itunes truncates file names to 36 characters

This is a user to user forum, if you want to make your views know to Apple, you can use the iTunes feedback option on the iTunes help menu.

The limit is 40 characters including extension for both file & folder names. The Windows API calls that iTunes uses will be limited to 256 characters so at a guess the limit was introduced in the initial version of iTunes for Windows as a way of ensuring that consistent names could be used without the likelihood of exceeding the limitations of Windows. The limit has no practical issues for properly tagged files accessed via an application, since these will process the full information stored in track name, artist, album fields etc, not the file path. If you let iTunes organize your files and folders then you let it choose the organization schema. If you're not happy with the way iTunes does it, disable those options and organize your media the way you want.

If your long named files are without tags, but in a sensibly organised <Album>\<Album Artist>\## <Name>[ - <Artist>] layout then my script TagFromFilename can be used to read tag data from the path and update iTunes accordingly, though this is only any use if you have first prevented the files from being reorganized as they are imported to iTunes. Alternatively MediaMonkey has some useful tools for manipulating paths and tags. iTunes doesn't cope well with files that are moved or updated via third party software so ideally you should do any tidying up before importing the tracks to iTunes.

See also this recent thread regarding classical music.

tt2

Use Edit > Preferences > Advanced and turn off the options Keep iTunes Media folder organised and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. Your existing filenames will now be left alone.

I've not looked at Rinse, but having invested quite some time in organising my own library I know the issues are not trivial. See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for example. As I said before, applications such as iTunes should be making use of tags embedded in the files, so the actual filenames shouldn't be important in the long run. The exeptions are for untagged files or files in .wav format that won't take a tag. In either case my TagFromFilename script can be used to update iTunes with information extracted from the filepath, assuming that files are in the form <Album>\<Album Artist>\## <Name>[ - <Artist>]. If you have previously used some other naming scheme for your files then I'd be happy to create a modified version of the script.

tt2

I'm sorry to say, that I don't think this has anything to do with the Windows operating system whatsoever.

Years ago I imported all my CDs into iTunes, and all new CDs and Apple Store purchases has been placed on the same network storage. And it has been working without problems.

But recently - I'm not sure when, but sometime within the last 2-3 months - iTunes started saying, that it couldn't find a file selected from my library and it offers me to locate the file.

And mind you - the file locations was originally created by iTunes during the import, but now it looks in folders with truncated names - not he ones it originally created.

The files are still in the originally (by iTunes) created folders, though.

I made some experiments by adding the (original) folder to iTunes again. Then of course it is added to my library - but now in a folder with truncted name. And any long filenames within the folder are truncated as well.

I didn't make any changes to my iTunes setup, which is set to "Keep iTunes Media folder organised".

The only changes are iTunes updates. And I'm running a Windows XP SP3 system.

But something comes to mind: For some time I got an error when logging in - an error about "sqlite3.dll not found". This was actually related to Apple products being installed and the location of that file. The solution to the problem was copying the sqlite3.dll file to the correct location.

If this is a file related to iTunes database handling, maybe this is the problem???

Anyway - it is very annoying .....

Did you try out the Long Path Tool? I'm sure it will help.

This thread has been asleep for two and a half years. I doubt anybody is hanging on for a solution.

tt2

I saw the same issue under both OS X & Windows. I used the feedback from within iTunes and expressed my disappointment regarding the issue. Waiting for a reply but will no longer us aiff or wav formats, which is where the true issue appears to be.