Basic Concept for migration of full photo library to PM Plus - feedback welcome

[Dino]

In photo mechanic I am going to be importing and finally archiving years of family photos which will start with default camera assigned filenames ex: DSC_0083.JPG

I plan to use the photo mechanic ingest to assign some default metadata and also rename the file as follows:
{datesortdash}~{timesortlong}~{filenamebase}~[just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On]

This will yield me a filename like this on ingest:
2024-04-10~1743345100~DSC_0163~[just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On].JPG

At this point I believe I would bring all the photos into year coded folders on my NAS and bring them each into catalog(s) any advice if I should use one large catalog or one per year?

I would likely put each year folder in as it's own catalog and that is because of the following:

As time permits me and my wife intend to use photo mechanic to add keywords to our photo's for example on the file in this example in keywords we might have keywords typed like this: 
Billy, Suzy, Grandma, Grandpa, Birthday, Party, Cake, Candles     

As we get keywords assigned to files I intend to do a filename refresh to change the filename from this:
{datesortdash}~{timesortlong}~{filenamebase}~[just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On]
To this:
2024-04-10~1743345100~DSC_0163~[Billy, Suzy, Grandma, Grandpa, Birthday, Party, Cake, Candles]  OR THIS

2024-04-10~1743345100~DSC_0163~[Billy_Suzy_Grandma_Grandpa_Birthday_Party_Cake_Candles]
Anyone have opinions which keyword approach into the filename would be better?  Commas or Underscore?

Does photo mechanic have the functionality to do this file rename???  Ideally the rename would have a replace function to replace
just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On
With
{keywords}
If not I believe I know of a third party renamer app that could do it but I would love to stay withing photo mechanic if at all possible.

At this point as we have working days where we have keyworded and renamed photo's I expect we will need to do a Catalog Sync …… I would expect that at this point it would pick up all the filenames that had changed in that year catalog folder and that it would also drop the photo references for the filenames that had changed and seem to be missing.


I would love some feedback about my ideas and what I am trying to do and also thoughts about how you might suggest we do it differently.  The file rename from keywords is kind of a must have however because we are looking for a way to in the end have filenames that are also somewhat smart and searchable outside photo mechanic.

Again your time to read, review and feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
Dino

[Kirk Baker]

Dino,

I would recommend against using the tilde (~) character in your filenames.  That character means something to command-line shells (represents the user's home folder).  Use a hyphen (-) or underscore (_) instead.

Also, I would not recommend filenames with keywords in them.  The catalog system will help you find your images by using the keywords in the files themselves.

But, yes, the renaming facility in Photo Mechanic is capable of doing what you ask, but you still have to end up with a filename that can be represented on all filesystems you plan to store the files on.  I suggest keeping things simple, dates are good, overall event names are good too.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Dino]

I would recommend against using the tilde (~) character in your filenames.  That character means something to command-line shells (represents the user's home folder).  Use a hyphen (-) or underscore (_) instead.

Fair point thanks for that, I will make it an underscore.

But, yes, the renaming facility in Photo Mechanic is capable of doing what you ask, but you still have to end up with a filename that can be represented on all filesystems you plan to store the files on.  I suggest keeping things simple, dates are good, overall event names are good too.

So what filename limitations are most often worried about?  Is there a max filename length for various Operating Systems which users should be mindful of?

Can Photo Mechanics File rename do a substring replace? Like look for the phrase "just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On" and replace it with {filenamebase}  If it can can you give example syntax or a link where i can read about it.


Thanks.

[Kirk Baker]

Dino,

But, yes, the renaming facility in Photo Mechanic is capable of doing what you ask, but you still have to end up with a filename that can be represented on all filesystems you plan to store the files on.  I suggest keeping things simple, dates are good, overall event names are good too.

So what filename limitations are most often worried about?  Is there a max filename length for various Operating Systems which users should be mindful of?

Most file systems support 255 character filenames.  Some support less (CD-ROM file systems like Joliet come to mind.)  There are also characters that shouldn't be used in the middle of a filename, which also varies across file systems.  Forward slashes (/) and backward slashes (\), asterisks (*), periods (.) can also have unintended effects on different file systems depending on where they're placed.

Can Photo Mechanics File rename do a substring replace? Like look for the phrase "just say something Names-Location-Whats Going On" and replace it with {filenamebase}  If it can can you give example syntax or a link where i can read about it.

Yes.  https://docs.camerabits.com/support/solutions/articles/48001252613-find-replace

HTH,

-Kirk