Automator: help me out.

[walmartconnect]

Hey everyone. I have a zillion songs that already have their names set in their info. There is only one problem: every song title's space is an '_'.

Example: "The_Star_Spangled_Banner"

I want to automate replacing the '_''s with ' '. Thoughts?

 

[walmartconnect]

Aw, come on, no one has any ideas?

 

[Netty4mac]

Automator is one of those programs that I have no idea how to use. But I am sure someone will chime in soon.

 

[eric]

you might be able to use renamer4mac to do that.

edit, just checked mine - it does have a search and replace function.

 

[walmartconnect]

I agree with you eric, and thanks. However, judging from what I have observed in your conversations, you understand my desire to understand how I could do this with the OS's tools if I were 3rd party software free.

Automator is powerful, it's just a little difficult to use sometimes.

 

[eric]

well i have used automator for renaming files, and you may be able to do this. ordering can be a concern. let me check my renaming automator scripts...

 

[eric]

ok, you should be able to open automator, find "Finder" on the left. Then find "Rename Finder Items" in the second pane.
then, on the right, click the drop down that says "add date or time" and choose "Replace Text."

then you just put an "_" in the find field, and a " " in the replace field.

to make this easy, you may want to create a folder somewhere to drop these items to be renamed, then choose that folder in the top most part of your automator function.

hmm. testing this with one file on my desktop and it's not working. perhaps i don't have all the options right. well, this will give you something to start with.


and i know you'd love to do this "1st party," but renamer4mac is a really nice tool. so nice in fact i added a button for it on the top of my finder windows.

 

[eric]

aha!

i found my issue. on top i had copy finder items before rename.

you need to have "get specified finder items" on top of rename. this give you a drop zone to place finder items within. now it works... except i can't replace a "_" with a " "... grrrrr!

 

[walmartconnect]

Hmm.

Eric, the big problem is that we are not dealing with filenames like "Star_Spangled.mp3", more like "whatever.mp3" with an ID3 metadata entry that states that the song's name is "Star_Spangled". Do you know what I mean?

 

[walmartconnect]

Netty, btw, thanks for trying to help

 

[eric]

oh, yeah, that would be trickier.

 

[giulio]

No Sweat..

• Quit iTunes
• Perform an extended search and replace on all of your MP3 files. The first few lines of the file are the song title.
• Relaunch iTunes

EX:

ID3����
#COMM���h���engiTunNORM� 00001909 00001909 00005759 00005759 000018E3 000018E3 00006D97 00006D97 00000B3B 00000B3B�TPE1������Mel Blanc�***2������Cartoon_Machine�ˇ˚pp��Ò/øÌ=Ä�† |†��

Artist=Mel Blanc; Title=Cartoon_Machine

You can also do this in the iTunes Music Library.xml file, but if your filenames have _ in them you'll probably get all screwed.