Hacking Mass-rename/folder creation for Nintendon't

[Cyber Akuma]

Ok, so I finally got all my GC disk images scrubbed and named properly.... then I was reading the FAQ on how to setup Nintendon't on my wii:

https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/gamecube/nintendont

First of all, it mentioned that each game needs to be in it's own folder, with the iso having the generic name of "game.iso" in said folder... d'oh.

Well, can anyone recommend me an easy way to do this with a batch of files so I don't have to manually create folders one-by-one, then move the iso files in there, then rename them.... I am sure I can script a batch file or something similar in Windows to do it, but I am not sure how.

And also... it mentions that the GameID needs to also be in the folder name... Double D'oh! My filenames don't have the GameID in them. First of all... is this even needed for Nintedon't? They mentioned that not all loaders need it, any idea which ones do and if Nintendon't is one of them? And second, if it is needed.... is there any way to have a batch-rename program that JUST adds the GameID to the end of the filename and does not rename the entire game? It took me a while to get all the files scrubbed with their proper names, and a lot of tools want to rename them something entirely different depending on the game, I only want to add the GameID to the end of the existing filenames.

 

[The_Meistro]

Sorry man Lets say you have an Animal Crossing ISO make a folder called games on the root of ur SD/USB and Make a folder in games called Animal Crossing. Move your ISO into that folder. (make sure its renamed to game.iso)
You have to do that man. I did it and have 20 GC games on My PC all ready to go. In the folders and everything lol. Sry man theres no workaround i know it sucks

 

[Cyber Akuma]

I am not asking for a work-around, I am asking for tools to perform the mass-renaming without having to manually do it one by one.

 

[The_Meistro]

I am not asking for a work-around, I am asking for tools to perform the mass-renaming without having to manually do it one by one.

Not unless you wanna go make one WHICH WOULD BE AWESOME! No theres no such tool

 

[GreyWolf]

I have a utility I've been working on that does that if you'd like to test it. Send me a PM if you're interested and I will send it to you. It is only for Windows and you'll need the .NET Framework 4.5 installed.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

If you already have all the iso files in separate folders, no need to have the game id btw since this is read from the iso file directly,
you can go to your Gc games folder and use windows find function to search for *.iso files. You should get all isos in the search. Press ctrl+a then f2 and type "game" then press enter. All your isos should be named game.iso. rename the parent folder "games" and copy it to sd or usb root... Done

P.S> newer versions of windows might add "()" to your file name
in that case you can use "Bulk Rename Utility" to mass rename stuff I found it very handy when processing the custom game loader themes

 

[Cyber Akuma]

So, I wasn't able to post this yesterday, but I figured it out. There is a utility called Wiimms ISO Tool that can deal with messing with Wii and GC ISO images. I was able to use it to add GameID names, create folders, and move the ISOs to the folders renamed as game.iso with a single command..... once I figured the %$^&@# thing out.

The command I used was: wit COPY *.iso "games\%G [%I]\game.iso"

Which basically means "Create a folder named "games", then inside that create a folder for each iso with it's filename(minus the iso extension at the end), a space, then the GameID in brackets, then copy that iso into that folder while renaming it "game.iso""... I could have just used MOVE instead of COPY but I wanted to have the source files in case something went wrong to try again.

I did have to go in manually and fix up the multidisk games as it would put each disk in it's own folder this way, but there was only a small handful of those, other than that it did the job.... at least, from what I can see of my directory structure it did the job, haven't gotten my new harddrive for these so I can test Nintendon't yet.

I have a utility I've been working on that does that if you'd like to test it. Send me a PM if you're interested and I will send it to you. It is only for Windows and you'll need the .NET Framework 4.5 installed.

Well, I was already able to it with the Wiimms ISO Tool but I can still test out your utility too if you want, especially if it can handle multidisk games properly. Wiimms is also a bit annoying to use as it's command-line only and some of the ways to invoke the commands are a little confusing.

If you already have all the iso files in separate folders, no need to have the game id btw since this is read from the iso file directly

I didn't, that was part of the problem. I had a bunch of ISO files that were basically just the name of the game, with no GameID, all in the same single folder.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

I didn't, that was part of the problem. I had a bunch of ISO files that were basically just the name of the game, with no GameID, all in the same single folder.

then I would use a text capture tools such as "snagit" to capture all iso file names (when they are displayed in list view) and paste the content in a batch file using "md" command to create all folder names:
for instance the file names are animal crossing, Sonic Heroes, Wind Waker (.iso hidden or not) the captured text file will have all that so you need to make the batch look like this

md "animal crossing"
md "Sonic Heroes"
md "Wind Waker"

you can also add a move command after each entry like:
move "animal crossing.iso" "animal crossing"
after all is done you can rename all the iso files

 

[Cyber Akuma]

No need to use something like snagit, you can just use the directory command and add something like "> filelist.txt" to write the output to a file, there were far too many to display in a single screen anyway for the snagit method.

And on top of that, I needed to add the GameID to each folder, AND then move the ISO files into each of their own folders.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

I thought snagit will be more user friendly than old dos commands but yeah that would be even better for a long list.
on another note Wii Backup manager can auto-create folders using the game name and ID from gametdb title.txt it has a handy rename function there.

 

[zektor]

So, I wasn't able to post this yesterday, but I figured it out. There is a utility called Wiimms ISO Tool that can deal with messing with Wii and GC ISO images. I was able to use it to add GameID names, create folders, and move the ISOs to the folders renamed as game.iso with a single command..... once I figured the %$^&@# thing out.

The command I used was: wit COPY *.iso "games\%G [%I]\game.iso"

Which basically means "Create a folder named "games", then inside that create a folder for each iso with it's filename(minus the iso extension at the end), a space, then the GameID in brackets, then copy that iso into that folder while renaming it "game.iso""... I could have just used MOVE instead of COPY but I wanted to have the source files in case something went wrong to try again.

I did have to go in manually and fix up the multidisk games as it would put each disk in it's own folder this way, but there was only a small handful of those, other than that it did the job.... at least, from what I can see of my directory structure it did the job, haven't gotten my new harddrive for these so I can test Nintendon't yet.



Well, I was already able to it with the Wiimms ISO Tool but I can still test out your utility too if you want, especially if it can handle multidisk games properly. Wiimms is also a bit annoying to use as it's command-line only and some of the ways to invoke the commands are a little confusing.



I didn't, that was part of the problem. I had a bunch of ISO files that were basically just the name of the game, with no GameID, all in the same single folder.

This is the most useful post I have found online regarding proper renaming for Nintendont (and folder creation). Not much information at all anywhere else. I have tested your method and it works like a charm. Thanks for sharing this information as it was EXTREMELY helpful!

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Glad to hear it helped others

 

[rhester72]

Kinda curious (sorry to dredge up the OPs words, but...), when you say you scrubbed them "properly"...what does that mean? AFAIK, there's never been a _definitive_ list of GC games that use audio streaming and thus must remain in untouched ISO form. (There are several lists - none fully agree with each other, and none are complete.)

I'd love to gain back many dozens of gigs of storage on my collection...if only I knew what was truly safe to scrub. (If you don't care about streaming audio, that's another matter entirely. I'm a perfectionist.)

Rodney

 

[GreyWolf]

Kinda curious (sorry to dredge up the OPs words, but...), when you say you scrubbed them "properly"...what does that mean? AFAIK, there's never been a _definitive_ list of GC games that use audio streaming and thus must remain in untouched ISO form. (There are several lists - none fully agree with each other, and none are complete.)

I'd love to gain back many dozens of gigs of storage on my collection...if only I knew what was truly safe to scrub. (If you don't care about streaming audio, that's another matter entirely. I'm a perfectionist.)

Rodney

If you open the ISO with a hex editor and the 8th byte is 01 then it's flagged as using audio streaming. Some titles have it set but don't have any streaming files on the disc so as you said the best bet is to just leave the disc alone. They're tiny comparatively nowadays anyway.

 

[rhester72]

LOL, I just looked into this - for the NTSC-U GC set, 452 of 578 ISOs have the audio streaming flag set.

Obviously, that's a tad high. <G>

Rodney

 

[GreyWolf]

LOL, I just looked into this - for the NTSC-U GC set, 452 of 578 ISOs have the audio streaming flag set.

Obviously, that's a tad high. <G>

Rodney

Yeah it's more reliable (but slower) to scan the FST for .adp files.

 

[zektor]

I wanted to add something pretty important to this that I discovered while using WIT. It automatically scrubs isos by default, so if you want to have 1:1 copies you need to add the --psel RAW switch. 1:1 copies are important to me (and to Nintendont compatibility) so I am glad I caught this before removing my source files. I know the original poster wanted them scrubbed, but just figured I'd add this for people that do not want to scrub them.

 

[Kazuma77]

The scrubbing is automatic on the "copy" command, but not the "move" command (which is what you're more likely to want to use after extracting a complete set), and "-raw" exists as a shortcut. So, the mentioned "move" alternative is fine as-is. However, the app threw me some sort of error and halted. Since the ID is optional, I was able to create a workaround using Total Commander and a simple batch file I call "separate.bat" that's only two lines.

@echo off
for %%f in (*.*) do md "%%~nf" && move "%%f" "%%~nf"

You could add an "if not exist" statement to avoid having it try to create folders that already exist, but it works fine as is. None of that capture the directory listing then column edit in "md" in Notepad++ crap required (don't get me wrong, column edit is a good trick for turning 3DS ticket lists into batch downloaders, or for making an alphabetic sorter, but for batch processing files the "for" command and "~" parameters are unbeatable).

So, what I did was, select "*(disc 1)*.*" and moved them to a folder named "Disc1". Same thing for "*(disc 2)*.*" and placed what was left in a "SingleDisc" folder. I then ran my batch file in all 3 folders (in hind sight, should have run the batch file then moved by disc number).

Now, I needed the multi-disc games to go a single folder, so next I did a multi-rename of the folders in "Disc1" and "Disc2" -- Ctrl-A, Ctrl-M (mine have the "Disc" designation at the end so I was able to use "[N1--10]" in the name field instead of doing a search and replace, YMMV).

So, once the folders are named right, simply go into "Disc2" and enter branch view, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-M, "disc2" in the name field and click "Start" then "Close" and go up a folder. Repeat with the "Disc1" and "SingleDisc" folders but using "game" for the name. Now, move the folders in "Disc2" to "Disc1". If all went well, the folder count should remain the same, and there should be a "disc2.iso" and "game.iso" file in each folder. Now just move the contents of "Disc1" and "SingleDisc" to your "games" folder and they should be good to go.

The IDs might have been nice, but I'm going to look at this in a file manager about as much as I am my MAME set. So, as long as it works. Besides, the loaders are still going to show the ID anyway. Well, hopefully someone will find this useful. Granted it relies heavily on TC, but Krusader (with KRename) has similar functionality if you're on Linux/Mac.

 

[zektor]

The scrubbing is automatic on the "copy" command, but not the "move" command (which is what you're more likely to want to use after extracting a complete set), and "-raw" exists as a shortcut. So, the mentioned "move" alternative is fine as-is. However, the app threw me some sort of error and halted. Since the ID is optional, I was able to create a workaround using Total Commander and a simple batch file I call "separate.bat" that's only two lines.

Knowing the "error" that halted the app would have helped us determine what happened. Seems like you went to a lot of trouble to get this going. WIT took care of it all aside from a few multidisc games and that was a few minutes of fixing time. The ID's are kind of important too...if you are to download covers and such. They are not just to look at

Also, the scrubbing does happen on the copy command, that is correct. But with the switch it wont. I personally like to copy as opposed to move when I am dealing with 800GB of files though, and that switch was the way to do it without scrubbing them.

 

[elshiftos]

I've found Advanced Renamer to be perfect for the task of renaming ISOs and moving them into folders. Simply set the options marked in the screenshot and you should be good to go!

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