Folder Titles are cut off.

Question

Hi Guys,
I need some advice on why my album folders are not complete but only cut off. Long Album titles are reduced.

Answer 1

Hi Garth,
If the *Keep iTunes Music folder organised* feature is enabled iTunes will rename files and folders that are within the iTunes Music folder. If you add files to the library or make changes to tags the files will be automatically renamed to reflect this. The general layout is:
<Artist>\<Album>\[<Disc No.>-]<Track No.> <Track Name>.<Ext>
If *Part of a Compilation* is true then a value of Compilations will be used instead of <Artist> above. Likewise, if the *Album Artist* field is set this will be used to set the <Artist> value which will make a difference if there are guest artists credited on the album or have a Various Artists album not marked as a compilation. The <Disc No.> is only prepended to the filename if there is more than one disc in the collection. All characters which are invalid within filesnames are replaced with an underscore. File & folder names are truncated to 40 characters inclusive of extention. If two or more files would have the same filename, the second filename is (where neccesary) shortened by a couple of charaters and given a trailing index of 1, the next 2 and so on. (Earlier versions of iTunes would replace the existing file with the new one of the same name potentially destroying data - although long since fixed this is another reason for my preference.)
Whether disc & track numbers are included in the filenames used to be optional within the iTunes preferences and, if desired, can still be disabled via a suitable hack.
If you disable the *Keep iTunes Music folder organised* option these rules will still be used for any music that you download from the store or rip from CDs. Likewise if you have the option *Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library* enabled and import files from outside the iTunes Music folder, the new copies will be created with the same naming conventions. What will be different is that if you make a change in iTunes this will not be reflected by updating the filename. If however you name files according to your own conventions and then add them to the library, iTunes will not rename them. Unlike Windows Media Player, iTunes will lose track of any files you manually rename so if you do go down this road you then have the extra effort of removing and reimporting files that you choose to modify.
I should make it clear that manually organising my music folders is a personal preference and not one I necessarily recommend to others - it's a lot more effort for no real gain. For a long while I had an iRiver H140 which I synchronised with my music folders. To make the iRiver easier to use I created a folder structure which separated out some sections of my library from others e.g. Comedy, Classical, Soundtracks etc. I also set my own rules for invalid character replacement and for compilations appended the artist to the track name. Although I no longer use the iRiver I prefer to keep this structure.
I used to keep the bulk of my library in the Windows "My Music" folder and only let iTunes manage the podcasts however the last time I did a full rebuild of the library I put everything inside the iTunes Music in order to take advantage of the ability to relocate a self-contained set of iTunes library folders. I know I should really commit to iTunes and stop worrying about exactly how my data is orgainsed but there it is... we can't change our nature.
tt2