How we name and organise your tapes on a USB stick
When you ask us to “put the tapes on the USB stick in order”, unfortunately a USB stick does not work like a pile of tapes where the first one put on stays first.
Think of it more like a list of names on a computer screen.
The files themselves do not have a fixed position. Your computer or TV decides what order to display them in.
For example, it may display them by Name, Date or Size, and it can also display them in either ascending or descending order.
So even if we copied the files onto the USB stick as:
1
2
3
4
Your computer could be set to descending order and show them as:
4
3
2
1
The same applies to letters. If it is sorted A–Z, A comes first. If it is sorted Z–A, Z comes first.
This is why the order in which we physically copy the files onto the USB stick is irrelevant. What matters is giving the files sensible names so that they can be displayed in a useful order.
How we name tapes that have dates
If your tapes have dates written on them, we will use those dates to name the files in Year-Month-Day format (YYYY-MM-DD).
For example:
1991-05-12 – Family Holiday
1993-12-25 – Christmas
1995-06-18 – Birthday Party
If only the month and year are written on the tape, we will use those instead:
1991-05 – May 1991
1993-12 – December 1993
1995-06 – June 1995
The advantage of this format is that when you sort the files by Name in ascending order (A–Z), they will automatically appear in chronological order, with the oldest first.
If you select descending order (Z–A), the newest recordings will appear first.
Please note that we use the dates written on the tapes. We cannot verify when the recordings were actually made.
What if your tapes are numbered?
If your tapes are already numbered, or you would like them in a particular sequence, please number them 1, 2, 3 etc. before giving them to us.
We will use those numbers in the file names, for example:
01 – Wedding
02 – Honeymoon
03 – First Holiday
When sorted by Name in ascending order, they will appear in that sequence.
What if the tapes have no dates or numbers?
If there are no dates or numbers and we have no way of knowing the correct order, we will name them:
No Label 1
No Label 2
No Label 3
These numbers are simply identifiers and do not indicate the recording order.
Once you have watched the recordings and identified their contents, you can rename the files on your computer just like any other computer file.
One important point to remember
A USB stick does not have a fixed “first tape, second tape, third tape” order. Your computer or TV sorts and displays the files according to its own settings.
We name dated tapes using Year-Month-Day so that sorting by Name, ascending (A–Z) will put them in chronological order.