# Spec proposal: naming media files **URL:** \ **Category:** Development\ **Tags:** spec-proposal\ **Created:** [August 19, 2022, 3:54pm UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/spec-proposal-naming-media-files/38709 "2022-08-19T15:54:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 10
**Author:** ![Grzesiek2010](https://getodk.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.getodk.org/grzesiek2010/32/2881_2.png) [@Grzesiek2010](https://forum.getodk.org/u/Grzesiek2010)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2022, 9:59am UTC](https://forum.getodk.org/t/spec-proposal-naming-media-files/38709/10 "2022-09-02T09:59:33Z")
Thanks @Thalie for sharing your thoughts! > [@Thalie](#): > > I would actually favour a `uuid()` prefix with a `now()` suffix, mostly because my understanding is that the primary need for end-users would be to easily (visually) see what media are associated with a specific record in the ODK database, while ensuring uniqueness. Our aim is to find a good balance between file names that will be unique and relatively short and meaningful. That's why by default I thought about adding a suffix with a few random numbers. There are different projects in terms of size and needs. In case of huge projects we want to allow doing things like you described (uuid + timestamp or anything else) and for very small projects we also want to allow disabling any suffixes but not by default. It would be a decision people responsible for creating forms would need to make. > [@Thalie](#): > > I wish you were right, but actually this is much less unlikely that you would think 😅 - I have had several cases where participant names where corrected at a later point of the form filling process (also considering names can be a fluid concept in certain contexts). Yes this seems to be important. If we decided to implement this feature without a mechanism for keeping those file names updated it could do more harm than good in some cases. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.getodk.org/t/spec-proposal-naming-media-files/38709)._