macOS copy certain parts of a filename (shell?)

kangping · Mar 29, 2011

hi there,

i am trying to get hazel to automate some file sorting for me. right now i am doing the following:

1. tag files using sublerCLI with this code

Code:

#! /bin/sh 

# media kind attribute
mediaKind="TV Show";

# media kind attribute
TVShow="King of Queens";

#Artist
Artist="Kevin James, Leah Remini, Jerry Stiller, Victor Williams, Patton Oswalt";

#Genre
Genre="Comedy";

/Applications/SublerCLI -i "$1" -O -t {Media' 'Kind:"$mediaKind"}{TV' 'Show:"$TVShow"}{Artist:"$Artist"}{Genre:"$Genre"};

2. send the whole thing to itunes and delete the original file.

what i would like to do is change metadata for title. the original file looks like this (coming from a online recorder):

Code:

king_of_queens_name_of_episode_1111_2222.mp4

how can i extract "name of episode", delete the underscores and put it into a variable? the loop of course is handled by hazel.

thanks, i hope its clear what i want to do

dave

balamw · Mar 29, 2011

kangping said:
thanks, i hope its clear what i want to do

Does your recorder let you tweak that naming scheme?

Otherwise I don't see a delimiter the computer can zero in on between the show and episode names. The show could be called king or king_of_queens_name for all the computer knows. If you can make the delimiter between them different like maybe _-_ you might have a better shot at automating this.

B

kangping · Mar 29, 2011

thanks for the fast reply. unfortunately this is a online service, which does not have to many options for naming conventions. i was hoping i could kind of "count" what the computer should delete...

for example (this is an actual name containing tv show, episode, date, time airing and some counter):

King_of_Queens_Latin_Lover_28-03-2011_1500_391678.mp4

- delete the first 15 characters
- delete the last 21 characters
- in this case: and the extension
- change "_" to " "
- copy the remaining characters to $EpisodeTitle

or something like that

my knowledge is just big enough to be dangerous. haha.

thanks for the help up to now

dave

frogdesign · Mar 29, 2011

Here's my first try using sed, I still need a way to handle mixed case:
For a loop you'd have: for F in `ls *.mp4' do; echo $F; done

> ls *.mp4
king_of_queens_name_of_episode_1111_2222.mp4

>TVShow="king or queens"

> t=`ls *.mp4 | sed 's/$.*$\.mp4/\1/' | tr "_[0-9]" " "`

> echo ${TVShow#$t}
king or queens

sero · Mar 29, 2011

This would work for the filename you gave

Code:

FileName=King_of_Queens_Latin_Lover_28-03-2011_1500_391678.mp4
EpisodeName=$(echo "$FileName"|cut -d"_" -f4-|rev|cut -d"_" -f4-|rev|sed s/_/\ /g)
echo "$EpisodeName"

This would have to be adjusted if the naming convention of the file was different, i.e., the name of the show is more/less then 3 words, or number of fields after the episode name is different. You could also use awk, also using "_" as a separator...

I would personally keep the "_" but that's just me.

kangping · Mar 29, 2011

thanks for the great answer sero.
would this also have to be adjusted, if the word count of the episode title would change? if you don't mind you could decode the line you wrote - i would like to understand what is happening. otherwise... you only used sed? then i will rtfm

edit: about the sepreator: this is not actually for a file name, but just the episode title i want to use as a metatag. unfortunately the metatag has the full tv show + episode title in it

thanks,
dave

balamw · Mar 29, 2011

kangping said:
edit: about the sepreator: this is not actually for a file name, but just the episode title i want to use as a metatag. unfortunately the metatag has the full tv show + episode title in it

Might I suggest an alternative approach then?

If you have a tag that includes the "TV Show" and a tag that includes "TV Show + Episode Name" why not use "TV Show + Episode Name" - "TV Show" to get what you want without the additional episode ID numbers etc.. at the end?

B

sero · Mar 29, 2011

kangping said:
thanks for the great answer sero.
would this also have to be adjusted, if the word count of the episode title would change? if you don't mind you could decode the line you wrote - i would like to understand what is happening. otherwise... you only used sed? then i will rtfm

edit: about the sepreator: this is not actually for a file name, but just the episode title i want to use as a metatag. unfortunately the metatag has the full tv show + episode title in it

thanks,
dave

The episode name can be whatever. Basically what's happening is the beginning and the end of the file name are being chopped off, leaving whatever is in the middle (episode name).

Cut is using "_" to separate the file name into fields - first we print the fourth field to the end, leaving "Latin_Lover_28-03-2011_1500_391678.mp4". Then "rev" reverses this, giving "4pm.876193_(etc)" and we repeat with cut, leaving "revoL_nitaL". Then this is reversed again with "rev" and finally sed replaces any instances of "_" with a space.

kangping · Mar 29, 2011

hi sero,

thanks for the reply and the great explenation. i would have never gotten the idea to mirror the whole thing

it's getting late here in china, so i'll hit the bed. i'll have a go at it tomorrow and respond

greetings,
dave

kangping · Apr 3, 2011

hi there again,

the script works just great. i'm using it on several different "hazel jobs" now. thanks a lot.

dave

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macOS copy certain parts of a filename (shell?)

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