How to set folder name with date and time

[XEyedBear]

I'm obviously well past my best before date. It's taken me 2 hours to find the magic sequence of obscure key strokes, brackets, braces, data entry boxes, and secret hand-shakes to get PM to rename my images to include the frame number. But I just cannot seem to find to which small god I have to sacrifice before PM will make a folder name containing an identifyng sequence like YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.

I don't want to use the option 'into dated folder only' because I frequently need to 'ingest' into more than 1 folder per day. I don't want to use 'into folder with name only', even with a sequence number, because I want the date and time. I don't want to use 'into dated folder then into folder with name' because this not only adds another layer into my directory tree (and this has considerable downstream problems) but it still won't give me the time.

I tried using date and time variables in various combinations with many varied and sometimes highly creative spellings and heat-felt - even rousing - oaths, but PM became quite petulant about that and refused to grant my request.

Is it just the wrong season of the year or is there some other special incantation that I haven't tried? Perhaps I've been using Nikon Transfer too long and have lost the will to think.....

[Kirk Baker]

I'm obviously well past my best before date. It's taken me 2 hours to find the magic sequence of obscure key strokes, brackets, braces, data entry boxes, and secret hand-shakes to get PM to rename my images to include the frame number. But I just cannot seem to find to which small god I have to sacrifice before PM will make a folder name containing an identifyng sequence like YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.

I don't want to use the option 'into dated folder only' because I frequently need to 'ingest' into more than 1 folder per day. I don't want to use 'into folder with name only', even with a sequence number, because I want the date and time. I don't want to use 'into dated folder then into folder with name' because this not only adds another layer into my directory tree (and this has considerable downstream problems) but it still won't give me the time.

I tried using date and time variables in various combinations with many varied and sometimes highly creative spellings and heat-felt - even rousing - oaths, but PM became quite petulant about that and refused to grant my request.

Is it just the wrong season of the year or is there some other special incantation that I haven't tried? Perhaps I've been using Nikon Transfer too long and have lost the will to think.....

In the Copy Photos: popup menu, choose the item titled "into folder with name".  Then in the Folder Name: field enter:

{year4}{month0}{day0}_{timesort}

That should do it.  But I'm not sure you'll really want each photo to be put into its own folder, do you?  Each photo will likely have a different time (unless you shot in a burst) and this will cause the {timesort} variable to evaluate to a different value and Ingest will honor your request and create a lot of folders for you.  If you decide you don't want the time as part of the folder name, you can always delete the _{timesort} part.

HTH,

-Kirk

[XEyedBear]

Well, that is a magnificent reply. You are quite correct -I don't want a folder per photo, but I do want a folder per 'shoot', with date and time. I guess the charcater string, amended as you suggest, will do exactly that for me - so, many thanks because I could not have comjured up that character string after a week of blue moons examining my trusty text of how to mangle metaphors.

I would like to try thinking a little wider on this: as they say 'give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day'. So, I would like to be able to fish in the 'variable' waters of Photo Mechanic, so that I don't have to be posing relatively dumb questions like this again. But I didn't see anything about the semantics, syntax or grammar of these variables. Where do I find that information?

Cheers

XEB

[Hayo Baan]

Have you already looked at the manual? You can find it in the download section of the Camera Bits website: http://www.camerabits.com

Cheers.