How do you deal with repeating filenames with panos?

Shivaess · Mar 13, 2021

I got a Mini 2 about a two weeks ago and I am loving it. There is one aspect so far that has really been an issue for me and that is DJI's file naming convention. I'm getting repeated filenames between the 100MEDIA folder and the PANORAMA folder. I have googled and dug through menus but so far the only option I've come up with is to write a script to append the folder name to each file in an attempt to make them unique. This is an obnoxious extra step in my normal workflow: copy photos from card to import folder, import all photos, rearrange in lightroom.

Anyone have a cleaner way of dealing with this? Is there a way to force DJI to use unique filenames on the mini 2?

Shivaess · Mar 13, 2021

Well this is what I've ended up doing. You can comment out the move line to test it and obviously change the path of the import. I am running this in the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) ubuntu bash shell on windows.

clean_dji_import (){

        PHOTO_IMPORT="/mnt/p/Images/Recent Photos/2021/import";

        echo $PHOTO_IMPORT;
        OrigIFS=$IFS;
        IFS=$'\n';

        for file in $(find "${PHOTO_IMPORT}" -type f -name "DJI_*.DNG"); do
                if [[ "$file" == *"PANORAMA"* ]]; then
                        NEWPATH=$(echo $file |grep -o '^.*/') ;
                        NEWNAME=$(echo $file|awk -F "/" '{print $(NF-1)"_"$NF}');
                        echo $file "- ${NEWPATH}${NEWNAME}";
                        mv $file "${NEWPATH}${NEWNAME}";
                fi;
        done;
        IFS=$OrigIFS;
}

tibzee · Mar 15, 2021

More or less I do the same + datetime from exif as suffix so it looks at the end like
20210315-131600_PAN0120-001.DNG

sarimento1 · May 10, 2021

i've struggled with same issue preparing downloads into lightroom.
here's a workflow that i'm testing out, so far it seems to be a little better.

in the lightroom import menu:
designate an overall destination folder based on location, date, or subject.
then designate a subfolder for all the drone panos, such as "DJI Air2S"
for the import from the drone card, "Rename" files.
i'm using something like "Air2S Date Hour Minute Orig_file_number_suffix"/
select "Organize by Original Folder".
this gives me a folder tree that mirrors the card but with individual files with distinct file names.
i'll work with this for a while and report back if it seems successful.

cjay22 · Aug 24, 2021

sarimento1 said:
i've struggled with same issue preparing downloads into lightroom.
here's a workflow that i'm testing out, so far it seems to be a little better.

in the lightroom import menu:
designate an overall destination folder based on location, date, or subject.
then designate a subfolder for all the drone panos, such as "DJI Air2S"
for the import from the drone card, "Rename" files.
i'm using something like "Air2S Date Hour Minute Orig_file_number_suffix"/
select "Organize by Original Folder".
this gives me a folder tree that mirrors the card but with individual files with distinct file names.
i'll work with this for a while and report back if it seems successful.

Any updates? I'm also curious...

sarimento1 · Aug 24, 2021

cjay22 said:
Any updates? I'm also curious...

seems to be working ok.
still not the smoothest, but it does keep stuff organized.
i'm doing mostly wide pano's, 9 shots each.
here's the LR folder structure and some of the files from my trip to Wash state in june...
i'm no LR expert, so very open to any better idea!!