One of the main features in Name Mangler 3 is multi-step renaming. Instead of being limited to just one renaming step, you can add many steps to one renaming task. In prior versions of Name Mangler, you’d need to use Advanced mode, or run multiple repeated single tasks, to handle multi-step renaming tasks. This is a great change for everyone, and has greatly reduced the need to use Advanced mode.
But Name Mangler 3’s Advanced mode still has a few tricks that you can’t do using the “normal” renaming options. One of the most powerful of these hidden gems is the “sequence identifier” parameter for the sequence action. The help file has this to say about the sequence identifier:
The sequence identifier, if included, indicates that sequence indexes are only inferred from the number of files that share the same identifier, as opposed to the overall number of files to be renamed.
Clear as mud, right? That’s entirely my fault, and I’ll try to come up with better wording in a future update. But for now, here’s a hopefully-clearer description:
The sequence identifier, if included, is used to group files together (by a common criteria) for sequencing. All files that share a sequence identifier will be treated as part of the same sequence.
Hopefully that’s a bit clearer…and here’s a real-world example of how you can put sequence identifiers to use to simplify your renaming tasks.