Stop renaming my files! (on auto phone upload)

BoxyBeat

Video files ( possibly photos too ) get renamed on automatic upload from the phone to Dropbox.

There must be a really good reason for Dropbox to rename files and I'd like to hear it.
It's very annoying because the file names are perfectly fine the way they are and so I can keep track easier for missing files, innterrupted transfers, moved files and so on.

It's a mess with video files especially becuase:

- Phone writes the video file with date time at the start of the video ( that's what it should be )
- Drobox renames the file with date time when the file was closed ( finished recording ).

So, can we please not mess with my video files names ?

Thanks !

video, file, rename, date, time, metadata, offset, unnecessary

Daphne

Hi there @BoxyBeat, This seems very interesting indeed! :thinking:

I tried replicating this on my side and here are my findings.

With videos taken on an Android device, the file is automatically named with the date and time at the start of the video, as you mentioned.

However, when checking the details of the file (from the "..." in the top right when viewing in the gallery), the timestamp recorded there shows the end time of the video.

With automatic camera uploads the app names the file according to the timestamp on the file. This fits with the behaviour you described above.

When I tried this by manually uploading the video, it retained the name of the file rather than uploading according to the timestamp on the video.

Can you let me know if the same differences in file name and timestamp in the video details from your Gallery? Would you mind sharing too which OS version your device is?

Looking forward to your reply!