Tutorial -Creating More Accessible Audio Books.

David Griffith offers a tutorial on using the free Bulk Rename Utility.

One of my favourite, go to tools is, the renowned freeware Bulk rename Utility.

The version I use is on the following modified DropBox link.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/by5miedsw1zqza1/bulk%20rename%20BRU_Setup_WinNTx86.exe?dl=1

bulk Rename can be used in several use cases, but I will focus on one application here.

Scenario

You have a CD originated Audio Book which has been created from 12 CDS resulting in 12 folders of mp3 files.

These folders will be typically called something like Dis 01, Disc02 through to Disc 12. Sometimes it is CD 01 and so on.

Each folder contains something like 10 or more mp3 files.

Unfortunately each folder contains identical filenames such as 01.mp3, 02.mp3 so it is not straightforward to merge the contents of all these folders.

Any attempt to do so will result in a conflict of filenames and a consequent destructive overwriting of each file with identical names.

A further complication is that the title, author or year of the book is sometimes also included in the folder or filenames. This may create awkward very long filenames for your audio books. Some Daisy Players will not like these files.

What you want to do is rename all the mp3 files in one Audio Book folder- in correct order. You may want to do this to make it easier to listen to on various Book Players. Perhaps you also want to convert the book into Daisy mp3 format.

This reorganisation and renaming task is normally tedious in the extreme.

Thankfully it can be done if not in seconds then in a few short minutes with Bulk Rename Utility and its ability to append the folder name to all the files contained in a folder.

First Install Bulk Rename Utility if not already on your machine.

Important.

Until you are used to this Bulk Rename method you should experiment only with a copy of your audio book and not the original. If you make any mistakes this then avoids a disaster and the need to angrily blame somebody.

Step 1

This is actually entirely optional but for the shortest eventual filenames you may want ,if the folders and filenames include the book title author etc , to Simplify the Folder names so that they are something like Disc 01 Disc 02 etc.

If the CD folders include the title of the book press F2 on a folder name and then in rename edit mode use shift arrow keys to highlight the name of the book title, author etc. and press control C to copy the text you want to cut out to the clipboard. Press escape to return out of file rename mode.

Now back out in windows File Explorer until you are focussed on the single main Book Folder which contains all the CD based folders within it.

bring up the context menu on this folder and select Bulk Rename.

Wait for the program to load and gain focus. This may take a few seconds depending on the size of the folder.

There are 2 stages of renaming.

Step 2

This is the next optional stage to quickly Rename the Disc folders if needed.

Press tab 4 times

You will hear something like.

RegEx Match

RegEx (1) Include Ext.

File (2) Name

File (2) Edit‑

Then you will find on the 5th press of the tab key

Replace edit.

Here is where you can paste in the name of the book title or author you want to remove.

If you wanted to you could tab once more and type in some alternative text but for our purposes we should leave this field blank as we simply want to remove it.

Now simply press control A to select all folders and then control r to rename the folders.

Bulk Rename will issue a warning that you are to rename files but simply press enter. You are after all working on a copy right so there is nothing to worry about.

Bulk Rename will then tell you how many folders you have renamed. Press enter to clear this message.

If you want you can now alt tab back to File Explorer to confirm that the changes you want so far have been made to the folder names.

Now for the most powerful and final step 3. When Bulk Rename has finished renaming on folder name you will want to make it focus on all the mp3 files and not just the folder names.

shift tab about 8 times until you hear the option to select sub folders.

Press space here to check this option.

Now Bulk Rename will be focused on all mp3 files and not just the folder names.

Pressing control, A to select all and Control R to rename will now remove book title strings from the individual mp3 files if this is needed.

Appending Folder name to files.

Now for the final step of appending folder names to your simplified filenames.

Firstly tab back forward and carefully removed the text you have pasted in to the replace field.

Warning pressing control a to select and pressing delete will not work. to select all the text you need to press home to go to the beginning of the text and then hold shift down and press the end key. Now pressing the delete key will remove the text.

Now you need to press tab forward about 20 times to navigate to the append folder name option. I normally just hold the tab key down for about 2 seconds to get there quickly. You may need to experiment to find the fastest way to get there on your machine.

The append folder name is just after all the auto date options.

Once focused on append folder name you need to press the down arrow once to change its setting from none to prefix.

Now again press control A and then control r and all your book mp3 files will be instantly renamed.

Bulk rename will confirm the number of files renamed.

Close Bulk Rename.

As an example I have just done this to a book and the files which were previously simply 01.mp3 and 02.mp3were were renamed to Disc 101 – .mp3 and Disc 102 – .mp3.

similarly the first two files in disc 2 folder were renamed to

Disc 201 – .mp3 and Disc 202 – .mp3. The Bulk rename has created unique individual filenames for all the files in the Audio Book folders. They can now be safely merged with no destructive overwriting of files.

Now you could simply select all the files from each of your 12 individual folder and cut them into a single audio book folder.

Happily Windows provides a simpler and quicker way to create your audio Book folder

Final step 4

Create your unified audio book.

Make sure you are in a file explorer view, within the audio book folder, where you can see all the CD based book folders.

This is important as you want to restrict this operation to the audio book folder only and not be affecting other mp3 files from elsewhere on your system.

So you should be seeing something like the folders disc 01 Disc 02 etc. or CD 01 depending on how your folders are name.

Press F3 to launch Windows File Search.

Type mp3 as your search term.

Now press F6 twice to jump to a unified list of all your Audio Book mp3 files in this folder.

Press control A to select all

Now press control x to cut all the files at once.

Press backspace to return into the root of your original book folder.

Press control v to paste / move all the mp3 files out of the individual folders into the root of your book folder.

Now finally delete your now empty CD based book folders.

Job done.

Once you are used to this method it is really very quick and only takes a couple of minutes to logically rename potentially hundreds of Audio Book files.

David Griffith

Ba

Sent from Mail for Windows 10