File alignment within folders

[RunnerBiker]

I have two folders that have hundreds of files like the following files:

Left Folder
1973_381 - Keith Hampshire - First Cut Is The Deepest - 256 JS 3.42.mp3
1973_382 - Dawn featuring Tony Orlando - You're A Lady - 256 ST 4.46.mp3

Right Folder
1973_381 - Keith Hampshire - The First Cut Is The Deepest.mp3
1973_382 - Tony Orlando & Dawn - You're A Lady.mp3

All files follow use the same numbering scheme (1973_000), but the text describing the files will vary. 1973_381 on the left should align with 1973_381 on the right.

I have tried lots of alignment overrides, but can not get BC3 to align them the way I want.

The latest I tried is:

(\d\d\d\d_\d\d\d).*(\.mp3$)
$1.*$2
with Regular Expression Checked.

I have also tried:
(\d\d\d\d_\d\d\d).*
$1.*
with Regular Expression Checked.

and
(1973_\d\d\d).*mp3$
$1.*mp3$
with Regular Expression Checked.

Can you help?

[Aaron]

Hello,

The 2nd line is required to be fully defined and cannot contain regular expression masks (though, it can use $1, $2). You can't have .* or other mask regular expressions in the right side.

You can set this up explicitely as:
1973_381 - Keith Hampshire - First Cut Is The Deepest - 256 JS 3.42.mp3
1973_381 - Keith Hampshire - The First Cut Is The Deepest.mp3

I'll need to test/play around with this for a bit to see if there is a suitable mask that we could use.

[RunnerBiker]

Thanks Aaron,

I guess I missed the part about regular expressions only permitted on the left side.

Using right click Align With isn't a reasonable solution, since I would have to do that 567 times for this folder (1975). When I start working on the year 1976 I would have to do the Align With thing another 500+ times.

The attached blurry picture shows a portion of the 1975 directory with every file mismatched.

[Zoë]

How are your scripting skills? The directory compare can not do what you want right now. If you're able, I'd suggest using the "Copy filenames" commands on each side, then compare the resulting lists in the text compare. Set up unimportant text rules so that you get the alignment you want, then generate an XML file comparison report. You can then use a text editor or scripting language to convert the resulting report into the format that the directory comparison's "Align with" settings are saved as, and you can copy them into your saved session's settings.

[RunnerBiker]

That works. Thanks.

It isn't very automatic, but it is a solution.

Thanks,

RB

[RunnerBiker]

OK - I tried for two hours to format the <AlignWiths> formatted correctly.

I had to download and add the XML addin to Excel. That allowed me to export the XML data, but I still had to massage it lots with Notepad.

First I found differences between &amp; and %26 then I found the é in José Feliciano caused problems, then there must be a limit on the number of <AlignWiths> that can be "pasted" into a BCSessions.xml.

I was trying to put about 560 of them in there, but it just seemed to ignore them. So I cut it down to 100 and it ignored them too.

Reduced to 50 - ignored.

This isn't worth it.

Maybe there is another XML editing tool that would make this job easier, but for now I'm giving up.

I will revert to:
Click the left file,
Control or shift click the right file, whatever works easiest.
Enter to view in MP3compare or Alt+A U H to view in Hex Compare.

[RunnerBiker]

OK - I spent a couple of hours writing a program to generate the proper XML format from the two lists of files.

Some extra things that I had to do:
Find all the ampersand characters "&" and translate them into %26.
Find all the accented european characters like the "é" in José and just delete them, for now, 'cause I don't know what to do with them yet. Fortunately they aren't very common.

The attached blurry picture is the result:

[Zoë]

It should work if you save your XML files as UTF-8. You're probably saving them as ANSI, which will cause problems with the european characters.

[RunnerBiker]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. Will it fix the problem with the ampersand too?

This is curious about the "é" in José.

The "é" that I copy into the BCSessions.xml file is the same 0xE9 that BC3 puts into the file if I tell BC3 to align the two files. There must be something else that I haven't seen. I'll keep working with it, 'cause aligning the files makes the comparison much easier for me.