question about batch renaming and "Date Taken"

Hi guys,

first i want to apologize if these questions have been answered before, I've searched but didn't succeed.

Question 1:
imagine you have 100 pictures in a folder, each has its "Date Taken" tag thus using

<img year><img month><img day>_<img hour><img min><img sec>

to rename everything, except for example those that ate taken within the same minute but different second (they would give error for same name) . For those i use

<img year><img month><img day>_<img hour><img min><img sec> (<Inc Nr:1>)

My question is how can i make it so when renaming all the files, only those that are taken the same minute have <Inc Nr:1> at the end? (so i dont have to do them separate, and not all pictures have <Inc Nr:1>)

Question 2:

I have a lot of old pictures that i am renaming and 99% have the "Date taken" tag, but lets say only 2/3 of them can be renamed with
<img year><img month><img day>_<img hour><img min><img sec>
the rest act as if there is no date in the Date Taken field. Any suggestion why that might be? old corrupted metadata or im doing smth wrong?

Question 3:
When renaming batch of files consisted of pics and videos - pictures have date taken and videos have that tag too...but
<img year><img month><img day>_<img hour><img min><img sec>
obviously doesn't work on vids...what would it be for vids?

Question 1 is most important :)

Thank you in advance

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Reply to #1:
I have these same questions. Any help?

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Reply to #1:
Def with you on q2. I've ended up with allot of mistakenly renamed files which, in my opinion, should have returned an error. If the metadata i have chosen to use to rename didn't exist, why not fail? No easy way to group our find these in a list of 10k files. Can't even sort the new filename column which would have brought them all together.

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Reply to #1, question 3 (video Exif dates):
I have thousands of home videos that I want to date-sort with my photos. I'm not at all proficient in Advanced Renamer so someone will no doubt have a better way, but by trial and error here's what I do for video files:
After making a backup copy in case I have to revert back, I drag the video files from windows Explorer into Advanced Renamer and ensure the file list on the right displays at least Filename and New Filename. I then add 3 Methods to an empty 'method list' so I can run one after the other in a single 'session'...
(1) "New Name" Method. When it's added to the Methods list I right-click its name and 'Change description' to "Check if exif date exists". Below that, in "New Name" I enter:
<ExifTool:DateTimeOriginal><ExifTool:CreateDate>
These 'proposed' names will show in the New Filename column on the right. In my case (many digital home videos since 2002 from many devices) some will have one date-name and a few will have two, and a few will be dates of all zeros (no date, I don't know why). I have not yet had a video that hasn't had one of these 3 results.
However if you have a video file that does not have either of these Exif fields then I assume the file list will show errors for those files having no name. I untick these, so only files with one or both Exif date fields are selected, and then I untick this Method so it is no longer used in this session; I only use it to check all my videos have at least one of the Exif dates. I leave the files with zero dates (file names starting with 0000_00_00) selected, so I can later sort my videos by name, play the zero ones and give them dates manually.
(2) "Add" Method, which I right-click and name "Add exif date to start of name"
In the "Add" field I enter "<ExifTool:DateTimeOriginal><ExifTool:CreateDate>^" and "At index" I leave as "1".
The file list on the right now shows the proposed new names, being the Exif date/s, a "^" separator and then the video's original file name.
In the next step I change the date format to be consistent with the default date-names of smartphone videos, which I prefer. For the few videos I have with both Exif dates, the next step only keeps the first one:
(3) "New Name" Method, which I right-click and name "reformat name-date", and for "New Name" I enter: <Substr:1:4><Substr:6:2><Substr:9:2>_<Substr:12:2><Substr:15:2><Substr:18:2>^<Name>
I then check the New Filename list and if OK I click Start Batch to apply the changes. This set of Methods can be saved for re-use, and I have other Methods to bulk modify the name-dates, eg. to add 2 hours to selected ones. I prefer sorting my videos by these name-dates because I've had unexpected results when checking, adjusting and sorting by File Modify or File Create dates.
As I started with, I am not any form of expert and the above is just what works for me. I'm certainly open to better ideas.

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