Track Column Width in iTunes

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Level 1

15 points

Track Column Width in iTunes

Hi all,

In my music pane of itunes I use the column "track #" to view the order of my tracks in certain albums. It only allows up to 3 digits and it doesn't seem possible to change the width of this column (unlike all the other columns).
Anybody any idea why this is? I know it's not very common, but I have an "Album" which contains 4000 songs, it's the TOP4000 all-time released by a radio station in my country. I like the tracknumber since it claims on which position the track is.
I could change the name to accomodate the tracknumber in it, but prefer the proper way.

any suggestions?

cheers

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4), Mac Mini

Posted on Feb 1, 2011 8:16 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 1, 2011 9:14 PM in response to scratch009

That would appear to be an iTunes imposed restriction, probably because they couldn't imagine somebody having a 1000 track album.

Musorg is a somewhat simple but free tag editor. It will allow you to enter a 4 digit (at least) track number but does not support an "out of" total number of tracks tag. It will remove an "out of" tag if you enter one with another editor.

MediaRage is a shareware tag editor. It allows at least 4 digits in both the track number and total tracks fields. If you display the track in iTunes it shows all 4 digits but iTunes will not let you edit them unless it is to a 3 digit value.

An iTunes solution is to use the CD number fields, then number each track for its position in the CD. It then displays the tracks by CD number and the order within the CDs, basically preserving the overall order. If you don't like it as CDs maybe put the "1" for 1000 in the CD number field and then number up to 999 in the track field, and so on.

A creative solution is if you aren't using the year field you can enter a 4 digit number in there. I did that for a series of files where I don't know the year anyway and only ever view them as a group.

Message was edited by: Limnos

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Answer 2

scratch009 Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 1, 2011 9:02 PM in response to scratch009

thanks for the reply, don't see why they want to restrict column widths, but anyway. I use Mp3Tag, freeware, and there's a tool for auto numbering tracks. The trackinfo is correct for all +-4000 tracks 🙂 just need to show them nicely.. i'm thinking of updated the track title to: "<Title> - <Track>" so when i play a song, i can still see which ranking it has...

prob not too big of an issue for 99.9% of people using itunes 🙂 but i got a bit annoyed with the column width 🙂

thanks

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Answer 3

Feb 1, 2011 9:05 PM in response to scratch009

The column width thing must be with newer versions. I use iTunes 7.5 and in list view it lets me stretch the column to view 4 digits in track and out of.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

278,351 points

Feb 2, 2011 3:56 AM in response to scratch009

The Get Info dialog box (on my PC & presumably on Macs too) limits the track entry field to 3 characters making 999 the largest value that can be entered directly via the iTunes interface. Testing things out via scripting however it seems that the full range of 16bit unsigned integer values is available, so track numbers can range from 0 to 65535. The main *Track #* column can be stretched to display 65535 of 65535 but there is also an unlabeled and non-removable column at the left (or just right of the artwork column) that either repeats track index numbers or holds the playlist order. When holding track numbers this column is, as you have found, limited to 3 digits. I suspect that this will be considered as the designed behaviour but I could submit a bug report.

tt2

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Answer 5

Oct 26, 2011 4:26 AM in response to scratch009

I have this same problem. My audiobible has 1259 tracts. Is there a way to do it within iTunes yet?

Thank you!

X

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Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

278,351 points

Oct 26, 2011 6:29 AM in response to X-Evolutionist

Hi there,

Thinking of your other thread in which you've split the thing into 10 "virtual" discs I was going to work out a way to adjust my AddToTrackNumber script to at least make each "disc" internally consistent with track numbers from 1 to # of tracks rather than have some start at 255 or others at 0.

I'd forgotten this little observation, but with it in mind there is no reason not to use the script to make the track numbers sequential across the whole 10 discs as would be my normal approach. However, I've a feeling the version currently online might need a little tweak to allow it to process more than 99 tracks in one go, so if you don't mind waiting a few hours (while work interferes with my hobby) then I will post an update to the thread when I get a new version uploaded.

tt2

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Answer 7

turingtest2

Level 10

278,351 points

Oct 26, 2011 1:53 PM in response to turingtest2

The script has been updated as promised. The new version allows for a second input value to set (or clear) the track count. You can also use the script to decrease track numbers as well as increase them, e.g. to reverse a previous action.

tt2

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