Can FB sort by input filenames/folders?

[DavidRTurner]

Congratulations!
This is perhaps the most useful tool I've come across to manage my video collection, in the decade or so I've been collecting, thanks to its configurability.

In Rename mode;
The list of input files is not in any order I can figure out - it lists the files (randomly?) - not by name, size, filedate, or anything I can figure out. For multi-season folders, it does not show S1, S2, S3 - it shows a random season order.

My files are sorted (recently, thanks to TVRename) as "SHOWNAME SxxExx-EPISODENAME" - so they are in clear alphanumeric order in any file list. But FB is able to offer so many customizable options, I'm doing it all over again!

Because the list in FB seems randomly sorted, it is difficult to pick out the oddballs I know I have... I've renamed 'specials' as "SHOWNAME SxxE99-EXTRAS-Outtakes" for example.
FB always tries to give these files an episode name - some, as per some DVD extras, it finds & names them S00Exx - but most of the time it gets confused and I need to delete them from the list first.
**In a long list of input files, it can take a while - up to 20 seconds - to remove a line from the list.
Is there any way to allow multiple-file-selection (CTRL-clicking)? Or even better, filtering (i.e. on "*E99*") and have FB rename just that bunch of files? Then unfilter & the rest re-appear?

Is there a way to force the input list in a certain order - specifically by filename? And by foldername (S01, S02, S03...) (option: to make S01 = S1 as far as sorting goes?)
Also, it would be nice to have the output list sortable, so that I could scan the list to see if any episode # was missing from the results.

I admit I have not yet reviewed ALL programming options; some may be possible already... I have a dozen other questions I can look up first, but being able to do the above would make my first run-through so much easier.

Thanks for the program!
-Windows 7 Pro x64

[Ithiel]

Congratulations!
This is perhaps the most useful tool I've come across to manage my video collection, in the decade or so I've been collecting, thanks to its configurability.

awesome! glad you like it

In Rename mode;
The list of input files is not in any order I can figure out - it lists the files (randomly?) - not by name, size, filedate, or anything I can figure out. For multi-season folders, it does not show S1, S2, S3 - it shows a random season order.

Yeah, the current ordering is a little bit unusual. I'm not sure on the reasoning behind that one either - I've mocked up some suggestions on interface tweaks for rednoah, but I'm not sure if there are some other contributing factors to this one, or how much work is involved on his end in fixing it, but I'll let you know once I know more.

My files are sorted (recently, thanks to TVRename) as "SHOWNAME SxxExx-EPISODENAME" - so they are in clear alphanumeric order in any file list. But FB is able to offer so many customizable options, I'm doing it all over again!

Yeah.. I got a bit carried away myself when I found out what I could do with this.

Because the list in FB seems randomly sorted, it is difficult to pick out the oddballs I know I have... I've renamed 'specials' as "SHOWNAME SxxE99-EXTRAS-Outtakes" for example. FB always tries to give these files an episode name - some, as per some DVD extras, it finds & names them S00Exx - but most of the time it gets confused and I need to delete them from the list first.

What works and what doesn't depends mostly on what has entries on thetvdb.com under 'Specials'
(e.g. shows with a little http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid ... 7991&lid=7
shows with a lot http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid ... 6260&lid=7)

If using drag and drop to load files into FileBot, an easy way may be to use a negative search on the folder (i.e. search SHOWNAME in explorer for "*.mp4 -EXTRAS -Outtakes" or something similar, so that way you're not loading them in in the first place.

**In a long list of input files, it can take a while - up to 20 seconds - to remove a line from the list.
Is there any way to allow multiple-file-selection (CTRL-clicking)? Or even better, filtering (i.e. on "*E99*") and have FB rename just that bunch of files? Then unfilter & the rest re-appear?

Pretty sure the delay here is a java thing. As you're using a 64bit OS, be sure to use 64bit java and the 64bit jar for filebot. might reduce the horror a little. Doing smaller lists at once also helps a little (when I was renaming several TB of files, I had about 4 FileBot instances open - doing a bit in each window at a time.. was much faster that way since every step was effectively being pseudo-multi-threaded haha)

Is there a way to force the input list in a certain order - specifically by filename? And by foldername (S01, S02, S03...) (option: to make S01 = S1 as far as sorting goes?) Also, it would be nice to have the output list sortable, so that I could scan the list to see if any episode # was missing from the results.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, you can 'force' a check by holding down the 'shift' key when you click the db you want to run the lookup on (i.e. hold shift while pressing 'TheTVDB', and a confirmation box will come up for each different show/query to allow you to specify what to search for).

Also, for output list being sortable... see 2nd comment >.<

I admit I have not yet reviewed ALL programming options; some may be possible already... I have a dozen other questions I can look up first, but being able to do the above would make my first run-through so much easier.

If you're hunting for answers, here is a few great places to start:

- [HOW TO] Everything: Scripts, Guides & Code Collection!
- [HOW TO] Fix 'Problems', Report 'Bugs', Get 'Features'
- Example format expressions
- [Windows] Advanced Context Menu & Cool Scripts Pack

Thanks for the program!

You're most welcome. If you would like to support FileBot's development, please consider donating file PayPal.

Filebot was created by rednoah while he continues to study full time at Uni. All donations to FileBot help fund additional coffee beans into his magical caffeine to code conversion machine, lol

[DavidRTurner]

Congratulations!
This is perhaps the most useful tool I've come across to manage my video collection, in the decade or so I've been collecting, thanks to its configurability.

awesome! glad you like it

I do indeed!

In Rename mode;
The list of input files is not in any order I can figure out - it lists the files (randomly?) - not by name, size, filedate, or anything I can figure out. For multi-season folders, it does not show S1, S2, S3 - it shows a random season order.

Yeah, the current ordering is a little bit unusual. I'm not sure on the reasoning behind that one either - I've mocked up some suggestions on interface tweaks for rednoah, but I'm not sure if there are some other contributing factors to this one, or how much work is involved on his end in fixing it, but I'll let you know once I know more.

Follow-up: When selecting a group of FILES (no folders) they do sort by alpha order.
It was when I was selecting folders, whether they had subfolders in them (TV seasons), or just a single folder with one level of files in it, the sort order is 'random'.

Because the list in FB seems randomly sorted, it is difficult to pick out the oddballs I know I have... I've renamed 'specials' as "SHOWNAME SxxE99-EXTRAS-Outtakes" for example. FB always tries to give these files an episode name - some, as per some DVD extras, it finds & names them S00Exx - but most of the time it gets confused and I need to delete them from the list first.

What works and what doesn't depends mostly on what has entries on thetvdb.com under 'Specials'
(e.g. shows with a little http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid ... 7991&lid=7
shows with a lot http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid ... 6260&lid=7)

If using drag and drop to load files into FileBot, an easy way may be to use a negative search on the folder (i.e. search SHOWNAME in explorer for "*.mp4 -EXTRAS -Outtakes" or something similar, so that way you're not loading them in in the first place.

Yes, I noticed the negative search options today, and will check some of that out.

**In a long list of input files, it can take a while - up to 20 seconds - to remove a line from the list.
Is there any way to allow multiple-file-selection (CTRL-clicking)? Or even better, filtering (i.e. on "*E99*") and have FB rename just that bunch of files? Then unfilter & the rest re-appear?

Pretty sure the delay here is a java thing. As you're using a 64bit OS, be sure to use 64bit java and the 64bit jar for filebot. might reduce the horror a little. Doing smaller lists at once also helps a little (when I was renaming several TB of files, I had about 4 FileBot instances open - doing a bit in each window at a time.. was much faster that way since every step was effectively being pseudo-multi-threaded haha)

I have about 6,000 files of all different shows (I collect first-episodes) so I can (and have today) selected smaller groups to make it faster. When I wrote the above, I was dropping in whole folders of hundreds of files.

Is there a way to force the input list in a certain order - specifically by filename? And by foldername (S01, S02, S03...) (option: to make S01 = S1 as far as sorting goes?) Also, it would be nice to have the output list sortable, so that I could scan the list to see if any episode # was missing from the results.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, you can 'force' a check by holding down the 'shift' key when you click the db you want to run the lookup on (i.e. hold shift while pressing 'TheTVDB', and a confirmation box will come up for each different show/query to allow you to specify what to search for).

Also, for output list being sortable... see 2nd comment >.<

With a series, the showname is the same, and the 'new names' list is pretty much visually the same, making it easy to see any problems stick out.
But with my collection of first-episodes, browsing a list of 'new names' in an order I could choose, would be greatly useful - all the renamed "The" & "A" shows are in a new order, so sorting by the results before applying the rename function, would be nice.


Thanks for the assistance, and I'll keep working it on my end with the info!

[rednoah]

Can u send me a screenshot of unsorted files?

Basically if you just drop in a folder it'll take the order that i get things back from the filesystem, which on windows is always sorted alphabetically as far as i can tell.

[rednoah]

BTW could create a list of all file paths so I can recreate something like this? I've never experienced this issue. But I could see that if you delete one entry then it would have to re-create all the matches since one pile gets move up by one.

Also when you delete via DELETE key (delete cell) it's that slow right? What if you delete via ALT+DELETE key (delete row) is that faster? Cause in that case the following matches don't change.

[rednoah]

Fixed with r2033, mostly anyway. I force alphabetical order if the OS isn't doing that for some reason, and once you start deleting entries the List cell size will be fixed, which means it'll never render anything that's not visible.

[DavidRTurner]

Can u send me a screenshot of unsorted files?

Basically if you just drop in a folder it'll take the order that i get things back from the filesystem, which on windows is always sorted alphabetically as far as i can tell.

I'm sorry, I never saw this reply...
I (somehow) got things sorting OK so never followed up.

However, just now I tried updating to 4.5 and got an error about needing Java Runtime - but downloading the current version from Oracle, offers no help how to use it.

Same thing happened with 4.2.

4.0 gave me a blue-screen error (Win 7-64), so I couldn't use it either, and have kept reverting back to 3.8 (as I did again just now).

NOW, the sorting problem is back. Apparently random sorting within folders.
It has SOMETHING to do with either Java or Filebot, as I've just been spending some time renaming half the collection, and only when I saw the update for FileBot today, & tried to set up Java & failed, and had to revert back to 3.8, has the sorting issue happened again.

Filebot sort issue 1.jpg

[rednoah]

You just need to install the latest JRE => http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... 33151.html

[DavidRTurner]

You just need to install the latest JRE => http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... 33151.html

OK, I've done that and it now works with the sorting again.

The error message that was coming up was 'requires Java Runtime', not the Developer Kit. (JRE = Runtime Env. and JDK = Developer Kit).
So I never saw this (correct) Win7-64.exe file until you linked to it... thanks.

Maybe the error message should be (or already has been) updated to state this?

[rednoah]

It only requires the Java Runtime. So you can either install the JRE, or the JDK which includes the JRE.

I suppose the JDK page was the first result when I googled "download java 8" then...

[DavidRTurner]

It only requires the Java Runtime. So you can either install the JRE, or the JDK which includes the JRE.

I suppose the JDK page was the first result when I googled "download java 8" then...

I wish I'd noticed the '8' part in your 'news' info, then.
https://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp#win was where it went off the rails...

Thanks much!