Renaming your photos for easy sorting using a media player

This article will hopefully show you how I easily rename all of my family photos and videos using some simple tools so that the are archived using the date and time the image/video was taken. It has a slight bend towards the Xbox media centre platform as that's been my media player of choice for many years (wife and child friendly with great support for thumbnails).

First, a little overview of my set up
I have a modded Xbox running XBMC connected via component to a full HD LCD and via optical to a 6.1 home theatre amplifier. My stairwell houses my pride and joy; a Synology DS209 NAS that is DLNA compliant.

The goal
If you're using a media player of any sort to display your photos on your television, I've found that the best way to slideshow these (in the most logical order), is to have them play chronologically.

What you'll need (you may not require all of them so read the whole article before downloading)

• A copy of the excellent and free Lupas Rename 2000 (V5)
• A compiled version of FFMPEG for Windows 
  
• A copy of Jhead.exe

Using Lupas Rename to quickly rename all images in a folder using the date and time the photo was taken i.e. 20091022-105507

 

 

1. Download and install Lupas Rename 2000
2. In the bottom left corner there's a tab marked "Name". We are going to use the "replace with the text" feature as shown above
   
3. Copy the following text and paste it (using Ctrl + V) into the "replace with the text" box
   
<E:DateTime:Y><E:DateTime:M><E:DateTime:D>-<E:DateTime:H><E:DateTime:MM><E:DateTime:s>

   
4. Use the folder icon highlighted in RED to navigate to the folder with your images in it.
5. If you have multiple folders underneath your DCIM folder (common), select the DCIM (or root folder) and then select the recursive mode icon highlighted in yellow
6. Select one of your photos in the left pane. It should show you a preview of the new name to the right as shown
7. If happy, highlight all of your photos and click Rename
   

To be continued...