Photo Redater Version 1.0 - December 24 2008

Copyright (C) 2008 by
Alexander G. M. Smith
agmsmith@ncf.ca

The input files you specify (presumably photos and videos) are given new names
which include their "modified" time (plus a camera clock correction factor) as
part of the name.  The renaming can be done immediately, or can be output as a
batch file for you to tweak.

Who would ever want to do that?  Just people trying to combine photos into
chronological order from several cameras all shooting the same event.

Hints and Instructions:

Make sure the file modification times of all the photos you are working
on reflect the shooting time (some camera download software will use the
date and time you downloaded the file, sometimes only for photos which
were rotated to be in portrait format!).  Tools like ACDSee can copy the
shooting time from the EXIF information in a JPEG picture to the file
modified time.  Videos unfortunately don't have EXIF.

Use a photo of a clock, with seconds displayed, taken with all the cameras
to figure out the time correction for each camera.  Alternatively, look for
photos of common events and check their timestamps to see how the time
differs between cameras.

Then run this program once for the photos from each camera with the time
correction for that camera.  That will give you sequentially named files that,
when combined with the files from the other cameras and sorted by name, will
be in chronological order.

The new file names include the old name's sequence number and initials you
specify.  For example, with "AGMS-C" as initials (person and camera brand,
but you can use whatever you want), the renaming would look like:

ren "IMG_5439.JPG" "20081223_161606_AGMS-C_5439.JPG"
ren "IMG_5441.JPG" "20081224_110308_AGMS-C_5441.JPG"
ren "MVI_5402.AVI" "20081223_142836_AGMS-C_5402.AVI"
ren "MVI_5402.THM" "20081223_142836_AGMS-C_5402.THM"
ren "SND_5275.WAV" "20081217_170516_AGMS-C_5275.WAV"

As you can guess, the first 8 digits are year, month and day from the file's
modification time plus the correction factor you specify (which is hopefully
the true photo shooting time).  The next 6 digits are the hours, minutes and
seconds, using a 24 hour clock.  The last number (if present) is the original
file's sequence number.

The Browse and Append More Files buttons are there because Windows can only
select a few thousand files at a time.  Normally you just use Browse.

Feel free to use this program for personal and commercial purposes, at your
own risk.  You may modify it too, though please update the credits to reflect
your changes and contact information, so people know who to ask about it.