Most DVD and MP3 CD players play the songs in alphabetical order. If you've ripped all the songs from your CD in the same operation, the file creation date/time order matches the order of the songs on the CD. This option adds numbers 01, 02 ... to the beginning of the filenames so that alphabetical order is the same as the creation date. As a result of this, most DVD and CD players that support MP3 files will play songs from a musical CD in the correct order even if playlist are not supported.
| Old filename | New filename |
|---|---|
| First song.mp3 | 02- First song.mp3 |
| Last song.mp3 | 04- Last song.mp3 |
| Overture.mp3 | 01- Overture.mp3 |
| Second song.mp3 | 03- Second song.mp3 |
After the numbers are added to the songs, they are sorted and played in the same order as on the CD (assuming that they were ripped from the CD in the correct order).
Click on the change button to change the text between the single quotes.
If this is empty ('') then no characters are erased from the filename. If the erase pattern is not found in the filename, no changes are made to the filename.
Many mp3 files have the artist information first with a '- ' after the artist name. Since the artist is the same for most of the songs on the CD, it is sometimes hard to find songs on MP3 players with small displays because it takes a while to scroll past the artist name. This option allows you to remove the artist name.
If you want to add songs from a new CD into an existing folder with numbered files, start the new CD with a number greater than the last file in the folder.
Auto will usually choose the correct number of digits so that the songs sort properly alphabetically. This means one digit for up to 9 songs, two digits for 10 through 99 songs and 3 digits for 100 through 999 songs. The digits determine the 0 padding on the left that is necessary for the songs to sort correctly alphabetically. If the songs were numbered 1, 2, .. 19, 21, 21, then songs numbered 11 through 19 would come before 2 alphabetically.
Adding the same pattern that was deleted '- ', allows you to add new files to the folder later and renumber the entire folder. This should work if the later files were ripped in order.
This determines which files are renamed. The default, *.mp3, causes all files with an mp3 extension in the current folder to be renamed. Other options are t*.mp3 which causes all mp3 files starting with t to be renumbered.