can make them out as I have a file that matches the filenames to the correct show and episode name.Do you have example file paths I could use for testing? Nobody else seems to have that particular use case.
Really? It would seem that being able to apply the exact same pattern change over a set of files where the only difference would be their file extension. It's not that complicated an action. It's just that the GUI fights you like a tenacious Mexican wrestler every step of the way when you try to attempt it.This use case is not well supported. You'll have to rename one file / episode at a time. You can do this quite rapidly though by pasting the same episode information via Command+V after hitting Rename.
Maybe, but it seems like it's just overthinking. All I need is the ability to find the specific episode of a specific show and say "Hey? See all of those files I have in the "Original Files" box? I want to manually find an episode out of the TVDB database and have you simply rename all of them using the format that I set as if they are from that episode. Can you do that for me? It doesn't seem that much of an outlier, and considering how badly file naming can be, sometimes it can come down to this level of manual work so having it just do it in one step after you've gathered all of the files seems like it should be easy.
Before the file extension it has ".pol" and based on the other files in the folder which are similarly named I am making an educated guess. All of that other cleverness by finding command words in the language text would be neat, but I am not asking for anything quite so advanced.There's lots of format trickery you can do. How do you know which subtitle file is Polish? Based on filename? By looking at the text content?
Thanks.
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
1.
If you can tell it's Polish by checking the files and / or sibling files then you can automate that via smarter format expression. Please create a new thread in the Naming Schemes if you need help with that.
2.
If you have a file that could help you preprocess files into something more meaningful, then FileBot can help you with that as well. That would be a use case for "Processing generic files" and matching files / text file information in a custom format.
3.
FileBot has a simplistic interface. I don't see a way to add a "DartNader Tools" button right now. But if I see this use case more often (and example paths would help me understand that use case in a more general way) then I'll think of a good general solution.
If you can tell it's Polish by checking the files and / or sibling files then you can automate that via smarter format expression. Please create a new thread in the Naming Schemes if you need help with that.
2.
If you have a file that could help you preprocess files into something more meaningful, then FileBot can help you with that as well. That would be a use case for "Processing generic files" and matching files / text file information in a custom format.
3.
FileBot has a simplistic interface. I don't see a way to add a "DartNader Tools" button right now. But if I see this use case more often (and example paths would help me understand that use case in a more general way) then I'll think of a good general solution.
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
Hi,
After that last reply, I can see that I am touching on a nerve with you and I don't mean to make you annoyed with me insofar that you think that I want a "personal button" to do it "my way". I genuinely have been trying my best to learn how to do it in accordance to your design, as much as I can understand it. While I know that I have been "needy", I really think I have been restrained and reasonable with my requests to you, provided you with as much detail as I possibly can, and spared you from the snarky comments that might reveal my frustration, especially considering this process of just learning how to use this $20 tool has taken about a month and I still am not there yet. Also, I don't think I am asking for anything that's an "edge case" or anything unreasonable because it is specific to my personal needs. I just want the tool to behave predictably and not require a tremendous amount of work just to get it to do its one job - a job, when you get down to it, is nothing more than a fancy regex parser. Why should such a thing require any sort of "pre-pocessing"? We're just renaming files here according to a predefined pattern. In fact, just saying that things require preprocessing outside of your tool might indicate that there is a shortcoming, yes?
I get the sense that when I point these things out to you that you think I am being dense or lazy for not "getting" your design. I am sorry to say this, but I am fairly certain that my need for repeated support for basic needs indicates that there is in fact a real usability problem with FileBot only because of the effort that I take trying to figure things out on my own or search through your documentation.
Please understand that this has nothing to do with my personal preferences or tastes, nor does it take away the amount of appreciation that I have for all of your support throughout what has turned out to be a far more challenging process than I ever expected it to be. Still, I am 100% confident that I am not alone in saying that this tool is not intuitive to use. Please understand that I don't mean that to be hurtful, insulting, or even discouraging in the face of all of your hard work. In fact, I hope that you continue to improve upon this utterly necessary tool by stepping back from your creation, taking a good look at it, and maybe get some other outside opinions form people that you trust about how it works, and then maybe you can see that it's features and behavior are needlessly convoluted for no actual gain in capabilities or capacity.
For instance, the fact that a user cannot simply select a set of files and put them into a list and then manually select a title and/or episode from one of the many online databases which can then be used to rename them all according to the format already specified. For this to be considered "not a common use case" seems almost absurd. If automatic matching fails to work, how else do you rename a set of files associated with a single title or episode? To me, this seems like it would be the most basic case of operation whenever automatic matching fails, like when the files are named so poorly. You shouldn't have to do a bunch of "preprocessing" to get it to work. You should just be able to select the files, locate the episode that they correspond to, and rename them. That's it! How hard should that be?
If you have another method that works better, by all means show me the light. It is known that since episodes come with all sorts of ancillary files, being able to do a many-to-one rename job seems like the most basic task imaginable. I can't see how this is a strange request. Is it that you're not understanding what I am asking for or I am doing a poor job of communicating what I am trying to do?
Again, I mean no disrespect and I don't mean to start any sort of argument with you, but when you suggest there be a "Darfnader button" it's a bit diminutive to me. As frustrated as I have been over the last month that I have been trying to use FileBot, I have been civil and restrained myself from venting frustrations and patiently awaited your replies which I am very happy have been prompt. I appreciate the you don't just ignore me as many developers do to their customers. I commend the level of dedicated support you provide. It's very unusual!
Also know that I am not just some computer illiterate person either as I have been a career systems programmer and devops engineer for over 20 years. I have used computers since I was 7 years old... 38 years go. I deal with all kinds of software- packages with elaborate GUIs to simple but powerful programs that just use the command line. I'm not asking you to cater to my whims. I am trying to address the basic usability of your tool so that I can get this job done, which has so far been very hard to do. I hope that you understand that and realize that I am not trying to put your down or complain for no reason. Before I ever said anything about what you did I first wanted to make sure I understood your design intention and your vision first. I hope you see that as a sign of respect. I am only now saying these things because of your resistance.
I really hope that I get to a point where I don't have to ask you how to do every little thing simply because I cannot locate help in the FAQ or documentation or cannot make heads or tails of the interface. I feel badly for ask you for so much help and so much of your time, but I don't know what else to do. Understand that I come to you for help because I don't have any other alternative except give up or assume things just don't work, and since I know you take pride in your work, I can't imagine you'd let that stand.
Thanks again,
Matt
After that last reply, I can see that I am touching on a nerve with you and I don't mean to make you annoyed with me insofar that you think that I want a "personal button" to do it "my way". I genuinely have been trying my best to learn how to do it in accordance to your design, as much as I can understand it. While I know that I have been "needy", I really think I have been restrained and reasonable with my requests to you, provided you with as much detail as I possibly can, and spared you from the snarky comments that might reveal my frustration, especially considering this process of just learning how to use this $20 tool has taken about a month and I still am not there yet. Also, I don't think I am asking for anything that's an "edge case" or anything unreasonable because it is specific to my personal needs. I just want the tool to behave predictably and not require a tremendous amount of work just to get it to do its one job - a job, when you get down to it, is nothing more than a fancy regex parser. Why should such a thing require any sort of "pre-pocessing"? We're just renaming files here according to a predefined pattern. In fact, just saying that things require preprocessing outside of your tool might indicate that there is a shortcoming, yes?
I get the sense that when I point these things out to you that you think I am being dense or lazy for not "getting" your design. I am sorry to say this, but I am fairly certain that my need for repeated support for basic needs indicates that there is in fact a real usability problem with FileBot only because of the effort that I take trying to figure things out on my own or search through your documentation.
Please understand that this has nothing to do with my personal preferences or tastes, nor does it take away the amount of appreciation that I have for all of your support throughout what has turned out to be a far more challenging process than I ever expected it to be. Still, I am 100% confident that I am not alone in saying that this tool is not intuitive to use. Please understand that I don't mean that to be hurtful, insulting, or even discouraging in the face of all of your hard work. In fact, I hope that you continue to improve upon this utterly necessary tool by stepping back from your creation, taking a good look at it, and maybe get some other outside opinions form people that you trust about how it works, and then maybe you can see that it's features and behavior are needlessly convoluted for no actual gain in capabilities or capacity.
For instance, the fact that a user cannot simply select a set of files and put them into a list and then manually select a title and/or episode from one of the many online databases which can then be used to rename them all according to the format already specified. For this to be considered "not a common use case" seems almost absurd. If automatic matching fails to work, how else do you rename a set of files associated with a single title or episode? To me, this seems like it would be the most basic case of operation whenever automatic matching fails, like when the files are named so poorly. You shouldn't have to do a bunch of "preprocessing" to get it to work. You should just be able to select the files, locate the episode that they correspond to, and rename them. That's it! How hard should that be?
If you have another method that works better, by all means show me the light. It is known that since episodes come with all sorts of ancillary files, being able to do a many-to-one rename job seems like the most basic task imaginable. I can't see how this is a strange request. Is it that you're not understanding what I am asking for or I am doing a poor job of communicating what I am trying to do?
Again, I mean no disrespect and I don't mean to start any sort of argument with you, but when you suggest there be a "Darfnader button" it's a bit diminutive to me. As frustrated as I have been over the last month that I have been trying to use FileBot, I have been civil and restrained myself from venting frustrations and patiently awaited your replies which I am very happy have been prompt. I appreciate the you don't just ignore me as many developers do to their customers. I commend the level of dedicated support you provide. It's very unusual!
Also know that I am not just some computer illiterate person either as I have been a career systems programmer and devops engineer for over 20 years. I have used computers since I was 7 years old... 38 years go. I deal with all kinds of software- packages with elaborate GUIs to simple but powerful programs that just use the command line. I'm not asking you to cater to my whims. I am trying to address the basic usability of your tool so that I can get this job done, which has so far been very hard to do. I hope that you understand that and realize that I am not trying to put your down or complain for no reason. Before I ever said anything about what you did I first wanted to make sure I understood your design intention and your vision first. I hope you see that as a sign of respect. I am only now saying these things because of your resistance.
I really hope that I get to a point where I don't have to ask you how to do every little thing simply because I cannot locate help in the FAQ or documentation or cannot make heads or tails of the interface. I feel badly for ask you for so much help and so much of your time, but I don't know what else to do. Understand that I come to you for help because I don't have any other alternative except give up or assume things just don't work, and since I know you take pride in your work, I can't imagine you'd let that stand.
Thanks again,
Matt
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
Well, I guess the crux here is that FileBot focuses on the common case where automation just works. That's what the vast majority of users want and it works for the vast majority of use cases to the point were most users think everything is easy and works great.
You touch up 2 corner cases. The first is auto-matching not working, and this requiring the Episodes panel to manual select the correct matches. The second is having multiple files that correspond to the same episode.
Each of the corner cases can be handled individually with relative ease and high degree of automation.
However, if you touch upon this two corner cases at the same time, things get tricky. But we're talking about an exception case within an exception case.
While I appreciate all feedback, please understand that I disagree and don't think that this is a common uses case that warrants first class support. I do agree that FileBot does indeed have limited support for this specific use case, simply because it wasn't designed with that in mind, and also somehow hasn't really come up in the last 10-ish years.
If I'm wrong, other users will report similar issues. I will then take note of that and figure out a solution.
This forum has been around since 2011. Maybe somebody posted a similar request and I forgot? You're welcome to remind me with a link to other users requesting similar features.
A solution to your use case would require some kind of episode by episode / file by file selection, which largely defeats the point of automation.
That being said, if you post a few more screenshots of the current problem and situation, then I'll have a look and maybe think of a solution.
Wasn't the original problem you posted some weeks ago also easily solved by SHIFT clicking the database and manually forcing a query?
Maybe there's a good solution for the current problem as well that I haven't thought of.
You touch up 2 corner cases. The first is auto-matching not working, and this requiring the Episodes panel to manual select the correct matches. The second is having multiple files that correspond to the same episode.
Each of the corner cases can be handled individually with relative ease and high degree of automation.
However, if you touch upon this two corner cases at the same time, things get tricky. But we're talking about an exception case within an exception case.
While I appreciate all feedback, please understand that I disagree and don't think that this is a common uses case that warrants first class support. I do agree that FileBot does indeed have limited support for this specific use case, simply because it wasn't designed with that in mind, and also somehow hasn't really come up in the last 10-ish years.
If I'm wrong, other users will report similar issues. I will then take note of that and figure out a solution.
This forum has been around since 2011. Maybe somebody posted a similar request and I forgot? You're welcome to remind me with a link to other users requesting similar features.
A solution to your use case would require some kind of episode by episode / file by file selection, which largely defeats the point of automation.
That being said, if you post a few more screenshots of the current problem and situation, then I'll have a look and maybe think of a solution.
Wasn't the original problem you posted some weeks ago also easily solved by SHIFT clicking the database and manually forcing a query?
Maybe there's a good solution for the current problem as well that I haven't thought of.
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
I would happily try and help with example paths, as RedNoah keeps asking.
I believe some combination of --q and --filter from the command line might force the match in your case but before jumping to conclusion I wanted to test it myself.
If you could post just a single example of paths that fall within this use-case I believe we could figure out a solution without requiring custom buttons.
For example, the following works.
EDIT: If you're on MacOS I believe it's possible to launch FileBot from command line without installing it via Brew Cask. It does require a little (a lot) of tinkering with the right startup options but you can find them on the github repo and you can launch the JAR file included in the AppStore application directly.
I believe some combination of --q and --filter from the command line might force the match in your case but before jumping to conclusion I wanted to test it myself.
If you could post just a single example of paths that fall within this use-case I believe we could figure out a solution without requiring custom buttons.
For example, the following works.
Code: Select all
$ touch 'Firefly - S01E01 - Serenity.mkv'
$ cp Firefly\ -\ S01E01\ -\ Serenity.mkv Firefly\ -\ S01E01\ -\ Serenity.avi
$ cp Firefly\ -\ S01E01\ -\ Serenity.mkv Firefly\ -\ S01E01\ -\ Serenity.mp4
$ filebot -rename Firefly\ -\ S01E01\ -\ Serenity.* --q 'Firefly' --filter 's == 1 && e == 1' --action test
Rename episodes using [TheTVDB]
Fetching episode data for [Firefly]
Apply filter [s == 1 && e == 1] on [18] items
Include [Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job]
Fetching episode data for [Firefly]
Apply filter [s == 1 && e == 1] on [18] items
Include [Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job]
Fetching episode data for [Firefly]
Apply filter [s == 1 && e == 1] on [18] items
Include [Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job]
[TEST] from [/tmp/Firefly - S01E01 - Serenity.mkv] to [/tmp/Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job.mkv]
[TEST] from [/tmp/Firefly - S01E01 - Serenity.mp4] to [/tmp/Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job.mp4]
[TEST] from [/tmp/Firefly - S01E01 - Serenity.avi] to [/tmp/Firefly - 1x01 - The Train Job.avi]
Processed 3 files
I only work in black and sometimes very, very dark grey. (Batman)
Re: Dealing with "One Offs"
While the use case "manually select episode match for each file" makes sense, I'm not sure how I would implement a solution that makes sense considering the current designs and workflows.
What I'm thinking is when using the "Send To" menu to copy & paste Episode information into the New Names list, it's currently only pasting one Episode object into the list. However, it would be little effort, and make sense, with no particular downsides, to just automatically duplicate the pasted Episode object for each entry in the files list (if you're pasting a single episode object, and if you have already loaded multiple files).
Does that make sense?
I'd really like to see some more screenshots though, for the various corner cases where you have issues.
Presumably, everything here is about the GUI. The CLI is much more powerful since you can easily script things and repeatedly call the same commands for different file sets, so the corner cases above only apply to the GUI, and not so much the CLI where you can easily script around them (in many ways, this is kinda what the amc script does, grouping files into sensible batches and the processing files appropriately).
What I'm thinking is when using the "Send To" menu to copy & paste Episode information into the New Names list, it's currently only pasting one Episode object into the list. However, it would be little effort, and make sense, with no particular downsides, to just automatically duplicate the pasted Episode object for each entry in the files list (if you're pasting a single episode object, and if you have already loaded multiple files).
Does that make sense?
I'd really like to see some more screenshots though, for the various corner cases where you have issues. Presumably, everything here is about the GUI. The CLI is much more powerful since you can easily script things and repeatedly call the same commands for different file sets, so the corner cases above only apply to the GUI, and not so much the CLI where you can easily script around them (in many ways, this is kinda what the amc script does, grouping files into sensible batches and the processing files appropriately).