Medley song tracks are skipped for long names, or adding commas or slashes

[Mnyb]

Thanks so much for brainstorming this with me. I have the iTunes plug-in activated and I checked "Use iTunes" in settings under the iTunes tab. So I assume I am integrating with iTunes. And, yes, exactly what I type into iTunes track titles appears in Squeeze Server in the player skin. I have a large library of over 32,000 songs in one large music folder on an external drive, and I run iTunes and Squeezebox Server on the same Mac Mini (OS 10.6). I am using Squeezebox Server v. 7.5.2, because it has been very reliable over the past three+ years. I hope I am answering your questions. Luckily, this seems to be an isolated single-album anomaly at this point, but it makes me worried new albums will encounter similar troubles down the road.

I was wondering about the actual file name ? you may have a look in finder (or explorer or shell or .... )

[Robert57]

I was wondering about the actual file name ? you may have a look in finder (or explorer or shell or .... )

In Finder's file names (in Music Folder), a colon and a "/" are both replaced by "_". I see no other changes.

So what I see in iTunes and Squeeze Player skin: 09 Fourth Movement: Grandma's Coffin (return), etc.

is shown in Finder as: 09 Fourth Movement_ Grandma's Coffin (return), etc.

And in ITunes and Squeeze Player skin: 09 Ist: Grandma's Coffin (return)/ Trampin/ Messin'

is shown in Finder file name as : 09 Ist_ Grandma's Coffin (return)_ Trampin_ Messin'

[Mnyb]

Ok so the file names are of the same length , but the illegal characters is at least stripped from the fime names.

Do you have a very deep folder structure ? or is it perhasp organised by iTunes ?

Just wondering what the toal length would be from root to file something like \folder\folder\folder\album\song.mp4

[d6jg]

Ok so the file names are of the same length , but the illegal characters is at least stripped from the fime names.

Do you have a very deep folder structure ? or is it perhasp organised by iTunes ?

Just wondering what the toal length would be from root to file something like \folder\folder\folder\album\song.mp4

I agree if its not tag length it is something in the file name itself and since illegal file name characters are being stripped it must be the length.

In the LMS web interface open up one of the non playing tracks and bring up "Song Info" - this will show you its file location as recorded in the database - is it complete ? including the file suffix whatever that is for XLD files.

[Robert57]

Ok so the file names are of the same length , but the illegal characters is at least stripped from the fime names.

Do you have a very deep folder structure ? or is it perhasp organised by iTunes ?

Just wondering what the toal length would be from root to file something like \folder\folder\folder\album\song.mp4

Yes, the music folder is managed entirely by iTunes. I don't think the folder structure is very deep at all--just two folder levels within my external drive connected to my Mac (which also runs Squeeze Server). And this "problem" album is no different than 2,800+ other album folders in that respect.

[Mnyb]

Yes, the music folder is managed entirely by iTunes. I don't think the folder structure is very deep at all--just two folder levels within my external drive connected to my Mac (which also runs Squeeze Server). And this "problem" album is no different than 2,800+ other album folders in that respect.

Ok , then its not the >256 character length issue .
This can apply even if your not using windows ? ( and its not the formatting NTFS can handle 32000 character file paths , its windows , same goes for names win forbids more chars than tye disc format )

[reinholdk]

I'd run LMS with only that single album in the music library to try isolating the problem.

Can you copy it to your local hard disk, point your LMS library to that folder and do a full library scan? Before you start experimenting you can stop LMS and create a copy of the LMS cache folder to make it easier to return to your original library.

And you said that you have 32000 files in a single folder of your external hard disk. Even if your problem might be unrelated with that, I don't think that this is the best idea.

[Robert57]

I agree if its not tag length it is something in the file name itself and since illegal file name characters are being stripped it must be the length.

In the LMS web interface open up one of the non playing tracks and bring up "Song Info" - this will show you its file location as recorded in the database - is it complete ? including the file suffix whatever that is for XLD files.

Sorry for the delay in responding. In Squeeze Server I tried to play again a longer file title from the Music Folder (without doing a rescan) that will not play and see no error message in the Server log. All I see is that Squeeze server has located all nine tracks of the album within the Music Folder with this log message:

[13-11-17 18:38:11.3640] Slim::Utils::Scanner::scanDirectory (320) Found 9 files in /Volumes/Icy WD Music A-1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/Cannonball Adderley & Art Farmer (Brooks, comp.)/John Benson Brooks' Alabama Concerto featuring Cannonball Adderly and Art Farmer (xld)

And In the Squeeze Server player interface, under song info. for the problem track No. 9, I see the following info. for the location of the file, which looks complete to me:

Location: /Volumes/Icy WD Music A-1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/Cannonball Adderley & Art Farmer (Brooks, comp.)/John Benson Brooks' Alabama Concerto featuring Cannonball Adderly and Art Farmer (xld)/09 4th_ Grandma's Coffin (ret)_ Rufus Playboy (ret)_ Grandma's.m4a

So it appears to me that Squeeze can see the file in the Music Folder, with no error message, but it just doesn't like something about the title and then refuses to play. It will immediately skip over the track to the next non-problematic title it sees in the playlist.

btw, for this track # 9, this title version does NOT play -- a few more text characters is all I see: 4th: Grandma's Coffin (ret)/ Rufus Playboy (ret)/ Grandma's.

And this version of the title for the same file/ location DOES play--fewer text characters: Fourth Movement: Grandma's Coffin (return), etc.

[Mnyb]

/Volumes/Icy WD Music A-1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/Cannonball Adderley & Art Farmer (Brooks, comp.)/John Benson Brooks' Alabama Concerto featuring Cannonball Adderly and Art Farmer (xld)/09 4th_ Grandma's Coffin (ret)_ Rufus Playboy (ret)_ Grandma's.m4a

Count all these characters your file path is very large including spaces and slashes pranthesis commas etc ?

You can have the actuall metadata ( the tags in the file ) as you want but I don't think the file name and the file path should be this long . I don't use iTunes but there must be a way to not have so long file and folder names ?
What do you rip your files with XLD ? The file name and the metadata is totally independent of each other .
You are in general loosing a lot of usefull characters in just the name of the music share /Icy WD Music 1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/
You are also using up 6 characters just by appending " (xld)" to the album name ?

I think the windows file path length limitation is hard coded somewhere in LMS probably in the iTunes integration plugin ?

Did you try the suggestion of scanning the normal way pointing LMS directly to the music folder as a try ?
You did try to browse the "Music Folder" that did not work so maybe the path length limitation apply somewhere else in the code.

[garym]

/Volumes/Icy WD Music A-1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/Cannonball Adderley & Art Farmer (Brooks, comp.)/John Benson Brooks' Alabama Concerto featuring Cannonball Adderly and Art Farmer (xld)/09 4th_ Grandma's Coffin (ret)_ Rufus Playboy (ret)_ Grandma's.m4a

Count all these characters your file path is very large including spaces and slashes pranthesis commas etc ?

You can have the actuall metadata ( the tags in the file ) as you want but I don't think the file name and the file path should be this long . I don't use iTunes but there must be a way to not have so long file and folder names ?
What do you rip your files with XLD ? The file name and the metadata is totally independent of each other .
You are in general loosing a lot of usefull characters in just the name of the music share /Icy WD Music 1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/
You are also using up 6 characters just by appending " (xld)" to the album name ?

I think the windows file path length limitation is hard coded somewhere in LMS probably in the iTunes integration plugin ?

Did you try the suggestion of scanning the normal way pointing LMS directly to the music folder as a try ?
You did try to browse the "Music Folder" that did not work so maybe the path length limitation apply somewhere else in the code.

agree, and this was always my first thought. Not sure if you've tried this, but take one of these nonplayable files, leave the tags the same, but rename the file name to something very short ("testname") and try to play this in LMS. If this works, it is file and path length causing the problem. If so, regarding your file naming technique....obviously, you should do what works for you, but a lot of the info that you are storing in the file name and path are what I personally put into metadata tags instead. You can even created custom tags. The "put lots of detail in the file name" approach used to be needed when tagging wasn't very flexible and had limited space, etc. Tagging has improved considerably. I use mp3tag and it is recommended by many around here as a powerful tag editor (yes, it does more than mp3). Its a windows program but there is a Mac OS version available. Also, it can do batch "automated" tagging based on info in the file name/path.

[Robert57]

/Volumes/Icy WD Music A-1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/Cannonball Adderley & Art Farmer (Brooks, comp.)/John Benson Brooks' Alabama Concerto featuring Cannonball Adderly and Art Farmer (xld)/09 4th_ Grandma's Coffin (ret)_ Rufus Playboy (ret)_ Grandma's.m4a

Count all these characters your file path is very large including spaces and slashes pranthesis commas etc ?

You can have the actuall metadata ( the tags in the file ) as you want but I don't think the file name and the file path should be this long . I don't use iTunes but there must be a way to not have so long file and folder names ?
What do you rip your files with XLD ? The file name and the metadata is totally independent of each other .
You are in general loosing a lot of usefull characters in just the name of the music share /Icy WD Music 1.8 TB/iTunes Media Content-large/Music/
You are also using up 6 characters just by appending " (xld)" to the album name ?

I think the windows file path length limitation is hard coded somewhere in LMS probably in the iTunes integration plugin ?

Did you try the suggestion of scanning the normal way pointing LMS directly to the music folder as a try ?
You did try to browse the "Music Folder" that did not work so maybe the path length limitation apply somewhere else in the code.

Thanks for all your helpful thoughts and advice. I think you've found the key. I shortened the album title dramatically, removing "featuring Cannonball Adderley and Art Farmer (xld)". Then I lengthened the track title for track 09 to the accurate, full text, as shown below, and it plays fine when I select it from my Music Folder!

Shortened title which I earlier used to get the long track to play: Fourth Movement: Grandma's Coffin (return), etc.

New longer track title, which previously did not play, and now does play: Fourth Movement- Grandma's Coffin (return); Rufus Playboy (return); Grandma's Coffin (2nd return)

I agree, I was using a very long and redundant album title in this instance, which was the technically complete title, but not necessary. So, I think we can conclude this exceptionally long title had usurped precious character capacity for each track in LMS/ Squeeze server. I suppose this is the first time I've had this combination of a very long album title and very long medley track names that together exceeded the character capacity limits in Squeeze Server. I had added (xld) to the end of the album title in this case to avoid duplication in my library from other testing versions--I normally keep this cruft out. I do often have long text in the "artist" field in the song tags, as I list many supporting musicians, but I hope that would not be a factor with this Squeeze play issue with the long album and track file names?

I'm not aware of the method of pointing Squeeze Server/ LMS to an album in the Music Folder for a targeted rescan. I'll try to find some directions on this approach.

So I guess we can mark this as "case solved". Thanks again for all your help! I don't want to go to the trouble of experimenting with the new version of LMS (requires new firmware) if I can keep my normally reliable Squeeze Server 7.5.2. Perhaps the file name limits have been expanded with LMS--a friend of mine who has a similar tagging system for this "problem" album had no issues with LMS.

[Mnyb]

Thanks for all your helpful thoughts and advice. I think you've found the key. I shortened the album title dramatically, removing "featuring Cannonball Adderley and Art Farmer (xld)". Then I lengthened the track title for track 09 to the accurate, full text, as shown below, and it plays fine when I select it from my Music Folder!

Shortened title which I earlier used to get the long track to play: Fourth Movement: Grandma's Coffin (return), etc.

New longer track title, which previously did not play, and now does play: Fourth Movement- Grandma's Coffin (return); Rufus Playboy (return); Grandma's Coffin (2nd return)

I agree, I was using a very long and redundant album title in this instance, which was the technically complete title, but not necessary. So, I think we can conclude this exceptionally long title had usurped precious character capacity for each track in LMS/ Squeeze server. I suppose this is the first time I've had this combination of a very long album title and very long medley track names that together exceeded the character capacity limits in Squeeze Server. I had added (xld) to the end of the album title in this case to avoid duplication in my library from other testing versions--I normally keep this cruft out. I do often have long text in the "artist" field in the song tags, as I list many supporting musicians, but I hope that would not be a factor with this Squeeze play issue with the long album and track file names?

I'm not aware of the method of pointing Squeeze Server/ LMS to an album in the Music Folder for a targeted rescan. I'll try to find some directions on this approach.

So I guess we can mark this as "case solved". Thanks again for all your help! I don't want to go to the trouble of experimenting with the new version of LMS (requires new firmware) if I can keep my normally reliable Squeeze Server 7.5.2. Perhaps the file name limits have been expanded with LMS--a friend of mine who has a similar tagging system for this "problem" album had no issues with LMS.

Yes the tags is not the problem its the file names .

[d6jg]

Hooray.
LMS doesn't give a fig about the file name as long as it is valid so a folder structure of
Music/artist/album
With
01track.m4a
02track.m4a
And a detailed tagging policy is the ideal.
Tracks numbering is good especially if you have some dodgy DLNA players in your network to ensure you have at least one method of playing an album in original order.