P: Better keyword management

Alan- I should look into Friedl's collection publisher - it might be a solution, thank you.
Dan- the videos (of one sign each from different sign languages) arrive from all over the world in all different formats (which incidentally lightroom cannot always handle, but possibly that is my computer not lightroom).  They are also named just about anything you can imagine, and i want to rename them to a standard format so they have a keyword gloss, a version number, a language identifier, a signer identification, a creation date in the format 20160721 and then a "sequence number" that connects the renamed video to the original name so that if i need to i can go back and match this video to an original unrenamed version.   a sample video would look like: sheepvv1lxrw1sg210dt20160721sqAed893xyz. 
i can rename the files in dopus, and then go to lightroom, import, add one keyword to each file, and then rename the file with that keyword at the front.  there is for example no way to insert the keyword into the middle of the filename.  if i make a mistake and use the wrong gloss, i have to correct it in dopus.  if i accidentally rename twice so that i get sheepsheepfilename, no simple way to remove all the duplicate keywords - again have to go to dopus.  in other words i can't tell lightroom please remove all of the material before the version number.    sometimes i have to change the language id.  i can't tell lightroom please change all occurences of lxamr to lxrw1.  and so on.  

you don't say if the video's come with KW's or you add them.  If you add them yourself, try putting the KW text into the "Copy" field in the metadata panel at the same time you create the KW.  Copy name is easily added to the fields displayed in the grid.

Not sure what you mean by batch rename for KW's?  If you have a KW named "Red" and want to rename it "Pink" for all images that have it, just right click the KW, select edit and type "Pink" right over "Red" and then click Save.  All images that had "red" will now have "pink".  Is that what you're talking about or something else?

Can you be more specific about what you think is missing in batch file rename?  I used LR file rename regularly and find it good enough.

I do all of my file renaming outside of Lightroom (using A Better Finder Rename 10 before adding the files to Lightroom), but you are aware of the renaming abilities baked into Jeffrey Friedl's Collection Publisher? I haven't used them, but they look pretty powerful.

I wish lightroom would allow keywords or at least the first N letters of the keywords to show up as headers or footers on the grid and loupe view.  I get 1000 videos that each have to have one keyword attached.  most of the time each one is different from the previous and most of the time they follow in a more or less expected sequence.  if i could see the keywords i have already attached, it would be much less confusing - i would be able to quickly find all the videos that havent been keyworded without hiding the ones that have been keyworded.  if i hide the keyworded files, then i cant remember where i was in the sequence.  thee problems plus the fact that videos do not play automatically when you open them in the loupe view means that i find Dopus easier to use for this task.  and like others have said, why cant we have batch renames for keywords?  and better batch renames for files too.   

Ahh, not the kind of merge i'm trying to do.

I want to merge keywords from the picture into catalog of LR. 'Read metadata from file' replace the keywords in the catalog with the keywords in the picture. I want to merge them to LR catalog.

Just to clarify; the keywords saved in the picture was added to files after the picture was added to the LR catalog.

Ahh, good point if you need an exact match.  There are a couple of ways to deal with that in my example with Smart Collections.   One is to put 2 rules in the smart collection, one using "Starts with" and the other using "Ends with" and put the entire keyword into both arguments.  

A second, and simpler, approach is to first bugger up the keyword.  Let's say the keyword is "Red Race Car",  Right click on it and change it to jibberish (e.g.  "QWERTYUIO").  It doesn't really matter what you use as we'll be deleting the entire KW once it's images are merged into another KW anyway.  Just pick text that you are sure doesn't appear (in whole or in part) in any other KW.  Then use the jibberish KW in the Smart Collection Rule using either "contains" or "contains all" and only images with that jibberish KW will be found 

Dan

Dan

I am sure your comments are correct (I have never used stacks), but your proposed solution runs into another deficiency in Lightroom -- you can't have smart collections with exact match of a keyword. This problem is at least 5 years old, and is especially annoying for those of us who use multi-word keywords. Given your comments about stacks, I guess it is "inefficient" if not "annoyingly difficult" to merge keywords.

I have no idea how a company adobe can let such a silly system remain. Its' 1960's stuff to come up with a system in which, if I provide <keyword1>,..<keywordn>, it will retrieve every entry that has <keyword1>^..^<keywordn>. (Position independent conjunctive search)This is known to be surprisingly good at retrieving things, because the user does not need to know which attribute has the required keyword.
Now, this can be combined with a simple, attribute independent Boolean search, and then also an attribute based Boolean search. All cases can (given the small size of even the largest collections) allow for unix style wild characters and keywords. The queries can return lists which can be toggled to display other attributes such as locations and folders., and link to them.
Then, as another option, some of the really complex, LR dependent searches can be allowed for.
All these can easily coexist, and, an organisation like adobe can do it all.
BTW, they are not the only ones who mess things like this up!
Karl Reed

this process will not work if some images with the KW being merged are buried in collapsed stacks.  First you need to Expand all stacks that may have images with the keyword.  However, many times it's hard to know which folders those are.  So, you have expand all stacks first.  Then Alan's process will work but if you have 10's of thousands of images it's quite a bit of processing and time and then you lose any sense you've applied to which stacks are collapsed vs expanded.  

An alternative method is to create a temporary smart collection where the only rule is that the images have the keyword you want to merge into another.  Smart collections show all images that meet the criteria regardless of stack status.  Then click on the smart collection and select all images and continue with Alan's steps. 

Go to Keyword panel. Find the keyword that you want to delete. Click on the right arrow to just show all photos with that keyword. Select all. Find the keyword you want to merge to. Click it to set that keyword in all these photos. Then click the old keyword to unset it in all these photos. Then right click the old keyword and delete the keyword.