How can I find/ change Metadata?

Frank,

There is an undocumented feature, chooseMenuItem, that does not work correctly for all menus. You can try it using the menu id for batch rename.

Such a script might be:
(note this has not been tested at all and could contain typos and all kinds of errors...)
MyRename = {};
MyRename.execute = function() {
for ( var i in app.document.selections ) {
var thumb = app.document.selections[ i ];
if ( thumb.spec instance of File ) {
var md = thumb.synchronousMetadata;
md.ns = "http://iptc.org/std/Iptc4xmpCore/1.0/xmlns/";
md.JobID = thumb.spec.name;
}
}
app.document.chooseMenuItem( "BatchRename" );
}

menu = new MenuElement( "command", "My Batch Rename...", "at the end of tools", "tools/myrename" );
menu.onSelect = MyRename.execute;

What this script would do: Run through all the selected files in bridge, preserve the current file name to the IPTC JobID field, then call Bridge's batch rename.

Now, chooseMenuItem may not work. If it doesn't, you would have to run this script before the batch rename (and pull the chooseMenuItem line out), and then once complete, execute the batch rename.

As a reminder, I wrote this code in my browser's text box, I haven't attempted to run it...

Regards

Bob

Picking up from Leah's query:

We are dealing with oodles (10,000+) of image files, some born digital and some scanned from film. The photographers and our partner organizations retain copies of the files and/or the original film and index/contact sheets, identified in various ways. We need to rename the files in a consistent manner for our long-term archiving, but we also need to retain somewhere the original filename and other legacy information (e.g., roll number, frame number, index sheet number, etc.) so that we can easily match up an image in our collection with its original. (For instance, to ask the organization holding the negative to rescan a given frame at a higher resolution.) So we need to store metadata such as the original file name, roll number, folder name, etc.--and when we rename files we need to retain the original file name. We would like to use the "Job Identifier" metadata field for all such information, potentially amending additional metadata several times. And we'd like to retain the original filename within this metadata field if possible. The "PreservedFileName" seems to store only the most recent previous name, so we'd like to read data from the "PreservedFileName" value and use that to populate (append, not replace) the "Job Identifier" field. Does this make our task clearer? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

It's pretty easy for a programmer.

If you could, please describe the entire workflow. It could be that there's a script out there that does what you're looking for, or could easily be modified to do so.

Thanks

Bob

Is this method friendly to people with basic computer skills? Nobody in my office has any real training in computer programming (we're all folklorists and librarians.)

If it is a fairly simple process, where should I look to find what to do?

Thanks.

Leah,

The old name is also stored in metadata.

It is stored under the namespace:

http://ns.adobe.com//xap/1.0/mm/

with the name: PreservedFileName

You can see this data in the File Info panel under the Advanced metadata option.

As for moving it to another field, you can do it via a script.

Bob

I should mention I'm working on a PC.

Thank you for responding!

What I mean when I ask about where information is stored, I meant, when you batch rename files in Bridge, you can check a box that asks if you want to store old names. But nothing seems to tell me where I can find my old names. I was hoping there was a folder I was overlooking.

As to the second question, I've tooled around with templates and appending versus replacing, but what I'm looking for is some way to simultaneously batch rename and move the old name into another field. So, for example, file Y would become X and Y would be moved to 'job identifier' and so on for all selected files.

Is this even possible?

Thank you.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.

XMP data is stored either as a sidecar XMP file (file of the same name, with an XMP extension) or in the file itself. So if you overwrite original XMP data, it's gone.

If you are talking about the batch application of a template, templates are stored in:

C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Application Data\Adobe\XMP\Metadata Templates

I can't remember where the Mac data is stored.

Your second question - you can create a template, and then batch apply that template.

Bob