Renaming files and directories

Tip

Use the renamer to structure your movies into folders and give them proper file names. MediaElch will automatically create sub-directories as needed.

MediaElch is able to rename your files and folders on a given pattern. The “Renamer” allows you to build up a solid directory structure to organize your movies, TV shows and more.

Renamer Button

The renamer button becomes active if items (movies/TV shows/…) are selected.

You are able to define how your files and folders should be named. After clicking on “Rename selected files” (see image above) in the main toolbar you see a bunch of placeholders which can be used for renaming:

Placeholders in angle brackets (<...>) are replaced by their actual value. Playholders in curly brackets ({...} ... {/...}) are conditionals. The content between them is only used if the condition is true.

If the media files for the movies (mkv, avi, mp4, etc.) are all in a single folder, you can use the renamer to automatically create individual folders and put the respective media files into new folders. Only the movie’s media file is moved to the new folder (no artwork).

Here’s an example: Assume we have three movies

No.

Movie

Year

Other Details

1

“Awesome Movie”

2000

3D movie

2

“Ordinary Movie”

1999

3

“Sequel Movie”

2018

movieset is “Movie collection”

Using the following rename pattern

  • Folder: {movieset}<movieset> - {/movieset}<title> (<year>)

  • File: <title>{3D}.3D{/3D}.<extension>

the movies will be renamed to:

No.

Folder

Filename

1

My Awesome Movie (2000)

My Awesome Movie.3D.mkv

2

Ordinary Movie (1999)

Ordinary Movie.mkv

3

Movie Collection - Sequel Movie (2010)

Sequel Movie.mkv

The following conditional placeholders are available:

  • {bluray}{/bluray} The movie is a bluray structure

  • {dvd}{/dvd} The movie is a dvd structure

  • {3D}{/3D} It’s a 3D movie, you selected a stereo mode in the stream details tab (if not detected automatically)

  • {movieset}<movieset>{/movieset} The movieset is not empty

  • {imdbId}<imdbId>{/imdbId} The IMDB Id of the movie

If you are unsure if your rename pattern gives you the result you want, just hit the “Dry Run” button. No file is renamed but you’ll see the resulting folder- and filenames if you were to actually rename them.