📁 Media Organizer

License: MIT

A simple, safe script to organize AND auto-rotate your photos/videos by date.

• Auto-rotates images from cameras/phones based on EXIF orientation tags.
• Respects manually edited images (no rotation if EXIF tag is missing/normal).
• Files are NEVER deleted—only moved and rotated in-place.

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⚠️ IMPORTANT: READ BEFORE USE

• Auto-rotation only works for images from cameras/phones (with valid EXIF orientation tags).
• Manually edited images (e.g., rotated in GIMP/Photoshop) won’t be auto-rotated (the script respects your changes).
• Always back up your files before running this script.
• Test on a small subset of files first.

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🌟 Features

Feature	Description
Date-Based Sorting	Organizes files into Year/Month/ folders using EXIF/metadata or filenames.
Auto-Rotation	Rotates images from cameras/phones based on EXIF orientation tags (3, 6, 8).
Respects Manual Edits	Skips rotation for images with no EXIF orientation tag (e.g., manually edited).
Video Rotation	Rotates videos with rotation metadata (common in phone videos).
Supports Many Formats	JPG, PNG, GIF, HEIC, MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, and more.
Empty Folder Cleanup	Removes empty folders in to-be-sorted/ after processing.
Clean Logging	Only logs rotations and successful moves.

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📦 Dependencies

Tool	Purpose	Install Command (Ubuntu/Debian)
exiftool	Extract dates and auto-rotate images based on EXIF tags.	sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl
ffmpeg	Rotate videos based on metadata.	sudo apt install ffmpeg

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone or download:

 git clone https://github.com/yourusername/media-organizer.git
 cd media-organizer

2. Edit auto_organize_all.sh:

 INBOX="/path/to/your/media/to-be-sorted"    # Unsorted media folder
 ORGANIZED="/path/to/your/media/organized"    # Output folder
 LOG_FILE="/path/to/your/media_organizer.log" # Log file

3. Install dependencies:

 sudo apt update
 sudo apt install -y libimage-exiftool-perl ffmpeg

4. Run the script:

 chmod +x auto_organize_all.sh
 ./auto_organize_all.sh

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📂 Folder Structure

your_media_folder/
├── to-be-sorted/    # Drop unsorted files here
│   ├── Photos/
│   └── Videos/
└── organized/       # Sorted output (auto-created)
    ├── 2023/
    │   ├── 01. January/
    │   └── 02. February/
    └── notime/      # Files without date metadata
        └── 00/

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⚙️ How It Works

1. Scans to-be-sorted/ for files.
2. Auto-rotates images based on EXIF orientation tags (3=180°, 6=90° CW, 8=90° CCW).
3. Extracts dates from:

• Filenames (e.g., 20230101_photo.jpg → 2023 01).
• EXIF metadata (DateTimeOriginal or CreateDate).
• File modification time (fallback).

4. Moves files to organized/Year/Month/ (e.g., organized/2023/01. January/).
5. Rotates videos if metadata indicates it.
6. Cleans up empty folders in to-be-sorted/.

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⚠️ Known Limitations

• No rotation for manually edited images: If you rotate an image in an editor (e.g., GIMP), the script won’t auto-rotate it (respects your manual changes).
• No duplicate detection: Use dupeGuru (80% similarity) or fdupes afterward.
• HEIC files: Auto-rotation works if exiftool supports HEIC (requires libheif1 on some systems).

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🛠️ Customization

Add/Remove File Extensions

Edit the regex in process_file():

if [[ ! "$filename" =~ \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|heic|3gp|mp4|mov|avi|mkv|JPG|JPEG|PNG|GIF|HEIC|MP4|MOV|AVI|MKV)$ ]]; then

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📜 License

MIT License – see LICENSE for details.

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🙏 Acknowledgments

• Inspired by "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart.
• Thanks to the open-source tools: exiftool, ffmpeg.