Filename Templates

Lots of users have asked for little tweaks to be made to the way that capture files are named. Adding more checkboxes and dropdowns to the already complicated file naming tab of the settings wasn’t really an option, so instead I’ve added the ability to completely customize the file naming using filename templates. You’ll find these at the bottom of the filename settings tab and you’ll notice that the templates update automatically if they are disabled and you adjust other settings on the page, which will give you a good idea of what is possible for now.

One thing you may notice is that there is the option to include the current filter name in the filename using the {Filter} tag. If you are not using an ASCOM filter wheel then you can still use this feature by selecting ‘Manual Filter Wheel’ in the hardware settings – this will give you a filter wheel control in the camera controls panel which will not do anything except give a filter name to the file name template.

You can see that each filename template can be made up of tags which are wrapped in ‘{‘ and ‘}’ and text. The tags available include dates, times, camera names, target name, filter name, etc. Please note that using filename templates is an advanced feature and incorrect use can lead to files being overwritten – for instance if you do not include either ‘{Index}’ or ‘{FrameTime}’ in your Sequence template you will find that if you capture 100 frames in PNG format you will only get one file on disk because the file name for each frame will be the same and they will overwrite each other. Keep an eye on the ‘Sample Filenames’ above which show you the results of your templates.