Pic Sorting Script

Overview

This project started as a personal media-library tool and now contains two substantial workflows:

1. Photo/video sorting and renaming based on metadata, filesystem dates, and folder/date hints.
2. Home-video deduplication, timestamp extraction, review reporting, and lossless remux planning.

It is still a pragmatic working tool rather than a polished end-user application. The code is useful, but it assumes the user is comfortable editing Python run blocks, reviewing generated Excel workbooks, and making backups before applying changes.

Main components

main.py

PySimpleGUI desktop front-end for the original sorting workflow in funcs.py.

funcs.py

Core photo/video sorting, metadata handling, copy/move logic, and assorted file-management helpers.

video_dedupe.py

The main dedupe pipeline. It can:

• compare two folders of videos
• run anchor/audio/timeline matching
• scan camcorder on-screen timestamps
• infer coverage/unique-content relationships
• build review workbooks in reports/
• maintain a unified cache in resources/cache/video_cache.json

video_rename_remux.py

Workbook-driven execution runner for:

• renaming files based on Rename_Queue / Rename_Done
• losslessly remuxing segments from Remux_Plan and optionally Remux_Short
• migrating cache keys when files are renamed

Typical dedupe workflow

1. Run video_dedupe.py to refresh scans and rebuild reports/dedupe_consolidated.xlsx.
2. Review the workbook:
   • rename decisions in Rename_Queue
   • remux decisions in Remux_Plan
   • optional short segments in Remux_Short
3. Run video_rename_remux.py in dry-run mode first.
4. Run video_rename_remux.py with apply=True once satisfied.

Requirements

Python packages are listed in requirements.txt.

External tools used by the project:

• ffmpeg
• ffprobe
• ExifTool

This repo keeps resources/exiftool.exe and resources/exiftool in-tree so the original sorting workflow still works in environments where ExifTool is not already installed.

PySimpleGUI note

The repository includes:

• Other/PySimpleGUI-4.60.5-main/PySimpleGUI-4.60.5-py3-none-any.whl

This is intentional. Older free PySimpleGUI versions became difficult to obtain reliably, and this project still depends on that package for the original GUI workflow.

Generated files

These are runtime artifacts and should not normally be committed:

• reports/
• resources/cache/
• resources/timestamp_debug/
• local workflow test outputs under Other/

The root .gitignore excludes them.

Utility scripts in Other/

Other/ contains small standalone helpers that were useful during development and are kept as generic utilities:

• Other/folder_renaming.py
• Other/list_files_in_folder.py

They are not part of the core dedupe pipeline.

Status / caveats

• The project is powerful but not simplified.
• The dedupe workflow is designed around spreadsheet review.
• Some run blocks still assume the user will edit local paths before running.
• Backups are strongly recommended before any rename/move/remux operation.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See COPYING.