Hey guys, I wasn't sure if this was the best place to post this, but it seemed like a decent fit.  
 
I've really been enjoying all the amazing work everyone has put into creating custom DLC for Rocksmith 2014, and I decided to give back in my own little way.  It's kind of OCD, but some of you might find it helpful.
 
I wrote a little program that will go through your DLC folder and rename all the PC DLC songs to match the embedded metadata, so it's easier to see what songs you actually have by keeping them consistently named.  I also use it just to help identify songs that have incorrect metadata so I can manually fix them using the Custom Song Creator Toolkit.
 
Here's my github page:  https://github.com/Darrken/RockSmithDLCRenamer
 
Make sure you read the ReadMe on that page!
 
The source code is all there, and the program itself is in the "exe" folder for those that don't want to compile it on your own.   :)  I'm actually using methods from the Custom Song Creator Toolkit to get the metadata, so you developers will see some familiar DLLs in the Bin folder.
 
I hope some of you find this useful.

 

Update: Dropbox link to compiled program

nice idea, how about giving it more flexibility :  I prefer names of the following structure

Buckethead - Gory-Head-Stump_v1_p.psarc or 

Buckethead - Gory_Head_Stump_v1_p.psarc or 

Buckethead - Gory Head Stump_v1_p.psarc

 

giving the user the possibility to choose word separating characters.

That's a good idea.  I'll mess around with it and see if I can make it an easy option.

Wow, this tool is a great idea! But I feel like it is kind of hidden here in this forum... maybe you should rather post it in the Toolkit Forum since it is directly connected to the use of the Toolkit.

 

Now all the official DLC are sorted correctly as well, nice :-)

 

One thing is that you could use the "version" information from inside the psarc to add it to the file name (and make that v1_0 if no version entry exists, e.g. for official songs or some CDLC)

 

Maybe the creator of the DDC can give you a hint on how to find out whether mulitple levels of difficulty exist in the DLC :-)

 

And I've spotted one problem:

Old Filename: rs1compatibilitydlc_p.psarc
New Filename: T-Rex_20th-Century-Boy_p.psarc
Artist: T.-Rex
Song: 20th-Century-Boy

This file should definitely be ignored by your program!

Thanks for your input, guys!  I've updated the program with an options file you can edit to further customize your results.  I also now exclude the rs1compatibility files.

 

I suggest copying a bunch of files to a temp folder for testing first, to make sure it works to your liking before running against your full DLC folder!

Thanks for the updates!

Now the request by @@TomSawyer2112 has become possible :-)

 

Here is another "bug":

In my collection, some files end on "_V3_p.psarc".

While the version number with a small "v" is detected correctly, the large "V" is not - the example becomes renamed to "_v1_p.psarc".

 

Another idea: A version "_v1-1" should become "_v1_1", but becomes "_v1" instead

 

In general, to unify the results even more, all "_v1", "_v2", etc. could be renamed to "_v1_0", "_v2_0", etc.

Good catch, Azrael.  Those issues should be fixed now.  :)  

 

I'll add an additional option to allow for the v1_0 format when I get some time later.

That was fast, thanks! But maybe something got mixed up there?

"_V3_DD_p.psarc" is now renamed to "_v_V3_DD_p.psarc"

Well crap.  It's fixed now.  :ph34r:

Man I have been waiting for something like this, I will try it tonight and see how it works with my customs. If this works like how it says it does you just saved me hours of time doing this manually. Something I have been avoiding for a while. 

More issues I found

 

German Umlaute (Ä,Ö,Ü...) are deleted in the renaming process

 

When you try different settings after another, the version information gets lost:

1. run

Artist-Song-Separator: "_"
Space-Character: "-"

2. run

Artist-Song-Separator: " - "
Space-Character: " "

3. run

Artist-Song-Separator: "_"
Space-Character: "-"

... now all files show version 1! (The problem seems to be the artist-song-separator)

Hmm, I'm starting to wonder if I should just drop the filename parsing and strictly use the metadata.  A lot of versions would turn into "v1" because so many DLC authors don't update their versions in the song creator, but parsing is so error-prone!

 

I'll look into those issues.  Once again, thank you Azrael for your time and effort helping me improve this thing.

Ok, I've got that version issue fixed (hopefully for reals this time).  Not sure what to do about other characters, as I'm using the Custom Song Creator functions to "clean" the artist and song name, and it seems to be removing those.  

 

Do you have an example of a song that uses one in the name I can grab and play with?

Sure: For example "Die Ärzte"!

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/junge-r7255

 

Writing the version into the psarc with the Toolkit is a relatively new feature. We can only hope that most CDLC that are released now do make use of that. As time goes by, the number of CLDC that support it will increase.

 

I've checked once more: The only reason for the version not to show up in the psarc is if you leave that field blank in the Toolkit. It doesn't even accept wrong characters anymore, only numbers and the dot.

Of course after an update the information will be wrong if you update only the file name, instead of the number in the Toolkit... but I think the system is as fool-proof as it can get^^

 

Edit:

Renaming multple times in a row with different settings seems stable now - havn't been able to brake it :-P

And it even worked with an ending "_DD_V1_p.psarc"

 

... we are definitely getting there! And thanks for "zero_pad"

I checked and it is indeed the Song Creator "GetValidName" function removing the umlauts (among other characters like the ampersand).  If you open that song in the Song Creator and save, it removes it there too, though it keeps it in the metadata.  I noticed on other platforms he'd left that character out of the filenames, probably because they are not as forgiving as the PC version.

 

I've done some experimenting with special characters in filenames and Rocksmith won't even recognize the song with certain characters present (like the ampersand).  Not all, of course, but enough to make me prefer to err on the side of caution and leave them out.

 

Maybe I could create a mapping for common characters and replace them, like "and" for &, and A for Ä. I imagine that could potentially get pretty large depending on how ambitious I want to be. :)

Great tool, saves me a lot of time finding out and renaming several hundreds of old cDLC,

I archived in case of somebody asks for them, or in case they were better then later releases. :o

 

I give you some feedback (log file) to nourish your ambition B)

Some minor problems, because these few files can be renamed manually using the log info.

 

I used

Artist-Song-Separator: " - "

Space-Character: " "

Use-Metadata-Version: True

Use-Metadata-DD: True

Zero-Pad-Version: false

 

- Short file names are not renamed

 

Old Filename: A - B - v-v1_p.psarc

New Filename: A - B - v-v1_p.psarc

Artist: The Agonist

Song: Business Suits and Combat Boots

Old Filename: Arc - Do - v1_p.psarc

New Filename: Arc - Do - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Arctic Monkeys

Song: Do I Wanna Know

 

Old Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

New Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Dream Theater

Song: Beneath the Surface

 

Old Filename: Rock - WDC - v1_p (3).psarc

New Filename: Rock - WDC - v1_p (2).psarc

Artist: Funeral For A Friend

Song: Waterfront Danceclub

 

Special Characters are lost (french, croatian ...)

Old Filename: Téléphone_ça_c'est_vraiment toi_v1_p.psarc

New Filename: Tlphone - Ca Cest Vraiment Toi - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Téléphone

Song: Ca (C'est Vraiment Toi)

 

Maybe you have to set a "code page", ie 850

 

The "The"

I normally remove the "The" in The Beatles to rename Beatles, The

This way all names are sorted together, whether "The" is used or not.

Bet you can't solve this :P

The Toolkit will soon manage the "The" issue in its name fields

 

Program crash with no log info

on a corrupted .psarc file, which I could only identify by a "Dir" dos command

to see which file followed the last renamed file in the log info.

 

Hey, fellows, don't forget to "THANKS" the newbie Darrken, wish we get more of newbie contributors,

and little less leechers. :ph34r:

I'm betting that your songs didn't get renamed using the metadata because you used "True" instead of "true", which I didn't think to check the case on.  Shame on me.  :)  I'll fix that so it doesn't care about case in the options file.  Change that to "true" for now and I bet that fixes most of those cases.

 

I'm trying to decide what to do with characters outside A-Z, because I'm not sure which ones will cause Rocksmith to ignore the song.  Right now I'm using the same rules the Song Creator is using to clean the filenames, but I suppose it would be easy enough to add another option that keeps all characters.

 

I could play around with moving/removing "The" from the start of artist/song names, but I prefer to fix those by editing the song itself in the toolkit so they also show up properly in the game.  That's partly why I originally wrote it; so I could identify songs that had errant metadata and fix them so they sort and display consistently in the game.  I don't want my renamer to get into editing actual metadata because that opens up a whole new can of worms.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

We was going to add this to the official CF app, are you interested in joining our dev team?

If so PM me, might not see your response.

Old Filename: A - B - v-v1_p.psarc

New Filename: A - B - v-v1_p.psarc

Artist: The Agonist

Song: Business Suits and Combat Boots

Old Filename: Arc - Do - v1_p.psarc

New Filename: Arc - Do - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Arctic Monkeys

Song: Do I Wanna Know

 

For the new file name, the attributes "Artist Sort" and "Song Sort" are used.

The problem might be that in those cases the "sort" attributes are indeed the shortened names (I've seen that in my collection, too). So the problem is a bad user input in the Toolkit, and not in this program.

The issue with the "The" is, after all, just another case of bad user input in the Toolkit.

 

@@Darrken

I think you should edit your log to the following style:

Old Filename:
New Filename:
Artist:
Artist Sort:
Song:
Song Sort:
Meta Version:
Meta DD:
Meta Tabber:
---- (empty line)

Then we could better see that a song is not named to what is written in "artist" and "song", but instead that "artist sort" and "song sort" are used. And we also get some more valuable information on the go :-)

 

 

@@Unleashed2k

If you plan to use features like this (based on the metadata and not only the online database) in the official app, then it might be worth it posting an announcement about the correct use of the toolkit :-)

It seems like some people still don't use the version field, do not include their own name and/or use the sort fields in the wrong way. Especially the charter name field is something lots of people just don't now about, I think...

I tried this out last night and it seems to be working great but one thing I noticed is that It will not scan any folders which may be in the DLC folder. It will scan all the cdlc in the dlc folder but will not check any sub folders inside that folder. Its not a huge deal but I thought I would point that out. Another thing is I copied over my dlc folder to another folder on my drive and tried that folder first and the program was able to finish the conversions but when I moved the program to my actual game dlc folder it works great but then crashes after almost completing it. It has done this twice on me so far. If you need a log or something to see why its crashing let me know and I will upload it (if one is even created) when I get home tonight. 

but then crashes after almost completing it. It has done this twice on me so far. If you need a log or something to see why its crashing 

 

Maybe you got a corrupted psarc like I do, the log won't help because it crashed before logging, so only the last renamed action is in the log file. Check by "dir" dos command which file comes next to last log file, and remove it from the folder

I'm betting that your songs didn't get renamed using the metadata because you used "True" instead of "true", 

 

Lost your bet :P . true give same result, it displays the metadata in the log, but doesn't use it.

ex.

Old Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

New Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Dream Theater

Song: Beneath the Surface

 

I'm betting that your songs didn't get renamed using the metadata because you used "True" instead of "true", 

 

Lost your bet :P . true give same result, it displays the metadata in the log, but doesn't use it.

ex.

Old Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

New Filename: D - beneatthe - v1_p.psarc

Artist: Dream Theater

Song: Beneath the Surface

 

 

Then I have a new bet:

"D" is the entry in the metadata "Artist Sort"

"beneatthe" is the entry in the metadata "Song Sort"

 

Import the song into the Toolkit and look at the fields - and change them to what you like while you're there ;-)

 

Then I have a new bet:

"D" is the entry in the metadata "Artist Sort"

"beneatthe" is the entry in the metadata "Song Sort"

 

Import the song into the Toolkit and look at the fields - and change them to what you like while you're there ;-)

 

 Bet won, but why use the metadata "Sort" instead of the real name

 

 Bet won, but why use the metadata "Sort" instead of the real name

 

First reason: Because this is also the way the Toolkit generates the filename in the first place.

Second reason: The "Sort" name makes it possible to leave out the "The" in "The Offspring", so that the sorted entry both ingame and in your files is at "Offspring"

 

In your examples you should inform the charters that they are using the Toolkit wrong :-)

Would it be possible to make this program also scan the folders inside the dlc folder? For example I have over 1000 customs in my dlc folder and a lot have been sorted into their own subfolder so that I can keep track of them by artists. Right now (at least after using it last night) the program was able to edit all my customs in the Main dlc folder but ignored all the subfolders. If this program could do that I would be very grateful. I know its also asking for a lot but a way to rename and sort into a folder would be awesome, its not a problem if it can't as sorting them manually isn't that big a deal now with this program being able to rename the files with the Artists names in there but man would it be great. I know I am lazy but automation is the best invention ever lol.