Question File names are all screwed up ?

[phoophan]

Over the past year, I've moved my picture and video files between cloud storage and external storage using my Macbook Pro. I've cleaned up over 5000 files to make sure there are no duplicates and so on. The problem is, ALL of the file names have changed to long strings of numbers and letters. Here's an example;

AMIfv96m6Yer_qT817GwXoqW9OoR1bI8OqGjuKY8icCm89ihSjrsnKpemRQmnW4DP3MIKX7E7CHNfS_GpkQcGs4GIv2HL6AWpXUSMmLJyMHaEaTqAUILGgrLhoahPvHAZtuEeC42jy_I_LakhaZVP5jDlwgIj5Dg.mp4

All of them are the same length and the actual files (Pictures & Videos) are untouched and working fine. Any ideas about what happened and could there be a solution to changing them back to the original names?

Thank you!

 

[Aeacus]

Since you're using Apple products, i have almost 0 knowledge on how to fix it. Still, my Google-Fu is good and found something.

Possible cause:

The Mac OS 9 Finder uses Apple-specific Mac OS character sets (such as MacRoman or MacJapanese) to enter and display file names.
The Mac OS X Finder uses a worldwide standard character encoding, named Unicode, to enter and display file names.
Mac OS 9 converts file names to Unicode for storage on Mac OS Extended volumes, but when the encoding differs from the system default (for example, a Japanese file name on an English system or vice versa) the conversion to Unicode can be incorrect. As a result, the file name may not display as expected. The Mac OS X File Name Encoding Repair utility will correct many of the common cases of incorrect conversion.

Source + link to the fix utility: https://support.apple.com/kb/dl355?locale=en_US

If the fix isn't as easy, then this topic should help you,
link: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/directory-names-randomly-changed-to-gibberish.79726/

All-in-all, there is some protocol issue between storages and your Macbook Pro, hence why file names are turned into gibberish.