What Would You Do? Slide Dates -- Again!

So, I usually don't tell you when my fancy pants file naming method for slides works -- and it almost always does. But, sometimes I encounter a problem or two, some of which are easier to resolve than others. Today I present a third, more intractable problem.

The file naming method uses the information printed and written on a slide's frame to name the digital file. What should I do when different slides from different rolls contain the same information? Here is an example:

As you can see, all the slides are developed as "AUG 61D". But, there are differences. The top left one has the date printed in black and the slide number also printed in black. The top right one has the date embossed but the slide number printed in black. The bottom left on has the date printed in red and the slide number also printed in red (very faint). The bottom left one has the date embossed but the slide number printed in red. This tells me there are four different rolls, separately developed, and (unfortunately, from an archiving perspective) with the same information.

What would you do?

I solved the problem by putting a number (1-4) after the date information in the file name so that the slides are at least grouped by roll. This is an imperfect solution for two reasons. First, future "AUG 61D" slides might not be easy to group with the correct roll, since I do not record an image of the slide frame; hopefully, this blog entry will help with this issue by recording what the frame of each roll looked like. Second, some slide frames actually have a number printed after the date information; while this potentially could be confusing, none of the "AUG 61D" rolls had a number, so I figured this was an acceptable solution.

So, the problem was basically solved, until I found this:

Not only does it have the same information in the same format as the bottom right slide above, it also has the same frame number! This means that there are at least two rolls that look exactly the same, and determining which slide goes with which roll (based on content) might be difficult or impossible.

What would you do?

I ended up just identifying the second slide at frame "4 -2" and left it at that. There were not enough slides to spend to much time sorting it out right now. But, it does raise the possibility that my file naming method does not create unique enough names for rolls of slides that are printed with the same information on the frame. Thus, other rolls potentially have mixed up slides. I figure this is rare simply because I have not seen it before. But, it is a problem without an elegant solution.