What's everyone up to right now?

[*Deidre*]

Realizing that sometimes I misjudge a situation and happy when people surprise me with kindness, instead.

[Angrboda]

And just to put my issues with the Windows Media Player ripper and "My Music" folder into perspective, since I can't edit my last post, I should mention that, after deleting the original rip of the problem CDs, I managed to rip eight others in my collection (not including the re-rip of the one that caused the problem), and I have had no other problems. I am 99% certain that it's been properly resolved. And I also talked about the issue with my Dad, who has been working with computers since they used punch-cards, and he thinks the way I describe it, the problem appears to have been resolved and shouldn't recur, barring another run-in with a classical CD (I strongly suspect it would be classical) whose pressers lack any restraint in metadata embedding. Then again, with my OCD, that nagging 1% makes me wonder. Then again, given that my compulsion, at least in this episode, seems to involve ripping CDs in my (exceptionally large) collection to see if anything strange happens, this episode of OCD could very well not be that bad.

I used to have the same problems ripping classical music. It's an inherent limit in Windows that you'll likely hit again if you rip similar material.

[Rev. Rye]

I used to have the same problems ripping classical music. It's an inherent limit in Windows that you'll likely hit again if you rip similar material.

And presumably, shortening the metadata/file names before properly ripping them (artist, album, track title) is able to obviate these problems, in your experience? So far, that seems to be the case for me.

[Angrboda]

I used to have the same problems ripping classical music.  It's an inherent limit in Windows that you'll likely hit again if you rip similar material.

And presumably, shortening the metadata/file names before properly ripping them (artist, album, track title) is able to obviate these problems, in your experience? So far, that seems to be the case for me.

Yeah. Basically there's a limit on the length of the complete path + filename, so if you have really long file names, you run the risk of hitting it. (I think. Reading on it, it's not clear. MSDN | Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces)

[Rev. Rye]

Yeah. Basically there's a limit on the length of the complete path + filename, so if you have really long file names, you run the risk of hitting it.

So, now that I deleted the original rip, and shortened the named artist and track names before ripping it again, this problem should theoretically be resolved, at least until the next time I rip a classical CD with no regard for path+filename length?

[Fireball]

When I started out with programming, we were limited to the 8dot3 file naming convention. Computer science has come a long way since then. One job I had, the output files had 37- and 41- character file names. That was a little later in the game, of course.

[Rev. Rye]

When I started out with programming, we were limited to the 8dot3 file naming convention. Computer science has come a long way since then. One job I had, the output files had 37- and 41- character file names. That was a little later in the game, of course.

Yeah, Dad brought the eight.three limit up (and how far we've grown since then) when I talked about it with him.

[Angrboda]

Yeah.  Basically there's a limit on the length of the complete path + filename, so if you have really long file names, you run the risk of hitting it.

So, now that I deleted the original rip, and shortened the named artist and track names before ripping it again, this problem should theoretically be resolved, at least until the next time I rip a classical CD with no regard for path+filename length?

Skimming the MSDN article just quoted, it appears to have more to do with path length than filename length. Assuming you have a directory solely dedicated to the album, and that name results in too long a path, Windows will have problems. (I've found you can get around it by shortening elements of the pathname, but reripping with shorter meta data is probably simplest, where possible. [I've had several examples where significant info would be lost to shortening, so some of my music files are stored as zip files of longer named files])

[Fireball]

When I started out with programming, we were limited to the 8dot3 file naming convention. Computer science has come a long way since then. One job I had, the output files had 37- and 41- character file names. That was a little later in the game, of course.

Yeah, Dad brought the eight.three limit up (and how far we've grown since then) when I talked about it with him.

  I'm old enough to be yo daddy!   Those were actually some annoying restrictions. I used aliases on the mainframes to get me to subdirectories (folders, to you young peops), and sometimes couldn't get there in one leap, if there was enough information necessary. Carried a gross of mnemonics in my head, I did.

[Rev. Rye]

So, now that I deleted the original rip, and shortened the named artist and track names before ripping it again, this problem should theoretically be resolved, at least until the next time I rip a classical CD with no regard for path+filename length?

Skimming the MSDN article just quoted, it appears to have more to do with path length than filename length. Assuming you have a directory solely dedicated to the album, and that name results in too long a path, Windows will have problems. (I've found you can get around it by shortening elements of the pathname, but reripping with shorter meta data is probably simplest, where possible. [I've had several examples where significant info would be lost to shortening, so some of my music files are stored as zip files of longer named files])

I figure that's a yes? I'll take that as a yes.