Renaming variables

[EGutknecht]

Hi Folks;

I apologise for the newbie questions but I am an older iMatch user (version 3.6) that has just upgraded to the latest. I am having a bit of trouble setting up the RENAMER to follow my original convention (I am not great with variables).

In my old iMatch I used to use variable: {Image.EXIF.Date and time Digitized} 01
It would give me a name like: 20160208 084322 01.jpg

I cannot seem to use or build this variable or recreate it for it to work in the latest iMatch... Any ideas?

Thanks;
Eric

[thrinn]

Hi Eric,
because using date and time as part of the filename is such a common requirement, there are special steps for this in the renamer. For example, I use the following configuration.
The first step should be self explanatory.
The second step adds a underscore after the date (you would change this to adding a space).
The following steps concatenate hour, minute, and second. You could also use the "Time in HH-MM-SS Format" step if you can live with the dashes.
The "Unique number" step is for avoiding duplicates.

I do not know what the 01 in your example should represent.

There is much more to the renamer (also variables), but for your requirement I think you won't have to fiddle with variables around. As always, pressing F1 in the Renamer dialog will point you to an extensive explananation of all possibilities in the IMatch help.

[Mario]

If possible you should always use the steps provided by the Renamer.
If this is not possible, you can add a Text and Variables step and add a free mix of variables and text.

To get the same result as the variable you used in the legacy IMatch 3 version, use

{File.DateTime|format:YYYYMMDD hhmmss}

This produces output like

20170506 163550


Tips:

+ File variable always start with {File.}  Since IMatch manages all files now, the old {Image.} prefix is no longer used.
+ You can use the Variables selector dialog everywhere to select variables.
+ Variables have been enhanced massively for IMatch 5 and IMatch 2017.  See the Variables help topic for full information.

+ Always use the pre-defined {File.DateTime} variable if you want to access the "official" created timestamp. IMatch provides this variable across all file formats, not just for images.

+ Don't use EXIF variables if possible. It is much better to use XMP data. Everything that is in the old EXIF is also in XMP, just better.
EXIF may be gone some day (hopefully the camera vendors finally learn that XMP exists for 20 years now).

[EGutknecht]

Thrinn and Mario... thanks!

Thrinn: your example makes sense, and the "01" was basically a unique identifier in case of duplicates which your example has. This has helped me better understand how its built and to learn the steps involved.

Mario: Thanks for the exact example syntax. I will take your advice and try to build it myself using renamer in order to Learn how to do it. If I truly get lost, then at least I can fall back to a solution using variables.

Cheers;
Eric