Suffixes after filerenaming

[BrJohan]

After having shot a hispeedsequence of photos, I usually get (say) five to eight images having the same second "Date Time Original". After "Rename Photo" to "Date_Time", these images are renamed as YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS followed by a suffix before the dot and the fileextension. For one photo the suffix is empty. For the rest it is either "-##" or "-#" (where the # stands for a digit).

One recent example gives these suffixes: -10, -11, -12, -13, -14, -8, -9 in addition to the empty one.

After carefully studying the photos I see that the order in which they were exposed is this: 'no suffix', -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, -13, -14.

Now in the Library module, no matter how I sort, I can not get them in the correct (point in time of exposure) order.

Is there a way in which to have them renamed so as to sort better? (Can I have some influence on the numbering of suffixes?)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

What I do is use the original file name numbers as suffix. So upon import I rename a file 'IMG_1234' to 'YYYYMMDDHHMMSS1234'. Of course you can add dashes if you want, but the principle idea behind this is that your original file names are in chronological order, no matter how fast the camera shoots.

 

[DGStinner]

I've come across the same issue and have started adding the original suffix to the filename. For example, let's say you have IMG_1234, IMG_1235, IMG_1236, and IMG_1237 all taken at the same time, the renamed files would be YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_1234, YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_1235, YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_1236 and YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_1237. The only time you would have to be concerned about is when the image count rolls over from 9999 to 0001. I reset the counter on my camera each year since I don't shoot more than 10,000 images per year.

 

[Gnits]

In grid view, you can easily change the filename in the right hand metadata panel.....

Try changing the -8 to -08 and the -9 to -09.

If this solves the sort issue then you can check if you can create a rename template to solve this. The problem is that the sort works from left to right alpha numerically, so -8x will appear after -10 or -11, etc

I do not use the file rename templates in Lr, so someone else might best advise how to set a rename template.

 

[Gnits]

I reset the counter on my camera each year since I don't shoot more than 10,000 images per year.

You also have to be careful if you use more than one camera or you swap cards between cameras. [This also depends on camera model, make and other factors]

 

[Johan Elzenga]

You also have to be careful if you use more than one camera or you swap cards between cameras. [This also depends on camera model, make and other factors]

No you don't, that's the beauty of it. As it always takes more than one second to lay down a camera and pick up another one, your images remain in shooting order if you use a file naming system that starts with the date and time and ends with the original file suffix number. You only need to be careful that the internal clock of each camera is set correctly.

 

[BrJohan]

Thank you all for problemsolving suggestions relating to my primary question.

What about possibilities to exert influence on Lightroom's suffix numbering when renaming? How come it does not start at "1" or "01"?. First image always (in my experience) has no suffix. Following images mostly get suffixes not starting with "1" or "01".

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thank you all for problemsolving suggestions relating to my primary question.

What about possibilities to exert influence on Lightroom's suffix numbering when renaming? How come it does not start at "1" or "01"?. First image always (in my experience) has no suffix. Following images mostly get suffixes not starting with "1" or "01".

It sounds like you do not let Lightroom add those suffixes, but leave it to the system to do that because two files in the same folder cannot have the same name. If you setup your rename template correctly, you can tell Lightroom to even add '00001' to the first image if you want to.

 

[BrJohan]

I invoke Lightroom's file renaming facility. Probably Lightroom allows the system to handle name conflicts instead of handling them within the Lightroom application.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I invoke Lightroom's file renaming facility. Probably Lightroom allows the system to handle name conflicts instead of handling them within the Lightroom application.

There is nothing to 'allow'. The system is king. If Lightroom tries to save an image with a name that already exists, the OS will stop it doing so and add a suffix. That is why the original does not have a suffix at all, and the second image will get '-2' behind its name. Check your Lightroom rename template. Show a screendump so we can see it too.

 

[Hoggy]

I also noticed what the OP is talking about, when I was trying to change to a strictly metadata file renaming scheme a little bit ago. (Well.. One that would never be affected by the following bug.)

.. Where the first will get no suffix, but instead of the next ones getting a '-2' or '-3' - they'll get out of order on top of skipping several sequential numbers. So they would end up being, for instance: x.dng, x-4.dng, x-3.dng (with no 'x-2'). And this happened even when making sure that no other filenames would interfere.

I never could figure out how get them sequential, or not skip several numbers. So I just gave up on that and continued to do what I've been doing for years. ... Which, like Johan, was adding the original filename sequence number after the date-time.

The trick to that though, is to make sure you do the renaming AFTER import if you want any hope of retaining the original filename field in the metadata. If you do it while importing, LR will overwrite that field with the new name. Losing any hope of using that sequence number again if you might ever need to reimport (& rename) for whatever reason. It's also the reason why I still have a few different filename patterns existing - as I was trying to settle on something, before finding out about that 'bug'.
Personally I consider this a bug - which has existed for many ages without being fixed. At the very least it's an inconsistency.

 

[BrJohan]

There is nothing to 'allow'. The system is king. If Lightroom tries to save an image with a name that already exists, the OS will stop it doing so and add a suffix. That is why the original does not have a suffix at all, and the second image will get '-2' behind its name. Check your Lightroom rename template. Show a screendump so we can see it too.

I beg to differ. Assuming that Adobe is using either Lua or Windows system calls (for the Windows version) when trying to rename a file, both of these ways are rejected when the new name exists. See documentation for os.rename() (Lua) or _wrename() (Windows) for further info. So, Lightroom is forced to decide what new name to use. What happens with system calls in Mac OS I don't know. In all likelyhood it behaves the same way.