Track name length limit?

Question

Track name length limit?

Can anyone confirm or deny that there is a limit to the length of a track name? I seem to have fixed a problem on my own that would say that there is.

I imported "Scottish Rant" from CD. The names came down from Gracenote CDDB. On a couple of tracks, iTunes would crash. I tried several different encoding methods and rates, with the same result. QuickTime played the files fine. I then checked the iTunes store, because I knew this album was on the store. I looked at the track names and saw that the name ended with an ellipsis (...). (The tracks were both medleys.)

I renamed the offending track, and it played just fine. I re-imported back at the desired size, renamed, and again, it played fine.

The track names that were download from CDDB were over 140 characters long, each, with no special characters. In fact, the iTunes Store names had ":" and "/" . BTW, I submitted updated, shorter names on that album back to CDDB.

So I guess my follow-up question is, if there is in fact a limit, can someone on the iTunes team please expand the limit, filter the CDDB names, or fix the bug that causes a crash?

iMac G5, 20", 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9) iTunes 7.1.1

Posted on May 5, 2007 11:09 AM

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Answer 1

jere7my

Level 4

1,815 points

May 5, 2007 10:44 PM in response to Sean Mcgarrahan

The longest possible song name in iTunes is 255 characters. (I've only hit that with one Sufjan Stevens song, The Black Hawk War, or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You're Going To Have To Leave Now, or, "I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!")

I'm not sure why your iTunes crashed, but Apple employees don't generally read or reply to questions here. You'd be better off submitting your request to customer support.

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Answer 2

May 6, 2007 7:34 AM in response to jere7my

Whew, what a song title. Thanks for the input. I wonder if it has anything to do with the length of the path as well.

For the record the title, in iTunes, was Medley-The Pikeman's March, Lady Madelina Sinclair, Loch Loskin, Traditional Reel, The Wishing Tree, W.E. MacPherson of St. Thomas

The full path was something like TheMaciMacHD\Users\seanmcg\music\itunes\itunes music\City of Washington Pipe Band\Scottish Rant\04 Medley-The Pikeman's March, Lady Madelina Sinclair, Loch Loskin, Traditional Reel, The Wishing Tree, W.E. MacPherson of St. Thomas.m4a But even that is only 233 characters.Like I said, even the iTunes Store version doesn't list out all the songs in the medley.

Anyway, the posting here was meant primarily to get some user base input, since I couldn't find anything official in support, or anecdotal on the discussions. I've been using iTunes since it first came out, and this is the first time I've run into this. Where did you find the 255 character limit?

Thanks again for your input. I'll wait and see if anyone else has had a similar issue and post to Customer Support in a few days.

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Answer 3

jere7my

Level 4

1,815 points

May 6, 2007 10:19 AM in response to Sean Mcgarrahan

I can't see any problems with your medley; iTunes should be able to handle that just fine. Maybe there's an invisible character stuck in there somehow? I have quite a few Scottish medleys as well, and they've never given me trouble. (Elke Baker's Cape Breton Set: The Lime Hill - Devil in the Kitchen - Miss Drummond of Perth - Put Me in a Box - Margaree - Jack Daniel's - High Road to Linton is 120 characters, for instance.) I have a lot of weird characters in my tags, too, like π and ----- and __, and never had a problem.

I figured out the 255-character limit myself, when I saw that the last few words of that Sufjan Stevens song were cut off.

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Answer 4

May 6, 2007 11:38 AM in response to jere7my

Well I'll call this solved. I'll check a bit further to see if CDDB is sending down a bad character. Not sure how I'll check, but maybe hexedit or something like it will reveal something.

Thanks for the data. Hopefully, this'll help others as well.

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