Media Manager enhanced subfolder search

[DHoude]

Not sure how many people do this, but I reorganized my video library folder structure, mid career. That means I have broken all my shows. Worse off, I am not even sure I like it the way it is, so I may do more.

That got me thinking, media manager is great. But why can’t I just point it at the parent folder and have it find all the contained files in my sub folders? I know it can find all the files that were in the same folder, but that is pretty limited.

Maybe there is a different way? I tried searching for a batch file search tool. Something that could search my XML file for the file names, point to the parent directory and let it find and repair all the paths.

I know we can all use something like this. Organizing video sets by theme folders make it easier to build new sets. But I still want some of my old sets back too.

[Zoltán]

But why can’t I just point it at the parent folder and have it find all the contained files in my sub folders?

Because many people do folder/file naming like [pack name]/01.mov
then you'll get the wrong files reconnected.

[DHoude]

I am failing to understand why people would change the actual file names. Is it more common to drop all the video files in one huge folder?

I just took the packs and made folders like “Ambient & Backdrop” or “Alpha & Overlays” to find elements that I need. Which buried the same set folders and same file names behind that theme folder. Before that, I had Artist folder. Nice to give them credit, but nobody saw them but me, and it was not very helpful to build new sets.

[Zoltán]

I don't think there is a way to cover all possible use cases with reconnects.
Making a hash for every file you load would identify the files, but will require a lot of processing.
People replace files with new versions, keeping the same name, then hashing is no use, as the file has changed.
Using file name only is not good either. If you have a file with the same name in multiple folders, you get the first connected.

[DHoude]

I follow the duplicate name thing. But was never talking hash signatures, advanced searches, etc. Just a simple file name search among sub folders. A much more minor enhancement than the direction it is being suggested here. Nothing can really ever cover all scenarios.

Maybe a prompt for multiple results, to choose which file?

[Zoltán]

Maybe a prompt for multiple results, to choose which file?

Also if there are 200 prompts popping up?

[DHoude]

No idea what to say man. I guess thanks for reading?

[Zoltán]

The thing with the xml path replacer, that also only works if it knows what to expect about the patch changes.

If you only use unique file names, the app could parse the file name out of the path, and search the folders for the file name and use the first match to write the new path.