How does RaceRender decide which GoPro files belong in a single session

[PatFarrell]

I record a full day of riding on my dirt bike using a GoPro Hero9. I go thru a number of batteries.
And I end up with a lot of files. Most of the footage gets edited out, I convert 3 or 4 hours of footage
into a mostly watchable 15 minutes or so.

If you ever look at the file names generated by a recent GoPro Hero (9, 10, 11, etc) you will see that the generated file names are goofy. They will not sort like you expect. For example:
GX020292.MP4
GX020293.MP4
GX020294.MP4
GX020296.MP4
GX020297.MP4
GX020298.MP4
GX020302.MP4
GX030293.MP4
GX030294.MP4
GX030296.MP4
GX040293.MP4
GX040294.MP4

But the real order of the files is:
GX020292.MP4
GX020293.MP4
GX030293.MP4
GX040293.MP4
GX020294.MP4
GX030294.MP4
GX020294.MP4
GX040294.MP4
GX030296.MP4
GX020296.MP4

I find the GoPro generated names a royal PITA to work with.

Normally, I just have RR join the files together, which it does well for those with the last three digits.

I am tempted to write a small sort utility that renames the files into the normal chronological order.

I'm thinking of doing a rename along the lines of:
GX020293.MP4 -> GX0293B.MP4
GX030293.MP4 -> GX0293C.MP4
GX040293.MP4 -> GX0293D.MP4

But I don't know if RaceRender will be able to tell that the proper order is GX0293B.MP4, GX0293C.MP4, GX0293D.MP4

Will this work? Does anyone have any better/clever ideas to make the file names map into a nice chronological order?

[HoboBob]

I believe RaceRender keys off of the naming format for the GoPro files; so I don't think that renaming them would help. I agree that the filenames leave something to be desired...

If you're determined to keep them all in the same parent folder, then perhaps [on Windows] you could change your view to Details (right click in the folder > View > Details) and click on Date to sort by date instead of Name. If Date isn't one of the options, then you can right click on the Name column and choose the columns you want to see. This would work in the Import window in RaceRender too.

If the folder structure doesn't matter, perhaps you could group the similar videos into subfolders? Then you could give the subfolders a name that could be sorted.

If you're not using the GPS or other data from the GoPro files, you could use a separate video editing program to combine the videos into a single more manageable filename (with the downside of duplicating the storage of the videos).

According to the GoPro documentation (https://community.gopro.com/s/articl...language=en_US), even the older cameras used a naming convention that had the same problem. They had the first video use a different prefix such that subsequent videos were a little easier to pick out. I think you could rename the files to that convention and still have RaceRender recognize and join them, but that wouldn't really solve your root problem...

[PatFarrell]

I have experimented with manually renaming the files. I've had good success.
I've found documentation from GoPro on how various cameras pick names:
https://community.gopro.com/s/articl...language=en_US

The GoPro name convention is basically:
GXccnnnn.mp4
where "cc" is chapter and "nnnn" is a sequential "file number"
The "file number" is incremented every time you press the record button. If the video gets near the 2GB per file limit, the camera switches to a new file
with the same file number, but an incremented "chapter"

So I rename all of the files recorded on one day to have the same "file number" and just increment the "chapter" number to make them sort properly by time recorded.

I'm writing a small utility program that can rename the files automatically, but my programming skills are a bit rusty since I retired a decade ago. I probably will have it working in a week or so.

[HoboBob]

Nice, very clever! If you need any help with the script, just let me know.

[PatFarrell]

I have finally gotten the program written and working well enough that I'm willing to share it.
The source code is in github, you can find it here:
https://github.com/pfarrell51/gows/t...er/goprorename
If someone wants an executable, I can make one for any of the supported OS and hardware that 'go' supports which is most.

This is a shell program, no fancy gui. You run it, it expects a directory/folder name containing .MP4 files generated by a GoPro.
It will walk the directory structure and write out commands that will rename the files.

So far, this version will only handle 99 files in the directory. That is a lot, so I stopped there. I know how to easily handles a few hundred, but
I don't want to write that before someone really needs it.