Renaming backups to match files already renamed

[Buzko]

Hi all,

I've acquired a bunch of media files and then backed them up (to external hard drives and other computers). I've then renamed the original files to my liking. In some cases, I've renamed them multiple times, after reading about new naming schemes. The files themselves have not changed, but now I have original files with the 'correct' names and backup files with 'wrong' names. The renaming has taken place across multiple computers, sometimes using FileBot and sometimes not.

What I would like to do is rename the backup files to match the correct names. I dimly understand that files can be uniquely identified with a hash, and that the hash will stay the same even if the filename changes. My thought is to generate a list of hashes alongside a list of correct filenames. I would then tell a program to search for each backup file's hash in that list, identify the correct filename, and apply it to that file.

I've looked around a bit in the manual and the forum, but couldn't find an appropriate function in Filebot. I'm not even sure that Filebot would be the right program to use, but I thought you folks would know more about such things than I would. Assuming of course that I've been able to explain it.

Thanks in advance,

Buzko

[rednoah]

1. Drop all the files you want to rename into Original Files
2. Drop all the files that are already well-named into New Names (so the names will serve as template)
3. Click Match

Try this and report back what happens.

Doing this in smaller batches (e.g. series folder by series folder) might make it work better since FileBot will only match by file size (very fast) and file name similarity (slow) but not file hash (very slow).