exiftool creates unwanted directory

I am trying to sort a large media collection with this command:

exiftool -v3 -r -d sorted2check/byYear/%Y/%Y-%m/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e "-directory<filemodifydate" "-directory<createdate" "-directory<datetimeoriginal" '-FileName<CreateDate' 2BeSorted/

Unfortunately, the names are generated like this:

/home/michael/data/ImagesSorted/byYear/2023/2023-06/20230625_142904.mp4/018.mp4

I want to have

/home/michael/data/ImagesSorted/byYear/2023/2023-06/018.mp4/018.mp4

but I do not see the issue in my pattern. Any quick advice?
Thx

What is the original name of the file? Your first output seems to indicate that the original file name is "20230625_142904.mp4".

Breaking down your -d (-dateFormat) option and assuming the embedded time stamp is "2023:06:25 14:29:04" you are

• First creating a directory called sorted2check in the current
  directory.
• Then a directory below that called byYear resulting in sorted2check\byYear
• Then a directory based upon the year, sorted2check\byYear\2023
• Then Year-Month, sorted2check\byYear\2023\2023-06
• Then you are creating a directory based upon YearMonthDay_HourMinuteSecond(copy number if needed).Extension. Which results in a path of sorted2check/byYear/2023/2023-06/20230625_142904.mp4

Remember, your date format string applies to all date tags. And you are copying the date tags into both Directory and Filename. And that makes things tricky as to which one will contain the actual target directory.

Example #11 on the Writing "FileName" and "Directory" tags page lists how the target directory is created:

> The output directory is taken from the first directory specified from
> the following list: 1) the Directory tag, 2) the directory part of the
> FileName tag…

So, writing to Directory will create a directory path based upon the above result string of sorted2check/byYear/2023/2023-06/20230625_142904.mp4/. Note that because you are writing to the Directory tag, 20230625_142904.mp4 is a directory, not a filename.

The final part of your command is to rename the filename based upon the date format string. This would normally create a file path and name of sorted2check/byYear/2023/2023-06/20230625_142904.mp4, with 20230625_142904.mp4 being the name of the file. Because of the priority listed in Example #11, the directory part is stripped away, leaving only the filename of 20230625_142904.mp4.

Combining the path written by the Directory tag and the filename written by the Filename tag, you end up with

/sorted2check/byYear/2023/2023-06/20230625_142904.mp4/20230625_142904.mp4

I do not know how you get a filename of 018.mp4, as nothing in the data you provided shows where it would come from. Unless it is the 18th copy of a file in the target directory. Be even that falls apart because of the leading 0 in the filename, which would require a copy string of %%3c, and the dash in your copy % variable of %%-c, which would result in a copy of -18.mp4. See the "Advanced features" section of the -w (-TextOut) option.