Batch treatment of files - advanced renaming and converting

Question

Hi! I got a couple of folders with thousands of short soundfiles sampled from old drum machines. Unfortunately, these sounds are organized by what instrument they are from, while I would find it much more useful to have them organized by type of sound (such as kick drum, snare drum, hihat, cymbals, electronic bleeps etc). Now, I'm prepared to put down the work of manually listening through each and every one of them and put them into new files, that's no problem even though it will probably take a couple of hours. The problem is that many of these files have the same name, generic names such as kick1.wav and similar. I therefore want to batch rename them so that the name of the folder (which is the drum machine they're from) is tagged onto each of the actual filenames, before I start to move them around. I hope you understand what I mean.
Another problem is that some of my files are in 32 bit wav format, and Logic Pro does not support that except in its sampler. I would want to convert them all to 16 bit format. Any suggestions? (Note, this is not as important as the renaming though)
Thanks!

Answer 1

...but I can't see how to copy the name of the folder and add it to the name of the files inside of it.
torb,
This should be relatively easy to do. Open Automator and set up a workflow using these actions:
1) *Get Folder Contents* -- from Automator's Finder library. Use this action when a batch change is in order. Unless you'll be working on drum machine folders which themselves contain subfolders containing files, you can leave "Repeat for each subfolder found" unchecked. Also leave the option to show the action when run unchecked.
2) *Rename Finder Items* -- also from the Finder library. When you attempt to add this action to your workflow you should see a warning suggesting that you include a Copy Finder Items action. This is an important safety precaution in case things go awry, which can happen. Although it's often possible to fix a botched rename job by running a second modified workflow, it can be tricky; and there's nothing so simple as an "Undo" command available once an Automator workflow has run. Hence the importance of a backup plan.
Another strategy would be to create backup copies of the individual drum machine folders well beforehand and work only on the copies of the originals. If you opt for this strategy you can skip adding the Copy Finder Items action to the workflow.
When the Rename Finder Items action is added, you may find that "Add Date or Time" appears as the default parameter. Click on the drop-down menu and change the default to "Add Text." Select "after name" or "before name" depending on whether you want either the file name or the drum machine folder's name to be prominent. Leave the text field blank and, in this case, be sure to check "Show Action When Run" under Options. Do this so that you'll be presented with a dialog each time the workflow is run. Save the workflow as an application on your desktop.
Run the workflow by dragging and dropping one of your drum machine folders (or its copy) onto the saved Automator application icon. When the "Add Text" dialog appears, type in that particular drum machine folder's name and hit Continue. When the workflow has completed running, open the drum machine folder to verify that the changes took. If the workflow runs successfully on a folder named, let's say, "DrumMachineOne," the files inside, which had been named "kick1.wav," "snare.wav," for example, should be renamed "DrumMachineOnekick1.wav," "DrumMachineOnesnare.wav" and so forth, while the name of the folder "DrumMachineOne" itself remains unchanged.
Good luck!
Regards, Andrew99