Easy way to rename a lot of video files. In Windows.

[bizzybody]

First thing you need is Karolj Kočmaroš Subtitle and Video File Renamer https://karoljkocmaros.blogspot.com/p/subtitle-video-renamer.html

Second thing is to get the episode list from epguides, for example https://epguides.com/Art21/
Click List as .csv Select the lines for the episodes you want to rename. Copy to clipboard.

number,season,episode,airdate,title,tvmaze link <-don't select line

1,1,1,21 Sep 01,"Place","https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/930863/art21-art-in-the-21st-century-1x01-place"
2,1,2,28 Sep 01,"Identity","https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/930864/art21-art-in-the-21st-century-1x02-identity"
3,1,3,05 Oct 01,"Spirituality","https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/930865/art21-art-in-the-21st-century-1x03-spirituality"
4,1,4,12 Oct 01,"Consumption","https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/930866/art21-art-in-the-21st-century-1x04-consumption"
5,2,1,09 Sep 03,"Stories","https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/930867/art21-art-in-the-21st-century-2x01-stories"

(five lines as an example, there are 44 episodes)

Create a new text file then paste into it and save with the extension changed to .csv If your text editor doesn't allow changing that, rename it after saving.

Open the CSV file in Excel or another spreadsheet program. In Excel, the " marks are ignored when opening a CSV.

You'll have columns A B C D E F
Delete column F and clear the contents of A B C D

In column C enter ART21 in row 1. With Excel you can automatically fill the column by dragging the lower right corner of the cell down the column. Since this show name ends with a number, Excel will auto-increment it. The way to stop that is add a letter to the end, so for example make it ART21P. (P for Placeholder.)

In column F, enter .srt in row 1. Drag down to fill all of the column with .srt (any subtitle file name extension Subtitle and Video File Renamer recognizes will do here)

In column B, fill with echo

Right click column D, Format Cells, select Text. Otherwise Excel will interpret this as formulas with an exponent.
In row 1 enter S01E01 or however you prefer your season and episode numbering, as long as it ends with a number. (I never use the S.)
Drag down to the last episode of Season 1, then in the next cell down, enter S02E01
Repeat until all your seasons and episodes are numbered.

Delete column A, which should be empty.

Save the CSV file. Note that if you re-open the CSV, Excel will interpret the series and episode number column as formulas since the plain text CSV format has no way to denote the data types.

Change the .csv file name extension to .txt and open it.

The contents will be like this

echo,ART21P,S01E01,Place,.srt
echo,ART21P,S01E02,Identity,.srt
echo,ART21P,S01E03,Spirituality,.srt
echo,ART21P,S01E04,Consumption,.srt
echo,ART21P,S01E05,Stories,.srt

Do find and replace all to change ,.srt to .srt"

Find and replace all echo, with echo "" >"

Extra step due to having to change the show name, replace all ART21P with ART21

Lastly, replace all , with a space.

The lines should now be like this

echo "" >"ART21 S01E01 Place.srt"
echo "" >"ART21 S01E02 Identity.srt"
echo "" >"ART21 S01E03 Spirituality.srt"
echo "" >"ART21 S01E04 Consumption.srt"
echo "" >"ART21 S01E05 Stories.srt"

These characters are not allowed in Windows file names
< > : " / \ | ? *
If an episode title contains any of them (most often it will be a : or ?) you'll need to remove or change it.

Change the .txt file name extension to .cmd or .bat then doubleclick it. It generates an empty subtitle file for every episode. It's best to run this in an empty folder.

Use them in the subtitle side of the renamer to rename all of your video files. Then you can delete the empty subtitle files.

When you have a large number of video files to rename, this is much quicker than renaming the files one by one, typing or copying and pasting the names and other information.