Remove set characters from YEAR field

Support
1

Hi all, I've been struggling to find a way to remove a set number of characters from the YEAR field on a large number of audio files I have.

It is currently formatted like this:

2024\2024-07-18 (includes 2 of the \ backslash symbol)

I would like to remove the first 6 characters, as in the 2024\ part (which includes the first 4 numbers and 2 of the \ backslash symbol but they don't display on the post) and leave the rest intact. I have had a look through various posts but cannot find a solution that removes the \ part without deleting 10 character and only leaving me with -07-18 in the YEAR field.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance

2

Use an action of the type "Merge duplicate fields" to keep the data in front and behind the \\ or use "Remove duplicate fields" to remove keep only the first part.
YEAR is a field that should only have 4 digits (according to standard).

If you want to keep the longer date, then I suggest that you move it to RELEASETIME.
For that try 2 actions:

  1. "Merge duplicate fields" for YEAR with separator ==
  2. Guess value
    Source string: %year%
    Guessing pattern: %year%==%releasetime%
3

Thanks for the quick reply. I would prefer to keep the full year-month-day format in the YEAR field as my Plex library pulls that information and it helps with sorting the music. I don't know if Plex can pull it from anywhere else in the metadata and I have nearly all my music collection in the format year-month-day.

Is there a way to do that at all?

4

Of course you can do more or less anything you want. I only wanted to point out that any longer number than 4 digit is not standard compliant.

If you want to remove the first part, modify the 2nd action to
Guess value
Source string: %year%
Guessing pattern: %dummy%==%year%

5

I have just tried the solution you offered but it didn't change anything in the YEAR field. Am I missing something? Sorry, I'm a little new to this

6

Have you merged the 2 year fields (indicated by \\) to a single field with == as a substitute for \\?

7

If merging does not really work, let us try this:
Convert>Tag-Tag for YEAR
Format string: $meta(year,1)
Does the preview show the long date?
If so - click OK.

8

Thank you so much, the last suggestion did the trick! Many thanks, your help is most appreciated