URGENT HELP NEEDED! sort files randomly

Question

Hi
I'm a film student and my final project needs to be finished in less than a week! I have a series of images which I need to appear in a random order in my timeline in Final Cut Express. I used Automator to add a series of numbers to the beginning of each filename corresponding to when each image was created/modified, in the hope that that would reorder them, but since they were all exported from Final Cut in the first place they were all created and modified at pretty much exactly the same time, so that didn't really help. I read somewhere that if you know AppleScript it would be a matter of minutes to write a script that could add a string of random alphanumerical characters to the beginning of a series of filenames, but I don't know AppleScript and I don't have time to learn it. Does someone out there know of a solution?
Many thanks!

Answer 1

User Craig Smith over in the AppleScript forums provided me with this helpful little script, which solved my problem:
set a to choose folder
tell application "Finder"
set all_Files to every file in folder a
repeat with a_file in all_Files
set a_file's name to ((random number from 100 to 999) as text) & a_file's name
end repeat
end tell
Copy and paste it into Script Editor (/Applications/AppleScript), press "Compile" and then "Run", and it will ask you to choose a folder, all the files in which will then receive a random three-digit number between 100 and 999 to the beginning of their filenames. Handy!
Message was edited by: Bacchus