Regular Expressions work by recognizing patterns. While default are regex provided, they're designed to recognize a variety of different file naming patterns for movies and series. They won't be of much use in this unique situation—other than perhaps serving as a guide for files organized in a way similar to series. For example, if your files were organized by [Series] - [Season] - [Episode]. [Episode Title] (where [Season] and [Episode] are integers, but all fields are used for whatever you want them to mean) then one simple regex would recognize the pattern and effectively capture those values. Handling variations in the pattern is a little more challenging, but still possible. That's done by adding another regex that matches the different pattern, and then making sure the two regex are mutually exclusive or if they're not, they're placed in the correct order so the right one is applied (the processing stops when a match is found).
It seems this would require some renaming of your existing files. Applying a series structure PVD will understand suggests...
| Series | Maxon Videos - Quick Tips |
| Season | 1, 2, 3... instead of R11, R11.5, R12... |
| Episode | 1, 2, 3... arbitrary or meaningful, but required |
| Episode Title | Whatever you want it to be |
Thus far, I haven't said anything meant to imply exactly what the file pathname pattern should be—only that these elements must be identifiable in the pattern. The current pathname of...
..\Tutorials\Cinema 4D\Maxon Videos\Quick Tips\C4D R13\01. XYZ.ext
...could be handled by one regex—if it's consistent. By that I mean (counting folders from the end)...
| Series | Folders 3 & 2 (yes, the title would include a '\') |
| Season | One or more digits at the end of folder 1 |
| Episode | One or more digits at the beginning of the filename |
| Episode Title | Filename following any number of digits and '. ' |
There can be any number of different variation handled by different regex. If, for example, folder 2 doesn't always end in a release number (i.e., there is only one release, or it's not applicable), a regex based on it's existence would fail. Another one that ignores folder 1 and doesn't attempt to capture [Season] would be used. Matched episodes would end up in Season 0.
I don't know how you intend to use this information, but Tutorials, Cinema 4D, Maxon Videos and Quick Tips can all be entered in separate existing or custom fields (e.g., [Genre], [Studio], [Medium], [Type]) for grouping, sorting, searching, etc.).
If you don't already have something in mind, consider how you might use the People fields to maintain useful data
related the videos. Your videos probably don't have actors, but they might have different people involved in some capacity. More likely, there are tools or techniques involved in their production you might want to keep track of. Then the database can answer questions like, "What videos did I use this technique in?"
You probably already know you can create or modify an existing skin to suit this data. What's not so obvious is you can modify a language file to change the captions in the program to ones more appropriate for what you're using the program for. For an illustration, see
Personal Anything Database?
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