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Filename Template not always applied - why???

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PhilBurton

Lightroom enthusiast (and still learning)
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If this is not the right forum for this question, please tell me where to move this post.

I rename files according to date and sequence number.

I wanted to change the naming template to the following, but the result showed that the last two files were not renamed. Did I run into a known bug in LR 6. I'm on LR 6.3 currently.

I don't even know how to try to "debug" this problem.

Filename Template Editor.PNG
outputs.PNG


I will post any additional screenshots, log files, etc, that might solve this riddle.

Phil
 
You'd have to look at some more files, but what I notice on this series is that the files that are not renamed are a JPEG file that has a sound file (.wav) that belongs to it (same file name). Maybe that sound file is the problem (and it would be a bug).
 
I don't think it's a bug since you can link an audio file to an image in Lightroom by it having the same name. Since Lightroom only manages image files, it most likely realized the two possibly were linked and by renaming the JPG, would break that relationship.
 
I don't think it's a bug since you can link an audio file to an image in Lightroom by it having the same name. Since Lightroom only manages image files, it most likely realized the two possibly were linked and by renaming the JPG, would break that relationship.

I would definitely call that a bug. There is no reason why Lightroom couldn't simply rename the sound file too. Renaming a file doesn't require opening it, so Lightroom doesn't need to support sound files to be able to rename them. And in fact, Lightroom does support them: Nikon voice memos - Photographs, Photographers and Photography

P.S. If I look at the present file name, it becomes even more strange. The present file name is definitely not the name that was given to it by the camera, so the jpeg and its sound annotation file were already renamed once (probably on import?)...
 
Last edited:
The unanswered question is whether raw WAV file is cataloged as a sidecar file for the JPG. If that is the case, then LR should be renaming both. If not a sidecar then LR should have renamed the cataloged JPG only. If the JPG & the WAV file were cataloged as a pair, then there is a bug and it needs reporting.
 
Maybe try an experiment: change the prefix of the JPEG to some RAW type, like NEF, and then see if Lr treated it as a sidecar. Since it generally ignores JPEG sidecars (but you'd think that in that case it would ignore the WAV and rename the JPEG...).
 
I think it's pretty obvious that the .wav file is treated as a sound annotation file of the jpeg, not vice versa. It may be purely a coincidence that these two files were the ones that were not renamed, but I don't believe in that kind of coincidence.
 
You'd have to look at some more files, but what I notice on this series is that the files that are not renamed are a JPEG file that has a sound file (.wav) that belongs to it (same file name). Maybe that sound file is the problem (and it would be a bug).
In my experiment, I imported 85 images, a mixture of NEF, JPG, NEF+JPG, and a few WAV's thrown in. 21 were not renamed, mosty NEF only images.

To respond to another post, I have a Nikon D3, which can create "voice memo" WAV files. An invaluable feature, especially paired with my Solmeta GPS (plugs into the Nikon 10-pin data port).
 
I would definitely call that a bug. There is no reason why Lightroom couldn't simply rename the sound file too. Renaming a file doesn't require opening it, so Lightroom doesn't need to support sound files to be able to rename them. And in fact, Lightroom does support them: Nikon voice memos - Photographs, Photographers and Photography

P.S. If I look at the present file name, it becomes even more strange. The present file name is definitely not the name that was given to it by the camera, so the jpeg and its sound annotation file were already renamed once (probably on import?)...

Johan,

All the test files have already been renamed. The original rename template was: YYYYMMDD_0000. To improve readability I want to change that to: YYYY.DD.MM-0000.

Phil
 
Johan,

All the test files have already been renamed. The original rename template was: YYYYMMDD_0000. To improve readability I want to change that to: YYYY.DD.MM-0000.

So if I understand you correctly, you did successfully rename the jpeg+waf combination? The only problem is that the new template doesn't work? In that case the problem could be that you have periods in the name. A period also separates the name and the file extension. Maybe that is what causes the problem for a combination like jpeg+waf (and perhaps also raw+jpeg), and not for single files.
 
Maybe try an experiment: change the prefix of the JPEG to some RAW type, like NEF, and then see if Lr treated it as a sidecar. Since it generally ignores JPEG sidecars (but you'd think that in that case it would ignore the WAV and rename the JPEG...).
Rob,

I will definitely do that and report back. To run these experiments, I created a folder with "test inputs" and each experiment is in a "test output" folder. Each test has a separate LR catalog.

Phil
So if I understand you correctly, you did successfully rename the jpeg+waf combination? The only problem is that the new template doesn't work? In that case the problem could be that you have periods in the name. A period also separates the name and the file extension. Maybe that is what causes the problem for a combination like jpeg+waf (and perhaps also raw+jpeg), and not for single files.
Johan,

Here is the input directory showing the files dated 2008-07-14. They were all renamed previously and all but two did get renamed this time successfully, as show in my initial message. No periods in the file names before renaming, only an underscore.
2008-07-14 Inputs.PNG
 
Here is the output of my test, another directory. No JPG files here, just NEFs and a few WAVs. Note that a few files were renamed successfully, most were not.

2014-08-29 Outputs.PNG
 
As Johan suggested, it looks like there's an issue with using periods in the template when a file has a sidecar (of whatever type).
 
Yes, same story. All the files that have an associated XMP file are not renamed. Only files that don't have an XMP file are renamed. Somehow your preset cannot be used to rename sets of files, probably because you use periods in the file name itself. Because a period usually separates the file name and the file extension, Lightroom apparently gets confused and would lose the association if it did rename such a combo. It's a definitely a bug.
 
Yes, same story. All the files that have an associated XMP file are not renamed. Only files that don't have an XMP file are renamed. Somehow your preset cannot be used to rename sets of files, probably because you use periods in the file name itself. Because a period usually separates the file name and the file extension, Lightroom apparently gets confused and would lose the association if it did rename such a combo. It's a definitely a bug.
John,

An a further test, I went back to my 2015 backup drive (I use a separate HDD for each year's backups) and restored the original,unrenamed image files, which I then imported and renamed using this renaming template. No issues. So there is definitely a bug. I guess I will have to submit a bug report to Adobe.

Phil
 
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