The Big Mean Folder Machine provides you a full (!) preview of the folder hierarchies that it will create before doing anything and by default your files are copied rather than moved to their new locations, leaving you with a perfect copy should things not work out as expected. It can split files into folder hierarchies or merge them into a single folder. With a familiar assistant-styled interface, The Big Mean Folder Machine is an essential tool for anyone who works with large file collections, including digital photographers, content creation, post-production, system administrators, and other creative professionals.
Splitting file collections into folder hierarchies
This is one of the most commonly used features of the program.
The basic steps are simple and you are guided through them by the program's assistant-style user interface.
- Select the folder(s) that contain(s) the files you want re-organize
- Select one splitting criteria per folder hierarchy level from the popup list
- Select a scheme to resolve file name conflicts (e.g. when two files in the same folder would have the same name, they need to be differentiated appending a number or letter to the end of their name).
- Select a destination folder
Splitting file collections in batches
This is useful for splitting large file collections into easy-to-manage 'chunks'. The program can split files from one or more folders into 'batches' of a given number of files or a given size on the disk, e.g. batches of 100 files or 100MB, ...
The basic steps are simple and the program's interface provides you with detailed information on each step:
- Select the folder(s) that contain(s) the files you want to split into batches
- Select the size of each batch
- Select the naming scheme for the batch folders (e.g. '0-99', '100-199', etc.
- Select a destination folder
Merging several file collections in a single folder
Sometimes, rather than needing to create a new file organization, you need to 'un-wind' an existing one. In this case, your files are spread over several source folders and/or subfolders and you wish to place them all into one 'big' folder.
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The main challenge in doing this, aside from the tedious manual dragging and dropping of files, arises from the possibility of 'file name conflicts', i.e. several files may share the same name and the Finder will refuse to let you move the files until you given them a unique name.
The basic steps involved in merging two or more folders or folder hierarchies are:
- Select the folder(s) that contain(s) the files you want to merge
- Select a file conflict resolution scheme
- Select a destination folder
The Big Mean Folder Machine will take care of the rest.
Confused by the word 'folder hierarchy'?
A folder hierarchy is simply a series of folders placed one inside the other. Say you are organizing your photos by the year they were shot and the name of the event that you took them at. You might have a folder for '2007' and inside this folder, you might have a folder called 'John's Wedding'. Together '2007' and 'John's Wedding' are a two-level folder hierarchy.
The Big Mean Folder Machine' makes it easy to (re-)organize huge file collections.
The assistant-style interface walks you through the decision process and allows you to create multi-level folder hierarchies and populate them with your digital photos, music, movies or document files. Conversely it also allows to merge the files from multiple folder hierarchies into a single folder. It can also split large file collections into batches of a pre-determined size, for instance for backing them up to CD/DVD or tape.
The Big Mean Folder Machine's database-backed 64-bit processing engine takes care of all the complications that make doing this manually a nightmare. It reads shooting date information from digital photo files (JPEG/Exif and all RAW camera formats supported by Mac OS X), track information from MP3/AAC music files, file creation/ modification dates and file sizes. It takes care of file name conflicts and eliminates manual errors.
Before doing anything at all, it allows you to preview the results to make sure that everything is just perfect. By default, 'The Big Mean Folder Machine' always makes copies of your original files rather than moving them, but you can of course also tell it to move existing files to save space and time.
The Big Mean Folder Machine is an essential tool for anyone working with large file collections, including digital photographers, music enthusiasts, content creation, post-production or other creative professionals, system administrators, ...
Creating Multi-Level Folder Hierarchies
- new hierarchy can be up to 3 levels deep.
- digital photo shooting dates can be read in a variety of formats
- splitting criteria include file name, file type, creation date, modification date, etc.
- custom criteria creation, includes template based date formats, file name text extraction.
- depth of hierarchy can be controlled by specifying the maximum number of files or the maximum size per folder; deeper levels will be created once the limit has been reached.act
- new folders can be uppercase, lowercase or sentence case.
Typical Tasks
- split photo collection by Year/ Month/ Day.
- split music collection by Artist / Album / Song
- split music collections by Year/ Artist
Creating Batch Folders
- splitting criteria include: number of files per batch folder, total size of batch folder in Kb, Mb, Gb
- preserve or 'flatten' the original folder hierarchy
- specify physical or logical file sizes
- sort files into batch folders alphabetically, by size, by creation date, by modification date, by digital photo shooting date, etc.
Typical Tasks
- backing up your photo collection to 4GB DVDs, beginning with the oldest photos (shooting date) and working your way to the most recent ones.
- backing up your music files to MP3 CDs sorted by artist and then by album.
Merging Multiple Folders
- multiple source folders and folder hierarchies.
- file name conflict resolution.
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Typical Tasks
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- merging all songs from an artist that are currently spread throughout a larger hierarchy into a single folder
Trial Download
Make up your own mind and download the free trial today:
Download Big Mean Folder Machine 2.42 for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 10.7 or later. macOS11 Big Sur compatible.
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