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Following on from the Photographers - How Do You Name Your Files thread, we have now implemented parsing of photo filenames on upload. Registration, location IATA or ICAO, and optionally date can be specified in the filename and filled in automatically when you upload.

The idea is to eliminate typing and make the upload process even faster for you, but:

Note that the use of this feature is completely optional.
You can continue to use your existing filenames if you wish.

Of course, Fast-Track upload does need the photos to be named this way, but the regular upload process will take any filename you want.

As always, post questions, comments, bugs, drunken rants below. The messy details follow.

Filename formats

The following filename formats are recognised by the system; any filenames not matching these formats will be ignored, and your upload will proceed as normal. The order is critical, and individual elements are separated by an underscore:

REG_LOC.jpg
REG_LOC_OWN.jpg
REG_LOC_DATE.jpg
REG_LOC_DATE_OWN.jpg

Examples:
G-BOAB_LHR_ed.jpg
N700EA_KBCE_20040228.jpg

REG - aircraft registration (or warbird fake reg). Acceptable characters: Letters, numbers, dash (-). No length restriction.
LOC - airfield IATA or ICAO identifier. Three or four letters.
DATE - in YYYYMMDD format. Eight numbers, optional.
OWN - personal element, ignored by the filename parser. Optional.

Registration and location

If the system doesn't find both a plausible registration and a plausible IATA/ICAO airfield code, it will ignore the filename altogether. The upload process continues as normal.

If both a registration and IATA/ICAO are found, these will be pre-filled for you on stage 2 of the upload process.

The registration must be formatted correctly, otherwise it won't match. If you have a photo of G-BOAC, then put G-BOAC in the registration part of the filename - not GBOAC or anything else.

Remember that the regular upload channel's location field uses a simple text search, so one code or the other may match multiple airports' plain-text names. For example, if I upload a shot from Oulu, Finland, its IATA code OUL will also match Toulouse, France, Boulder City, Nevada and many others, so I will have to choose Oulu in the next step. Using the ICAO code EFOU ensures that the right airport is chosen for me. If one code looks much less pronounceable than the other, it's probably your best bet. Fast-track upload knows that you've given it an ICAO or an IATA code, so this doesn't apply there.

Date

The system can usually determine the date your photo was taken from the embedded EXIF data. However, you may wish to override the EXIF date, or you may be uploading an older shot (perhaps from film) where EXIF data is unavailable.

If, in addition to registration and location, the system finds a date block (eight numbers) in the photo filename, it will pre-fill this as the date in stage 2 of the upload process. If both a filename date and an EXIF date are found, the filename date, not the EXIF date, is chosen - the assumption is that you're overriding the EXIF date deliberately for some reason. (Perhaps you were shooting in a different time zone and all your EXIF dates are one day out.) However, in this case a message appears to warn you of the conflict, along with a "Use EXIF date" button; you can restore the EXIF date with a single click.

Note that the date format is YYYYMMDD - 4-digit year, 2-digit month (with leading zero if required), 2-digit day (also with leading zero).

Of course, if you don't have a date in the filename, the uploader will read the EXIF date (or not) just as before.

Own

The last part of the filename is ignored by the system, so you can put anything you like in here that is valid in a filename, including underscores. You could put a number in here if you have several shots of one aircraft at the same airport, for example. Or you could have the original filename as it came off the camera. However, if this own part is exactly 8 numbers, it will be interpreted as a date. Beware!

Limitations

This won't work at all unless the system thinks it has a reg and a location - and the location must be IATA/ICAO. This means that off-airport shots, in-flight shots, airport overview shots, etc., can't use this feature; it's strictly for "an aircraft, at an airport" shots.

There may be some characters in registrations that aren't allowed in filenames; needless to say, this won't work in those cases. For simplicity's sake, it only handles letters, numbers and dash.

It's just possible that some random filename might match the pattern. The worst that happens in this case is that a bogus reg and location appear on the form; simply type the correct ones in.

The server forgets the uploaded filename as soon as you see the Stage 2 form, so if you get half-way through the process and come back, the filename can't be parsed again. This means that, if you change the reg, location or date from those found in the filename, you won't see the filename ones when you come back.

Just trialled it on a couple of uploads; worked well (though it did confuse me with the date order of YYYYMMDD - I put it in the wrong order first and ended up with a date in the future!).

ShanwickOceanic wrote:Note that the use of this feature is completely optional; you can continue to use your existing filenames if you wish.

Quoted for effect

You don't have to change the way you name your files, if you don't want to make use of the feature.

Many of you certainly have a specific way to name your files for many years already, and changing such habits never is easy.

But as Ed said... things may become even better in the future... so maybe it will be worth making yourselves familiar with the system

Thanks for the feature, Ed.

Zak wrote:

ShanwickOceanic wrote:Note that the use of this feature is completely optional; you can continue to use your existing filenames if you wish.

Quoted for effect

Thats good, cause I can do a lot of stuff, but parsing file - whatever that happens to be - and causing Ed volumes of work - beyond his normal volumes of work - doesn't matter to me . . . my files get named what they are cause I don't know - and don't wanna know - better . . .

Well done Ed . . . yet another NAS feature that you have afforded us with your grand talent for ones and zeros . . . man I envy that

Just tried this for the first time, it was quite handy. I used the REG_LOCATION.jpg format, then the date was automatically found from the exif data. Only problem was the aircraft I uploaded wern't in the database so I had to type the data manually which in the end didn't save too much time.

Although I can imagine when the content database fills up more and most of the aircraft you uplaod are already in the database, it will be a lot quicker uploading.

Just re-discovered this now I have cause to upload again - is it worth adding this to the upload FAQ or placing a link to it on the upload page? It wasn't easy to find as a forum thread, and that's with me knowing it exists!