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Accepted
Ohto Nordberg
Asked: 2016-11-21 07:36:06 +0800 CST

How to rename undeleted mp4 videofiles according to "encoded date"

  • 772

I recovered deleted videofiles from sd-card and now I cannot sort them by date.

I can see "encoded date" with mediainfo filename.

How can I use the "encoded date" to sort videos, even rename them according to that date or better yet, rewrite "modified date" to file properties?

files

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Assuming the line of output you have looks something like this (the date format does not matter):

    Encoded date               : 2016-11-20

    You could rename the files as their dates with a little script...

    i=0; for f in *; do printf -v new "$(mediainfo "$f" | sed -nr 's/Encoded date\s+: (.*)/\1/p')-%02d.mp4" "$((++i))"; echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"; done

    I am giving them a final number to ensure files with the same date don't end up with exactly the same name, which would cause some to be overwritten. New filenames will be 2016-11-20-01.mp4 etc or whatever the date format from "Encoded date" is for you. Remove echo after testing to actually rename the files. More readable version:

    i=0
for f in *; do 
   printf -v new "$(mediainfo "$f" | sed -nr 's/Encoded date\s+: (.*)/\1/p')-%02d.mp4" "$((++i))"
   echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"
done

    Explanation

    • i=0 start iterating from 0
    • for f in * for all files in the current directory (replace with appropriate path or glob if necessary)
    • printf -v new format the new name like this
    • $(mediainfo "$f" | sed -nr 's/Encoded date\s+: (.*)/\1/p') extract the date info from the Encoded date field
    • -%02d.mp4" "$((++i))" add a number and extension to the end of each filename
    • mv -v -- "$f" "$new" rename the files
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