MM removes album art from files with long filenames

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Wed Dec 29, 2021 2:30 pm

Hi, I've noticed this with 2 files already. Basically, when the filepath gets to a certain length, MM stops showing the album art. If I browse via windows explorer, it shows, so it seems like the tag is there, but MM is doing something weird.
It seems to happen only when the full path (with auto-organize) is pretty close to the windows path limit. If the name would be much longer, then it truncates with no issues.

The path is:
F:\Música\G\Giraffes Giraffes!\2005 - SUPERBASS!!!! (Black Death Greatest Hits Vol. 1)\01 - 07 - She Looked Up From Examining The Freckles On Her Arm And Shouted, “Jesus! I’m Fucking God-Damn Tired Of All This Make-Up Sex!” And He Just Stared Off..mp3

Artist: Giraffes? Giraffes!
Album: SUPERBASS!!!! (Black Death Greatest Hits Vol. 1)
Title: She Looked Up From Examining The Freckles On Her Arm And Shouted, “Jesus! I’m Fucking God-Damn Tired Of All This Make-Up Sex!” And He Just Stared Off.

It should be noted that if I simply reduce the title (for example removing "And He Just Stared Off.") then it all works properly.
If I simply add more characters (from the original title, when MM isn't showing the album art), it still doesn't work, but if I first reduce the title and then add the new title (with a bunch of words ahead so it's clearly too long), then it works fine as well.

Album art is stored in tags, not in file.

Same thing happened with the last Godspeed You! Black Emperor album. I had to remove some characters from the title to get it to work properly. But now it's happened to this one as well, so I'd rather get the issue fixed and have the correct titles.

Post by **Lowlander** » Wed Dec 29, 2021 11:29 pm

Only Paths of up to 248 characters are supported in MediaMonkey 4.

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:53 am

Sure, but I'm not the one that chooses the path. Auto-organize is. I just set the rules for the format.
Besides, that is not the point. The point is that if the tags are such that the path is somewhat smaller (haven't tested to check the threshold on this) it works fine, even with auto-organize. And if the tags are such that the path is bigger than the limit, it also works fine.
But there seems to be some sweet spot that will make MM work wonky and remove album art from the library.

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:40 am

Ok, so I did a bit of testing.

I started with a slightly smaller title and with album art back in and then I increased the title back a character at a time.
As soon as I get:
F:\Música\G\Giraffes Giraffes!\2005 - SUPERBASS!!!! (Black Death Greatest Hits Vol. 1)\01 - 07 - She Looked Up From Examining The Freckles On Her Arm And Shouted, “Jesus! I’m Fucking God-Damn Tired Of All This Make-Up Sex!” And He Just St.mp3
It stops working. That's 242 characters total.

Likewise, I started with a bigger title and started cutting it one character at a time. As soon as I get:
F:\Música\G\Giraffes Giraffes!\2005 - SUPERBASS!!!! (Black Death Greatest Hits Vol. 1)\01 - 07 - She Looked Up From Examining The Freckles On Her Arm And Shouted, “Jesus! I’m Fucking God-Damn Tired Of All This Make-Up Sex!” And He Just Stared Off. And Her.mp3
It also stops working. That's 259 characters total.

So it seems that when auto-organize ends up with something between that range naturally (meaning that it doesn't need to cut anything, if it's a longer title it will cut off properly with no problems) it does weird things to the album art. At least in the library. As I said before, if I go via windows explorer, it still sees the tag on icons view.

Post by **Lowlander** » Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:49 pm

You set what Auto-Organize Files does. So you can have it set to limit the Path size.

For example $Left(<Title>),50) will make sure that no matter how many characters the Title actually is, it will not occupy more than 50 characters in the Path.

Do note that longer Paths are supported in MediaMonkey 5, however although Windows 10 supposedly supports it, our experience is that it's buggy on Windows 10.

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:14 pm

Just setting a left on title wouldn't necessarily fix it. There are bands that have long names, there are albums that have long names, etc.
I could limit them all but it's not aesthetically pleasing and it feels like a sloppy fix.

The problem is that MM works wonky only on that range. If MM were to act the same way it does with longer ones (I have files that would have a much longer path and auto-organize works properly on those).

It seems to me that it would be logical that auto-organize would decide that filenames longer than X characters would get truncated, which it does. So the bug seems to happen in the 242-259 characters. Either it should show the album art properly, or auto-organize should define a max length of 241 characters. Either would be fine.

The point is that it's not a problem of the auto-organize format I use. It's some inconsistency between the auto-organize cutoff and something in the library.

Post by **Lowlander** » Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:36 pm

As mentioned, MediaMonkey 5 has changed this. MediaMonkey 4 was limited as older versions of Windows were limited. There won't be a change for MediaMonkey 4 for this.

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Fri Dec 31, 2021 3:26 am

I liked MM5, but I need some tools which don't exist on MM5 yet to help me organize my library. Using MM5 would mean that I would need to add new files with MM4 and play them with MM5, which seems like too much hassle.

Isn't it possible just to limit auto-organize to 241 characters? Or give us an option to set a max to auto-organize? Though I'd be fine with hard coded. Probably simpler to change as well, since it already has a hard coded value. I just want MM to show the album art on those few songs, which is actually there in the tag, but for that range MM4 deletes it from the library.

Post by **Lowlander** » Fri Dec 31, 2021 2:16 pm

Yes, you can limit with the above provided method, you can use $Left() on each individual field that may be too long for certain files or include multiple fields. There is also <Field:n> that can be used: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... ormats/4.0

DJSamhein · Post by **DJSamhein** » Fri Dec 31, 2021 2:34 pm

I know I can limit individual fields, but that doesn't really solve it. If I do that, it will limit titles that are over 50 characters, even if the whole path would just result in 150 characters total. I would need something that would limit the overall path. But as far as I know, that is not possible.

Honestly, auto-organize works perfectly well for what I want, except for this bug for paths that are between that range.
Or rather, auto-organize works fine, it's the library that doesn't work properly for those files. So it's an inconsistency between those 2 features.

As I said, auto-organize limiting files to 241 so it works fine would be acceptable and I imagine much less effort than fixing the library.

MM removes album art from files with long filenames

MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames

Re: MM removes album art from files with long filenames