Re: [mb-users] Picard file naming issue

On Wed, 2013-08-14 at 11:58 +0200, Frederic Da Vitoria wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have just tagged this
> http://musicbrainz.org/release/541d57c6-79f8-4cfd-b76b-0ae019d99036 with
> Picard. I found that the file names were strange: all the Requiem tracks
> were named ## Gabriel Faure - Requiem, op..mp3 and all the Messe tracks
> were named ## Gabriel Faure & Andre Message.mp3. I first thought this was a
> string length issue, but the file names aren't the same size in the 2
> works.
> 
> Here are the Picard options I use:
> - "Rename files when saving": checked,
> - "Replace non-ASCII characters": checked,
> - "Move files to this directory when saving": checked and set to a
> directory different from the source,
> - "Name files like this":
> "$if2(%albumartistsort%,%artistsort%)/$left(%originaldate%,4)-%album%/$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),%discnumber%-,)$num(%tracknumber%,2)$if(%compilation%,
> %artist% -,) %title%"
> 
> Am I missing something or is this a bug?

What operating system are you using this on, Windows?

Windows has an issue where the maximum total length of a filesystem path
is limited to a fixed value. As a result, Picard has to truncate file or
directory names if you're approaching this limit.

(Linux works differently; there is a maximum length per path component,
but the total length has no limit.)

Different versions of Picard use slightly different algorithms for this;
recent versions will attempt to truncate directory names to allow more
room to be left for filenames, for example. I think it tries not to
split in the middle of a word, which explains the variation that you're
seeing.

To work around the issue, you can try moving the directory where you're
saving files closer to the top level of the filesystem; e.g
C:\\Music
is better than
C:\\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\Some Subdirectory\Temp Place to store Picard Output

-- 
Calvin Walton <[email protected]>