itunes and file names

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Level 1

4 points

itunes and file names

WHY does iTunes add the track number to some file names, but not all???

I haven't been able to find a specific answer to my query. Maybe I missed it. Have been using iTunes for Windows since its' inception. It actually got usable when whenever back when "album artist" was added.

So, WHY does iTunes add the track number to the beginning of some file names when they are imported or manipulated within iTunes, but not all??? It doesn't seem consistent to me. Computers are usually very consistent, depending on the programming LOL

I have no problem whatsoever for iTunes to do what it wants to do with the filenames. Let it be happy. Life is simpler when you allow iTunes to follow it's particular logic and not try to battle it LOL I have too much stuff to get overwhelmed about worrying about file name stuff.

BUT I LIKE CONSISTENCY.

I have thousands and thousands (33,000 songs in 3,000+ albums) of items, and really really REALLY want to be consistent in my iTunes stuff.

Quite often I create a folder with my COMPLETELY untagged mp3 files for later import into iTunes. It's usually a complete album I have gathered from various sources. No metadata in the mp3's, just the name of the song as the "song title.mp3". (I'm an mp3 person for all my iTunes stuff, easier to share with family for whatever they use.)

I have the "keep organized" and "copy files to itunes" checked. I want iTunes to do its' work consistently such that I can find the files easily in windows explorer when I need to and for copying to my dropbox for safety. (Lost it all once and will NOT have THAT happen again!)

I import the folder into iTunes, and then go through the "unknown album" in iTunes, making the iTunes entries pretty, first adding album-level info such as album artist, album name, artwork, year, genre, total number of tracks, etc. and then save at the "album level", and then going back in to modify the song-info level song-by-song and adding the track number, song artist (if needed), etc.

And sometimes! I look at the file-level info in windows explorer and some of the file names have the track number concatenated to the start of the file name and some don't! all the metadata is good from what I entered in iTunes, but not ALL of the file names get iTunes manipulated.

Is this a BIG deal? Really, no....as long as the files are in the correct subdirectories, I really don't care.

BUT WHY OH WHY?

If any of you know, you will solve a Mystery Of Life for me. :)

TT

Posted on Oct 9, 2019 2:32 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Oct 10, 2019 8:10 AM in response to tekitson

I suspect the files in question have no tag present at all. When iTunes imports them, as with tracks in .wav format, the only information it gets is the filename which it uses as a track name. Subsequent changes you make to the metadata might be stored in the library only, and not written to a field in the tag. This might allow for a distinction between no track number, and therefore no leading digits added to the filename, and a track number of 0 if not otherwise set, which will affect the filename. I've not tried to test this hypothesis but you could select an affected track and use File > Convert > Convert ID3 Tags > v2.3 and see if that changes what you see in Explorer. That might not be enough to force a rename so you might need to make some other change too to trigger that.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Oct 10, 2019 12:02 PM in response to tekitson

You're welcome. 🙂

I thought your post suggested that you had sometimes been able to update metadata without any corresponding change to the track name or visibility of metadata in Explorer which is why I tried to think of a possible mechanism. Clearly if iTunes can add a tag where none exists then it does.

BTW, see Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy - Apple Community for my approach to backup.

tt2

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Answer 3

tekitson Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 10, 2019 11:36 AM in response to turingtest2

Yes...your suspicion is accurate. For the album I imported yesterday, I noticed that the files that had the leading track number (and data in the Title field at the file level) were ones that I had manipulated the song name in iTunes. The files without the leading track numbers and no data in the Title field were songs that I didn't make any changes to the song name since they were already accurate. So, then, iTunes obviously writes the data elements to the file level based on what you change in the album/song info. The Convert ID3 Tags>v2.3 didn't change anything.

Thanks for your response. The Mystery is now Un-Mysterious.

TT

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Answer 4

tekitson Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 10, 2019 12:14 PM in response to turingtest2

Sorry for any confusion...I guess I assumed that adding the track number in iTunes was what caused the track number to get added to the start of the native file name. So I was just very confused. But NO, it is changing the TITLE that forces the track number there. I like these tiny details. :)

I did read your syncToy article, and it looks like a nice tool, but it did not want to play with my current version of net framework on Windows10 1903.

Been reading your stuff and it's all really well-written and interesting

Thanks again.

TT

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