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Forum Discussion
How to change naming conventions, and rename content?
Hi,
the file renaming feature is really powerful but:
I set it up a week ago and I had the choice of the naming convention, now I would like to change it but I can't find it -> can someone ...
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey ibox1 - sorry to jump in here, but I just wanted to mention that naming conventions are available through the website at this time, not within the mobile app or the desktop app (it would redirect you to the website anyhow).
As for the previous setup, can you navigate to the folder from a web browser and click the (...) button for the folder? Do you see 'edit' or 'add' automation?
Next to the folder on the web, do you see a little grey tag icon showing 'automated'?
Hi Walter,
I can't see a grey icon "Automated"
[A] so, knowing that the naming convention works from my mobile but not my Web or Desktop app, it would mean that
- the Naming Convention was setup from my mobile the first time I set up Camera Upload
- but now I can't edit it from my mobile
- and at the same time the naming convention was not set up for my Desktop app nor Web app (which is weird to me as it should be cloud based)
- I say this because when I drop a new file on my Desktop or Web app, the renaming doesn't work
- AND I see no existing rules when I click on Organise from the Web app
[B] So now I should set the Naming Convention rules from my Web app and Web/Desktop/Mobile will all work?
Because if I try to do this for example, the naming conventions I can pick from on the Web app are not the same than what I originally had in the mobile app:
as you can see, everything is already setup with YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS (from Mobile) whereas on the web I can't have that and the closest is only YYYY-MM-DD-HH.MM which means I have 2 different naming conventions in the same folder...
[C] even doing all the above, with my Naming Convention set up from the Web app, dropping a file there still doesnt rename it, it only works from my Mobile app
you can see the file "image.png" that I tried to upload via Web or Desktop -> the name should be "2023-10-27 13-38 - image.png" as it was created/captured on 27/10/2023
it has the Date Created field
-> on the laptop that's the only field we can see, how can I check the Date Captured field?
-> if it's not the same, how is it possible to use the Date Created field for the rule?
-> or is there any other way to connect both? I have pictures/videos dump from other iPhones, GoPro, Inst360, DSLR etc... that we get on my laptop, and then push online.
The naming convention is helping us to timestamp every piece of media we have and indicate time markers to our editors to save them time when they are looking for highlights (they have the timeline of the footage across all devices, so if we tell them something happened on a specific date at a specific time, they find it quickly)
- Jay
If you get the properties or info of the file, the date captured should be on the EXIF data for the image. Bear in mind that not all cameras will populate this field depending on their settings, and likewise for video recordings.
There isn't an option for the 'date created', only 'date uploaded' (to Dropbox), which will be different to the creation date.
This is very helpful Jay thanks, we are getting there!
So I did more tests and indeed for images captured with a camera device, the EXIF metadata is there, all good
The remaining pain point is with videos:
- for .mov videos, the EXIF worked at upload (from my phone), and when I read the metadata on sync files on my laptop it works BUT when I upload .mov from my laptop with correct EXIF it doesn not rename -> why?
- for .mp4 videos, the EXIF worked at upload (from my phone), BUT when I read the metadata on sync files on my laptop it does not work -> why? Cause the EXIF must have been good at some point on my phone to do a proper renaming no?
yes no problem
