Import Does LrC save the original filename when renaming on import or using Library>Rename Photo... ?

[vbnut]

Lightroom Version Number

14.2

Operating System

1. Windows 10
2. Windows 11

For many years, I renamed images in Lightroom 5.7.1 after I imported them, copying from a memory card to date-based folders. When I first purchased a camera (Canon EOS R3) that wasn't supported by that old version of Lightroom, I wrote a PowerShell script to copy images from a memory card to my hard disk. It uses exiftool to organize them into the same date-based folders and rename them using the same naming scheme I used in Lightroom. It also does some other things, including making two backup copies. I then used Adobe's DNG converter to convert the unsupported images into DNG files that I could then import into Lightroom without moving them (since they were already in the desired folders).

Eventually, I decided the conversion to DNG was unwieldy and wasted disk space, so upgrade to Lightroom Classic which support the R3 files. I continued, however, using the PowerShell script to ingest images, and it has been working well for photos and images from my Canon EOS R3 ever since.

I recently purchased an R5 Mark II, and while the script still works fine for images, videos are a different story. Instead of naming video files similar to images, but with the suffix .mp3, like the R3 did, the R5II use a more complicated file naming scheme for videos (described here), so my renaming scheme isn't working well for these video files, and I'm trying to decide how to fix it. As part of that investigation, I was thinking about preserving the R5II's original video file names somewhere, since then encode a bunch of information that I might find useful someday. I looked at the "Original Filename" field in LrC's metadata for some R5II image files and discovered that it was the current filename (the one produced by exiftool). I then went back and looked at some R3 image files and saw the same thing. Next I looked at image files from my older camera where the files were renamed in Lightroom 5.7.1, going back to images from 2008, and in all cases, the "File Name" and "Original Filename" are identical.

So my questions are:

1. Does LrC save the original file name when renaming on import or using Library>Rename Photo... ?
2. When, if ever, does it save the original file name in the "Original Filename" metadata field or some other metadata field?

I'm going to ask similar questions in ExifTool forum, although I expect the answer will be if I want exiftool to do that I need to explicitly tell itto do so.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

It is the ‘Preserved File Name’ metadata field.

 

[Gnits]

I have a VB app which ingests my card images to their destination project folder location. Files are renamed to my personal file renaming scheme. As I do not create video content, my add ignores all video content.

However, sometimes I ingest cards on behalf of others(to their disks) and they may have video… so video has to watched for and handled manually.

I am just about to add an enhancement to cater for video. It will first warn the user that there is content on the card. My thinking is that I will then just copy all video content exactly as it has been saved to the card, including any xmp or thumbnails or any other misc files. My reasoning is that modern video editing apps increasingly can make use of the xmp metadata, thumbnails and other files. My knowledge of video is so limited…I just want to make sure I preserve the integrity of the video files captured.

 

[vbnut]

It is the ‘Preserved File Name’ metadata field.

Thanks, but I see the Preserved File Name being identical to the current filename for both images renamed in lightroom and images renamed by exiftool.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thanks, but I see the Preserved File Name being identical to the current filename for both images renamed in lightroom and images renamed by exiftool.

It works for me. I rename on import and ‘Preserved File Name’ is the out of camera file name, so the file name before the file was renamed.

 

[vbnut]

It works for me. I rename on import and ‘Preserved File Name’ is the out of camera file name, so the file name before the file was renamed.

I never (rarely) renamed on import. I would import first, select all the imported images and rename with F2 (Library>Rename Photo...), because I figured doing one thing at a time is less likely to cause issues. Could that work differently?

Okay, I just did a test of both renaming on import and renaming after import, and in both cases Preserved File Name is the out of camera file name.
Unfortunately, all the images I renamed after import before December 2022 (with LR 5.7.1 and earlier) have Preserved File Name identical to File Name. I wonder if there was a bug in those old versions that was fixed at some point.

 

[Califdan]

Preserved filename was added to LrC with version LrC/8.3 (5/14/2019) according to my notes.

 

[vbnut]

Preserved filename was added to LrC with version LrC/8.3 (5/14/2019) according to my notes.

I'm impressed, and appreciative, that you keep such detailed notes.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I never (rarely) renamed on import. I would import first, select all the imported images and rename with F2 (Library>Rename Photo...), because I figured doing one thing at a time is less likely to cause issues. Could that work differently?

I don’t think it should.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

And I can confirm it doesn't. Yesterday I imported some images from a camera that I had not used recently, so after import I noticed the camera was not yet on DST. As my rename template includes the capture date and time, it also meant that the images got renamed incorrectly. So I renamed them back using a template that just consists of the Preserved File Name, then changed the capture time, and finally renamed them again with my usual template. The names are now correct and the Preserved File Name field shows the original (camera) file names again.