Sophisticated Rename is a confirmed leader in file processing software. Notwithstanding its name, the power of the program is not limited to renaming functions only. The software was mainly designed to meet specific requirements of photographers and music lovers, but it also may be of interest to other people who want their files to be perfectly in order. Here is a list of general features of the program; if you need more precise information, please refer to the manual.

• SR processes files using flexible algorithms with the help of various data types:
  • Constants add any text to the renaming template.
  • Text variables add a text line that can be updated before every processing.
  • Counters (numerical and alphabetical) allow to numerate files.
  • Variables represent any limited part of the original file name or other string.
  • Extra variables refer to the metadata of files – EXIF (jpeg, tiff), ID3 (mp3), etc.
  • External variables call your own plugin program for additional processings.
  • Conditionals allow to deal with the most complicated cases.
• In contrast to programming languages, all data types are defined visually and added to the template with just one click.
• All your preferences can be saved to a preset to be used later with other files.
• The program allows you to sort out files to different folders automatically. The distinguishing feature can be either in the filename/extension or in the content of the file.
• SR can also change attributes, dates and times of files (it can be done in compliance with EXIF as well); you can choose one of the five available case types for any item in the template or for the whole file name.
• Internal EXIF and ID3v1/v2 editors are at your service. You can edit the data for all files at once or for each file separately. ID3 editor also allows you to analyse file names and write ID3 tags automatically to thousands of files.
• Advanced users are able to use regular expressions with search-and-replace feature.
• You can also use all the power of SR to rename multiple files on FTP servers!
• The renaming process is global, it is not conducted for each file separately. It means that you are able to use complicated rules to analyse all files in the list before generating new names for each file.
• The program can not only rename files, but also copy them to other locations, and you may use sophisticated rules to select which files should be copied.
• Only this program allows you to fulfill all your ideas concerning batch processing. If you happen to find that SR is short of some features, you can write a plugin for it in any programming language.
• And last but not least is the reliability of the program. First of all, SR shows the results preview every time you change parameters – you don’t have to rename files to see how your template works. Second, it allows you to restore old file names even after the renaming process.

Sophisticated Rename Plugins (external programs).

The unlimited power of SR is explained by the ability to work with plugins. SR includes only general features that can be useful for almost all users. The purpose of plugins is to meet the specific requirements of a certain user. It’s impossible to write a program that will satisfy everyone, but it’s possible to write separate plugins for different tasks of any difficulty! Right now you can check out the plugins that were already created:

Data Plugin – store and process data during the renaming process.
SR can only keep some user data in conditionals, the data being accessible only for current file name. With this plugin you will be able to store string and integer data which will be accessible from the beginning to the end of the whole renaming process. An interesting feature is that you don’t need to define the type of the data beforehand – you can treat any data both as integer and string (when it is possible). The plugin is included into sr.exe. This pack contains demo files only.

HTML – get title tags from html webpages.
Sometimes you need to rename HTML files and give them sensible names. The best way to do it is to extract the text between <title> and </title> tags from the html file and postprocess it if needed, for example, delete an unneeded part of it. This plugin allows you to rename webpages easily.

Lists – rename files according to a prepared filelist.
If you have a list of existing files and a list of new file names to preceed with renaming, this plugin is for you. It understands 3 types of lists: a) old name – odd line, new name – even line; b) old and new names are separated by a special symbol or a set of symbols; c) there are two files – one file contains old names and the other one contains new names.

RegExpSR by Andrew Andreenkov – advanced search-and-replace using regular expressions.
The plugin allows you to use regular expressions in Sophisticated Rename. You can use the plugin with any SR datatype.

EXIF Master – inserts any EXIF tag to template.
SR has a few extra vars representing the most useful EXIF tags, such as datetime and image dimensions, but you can use this plugin to get such specific information as aperture, focal lenght, iso, shutter speed, etc. The plugin is included into sr.exe. This pack contains demo files only.

EXIF Edit – a) adds datetime, datetime original, datetime digitized tags and sets their values to current date and time – it allows Exif Updater to modify them later as you need; b) completely removes all EXIF information – having erased EXIF, you will considerably decrease the size of some JPG files. The B feature is not needed now as internal Exif updater can erase all exif information as perfectly as this plugin does.

SaveID3 – saves vars to MP3 files as ID3 tags.
This plugin allows to save SR datatypes as ID3 tags. This may be used to extract the names of the songs from the names of the files. The plugin was used until this feature was implemented to the internal ID3 Updater. Still this plugin may be useful if you want to rename files and save ID3 tags during one processing to save time.

Truncate – automatically finds a common substring in all filenames and truncates it.
Some files may have an undesirable prefix, suffix or both. Generally, you need to setup a variable to get rid of them. Different sets of files may have different suffixes and it will take you long to reconfigure variables every time. This plugin finds such substrings automatically and gets rid of them, returning only useful parts of file names.

Mask – allows to use * and ? wildcards.
If you get used to work in DOS, you may find such a filtration useful, although you can also filter the files with the help of SR conditionals.

No More %20 – decodes hex codes after % symbol to normal letters. For example, %20 will be replaced by space character:
File%20downloaded%20from%20internet.htm -> File downloaded from internet.htm. There is also an option to replace spaces with any other string, for example, like this: File_downloaded_from_internet.htm. The plugin decodes not only %20 but all codes, for instance, %41 is ‘A’, etc.

Translit – transliteration from any language to English (or other).
Some localized file names may cause problems in the OSes or devices that understand only English file names. This is the case with most hardware MP3 players. You must transliterate foreign letters to English. The plugin has examples for Russian and German transliteration, but you can configure any other language as well. German transliteration means replacing “ä” to “ae” and so on.