Long filenames on Windows cause troubles

A few weeks ago, I was forwarded a tech support email from a Windows XP user who couldn't unzip a few of our albums.

After way too much research, I found that Windows XP and Windows 7 both have problems (in different ways) with long filename paths. Not the file's length, mind you, but the total name of the entire path to get to a file, i.e.:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Artistname\Albumname\MP3name.mp3

Specifically, there is a concept in Windows of the MAX_PATH variable, which is 260 characters, and which causes problems in different places.

• In Windows XP, you can't drag-and-drop files from a zip file to your desktop if the total filename length is over 260 characters. No problem unzipping though, if you right-click and choose "extract" or use winzip or 7zip. Just drag-and-drop doesn't work.

• In Windows 7, if you drop long filenames onto the recycle bin, you'll be told you can't because they're too long, and do you want to skip those files or cancel the drag-and-drop.

I really wanted to fix these problems, because when these things occur, people don't blame Microsoft, they blame Magnatune, and tell us that our ZIP files are broken, and I want my customers to be happy!

So... a new test at Magnatune now identifies if the total likely size of an unzipped file will be over 240 characters (I'm building 20 characters of safety margin in).

The two most common places to drop audio files is:

Your desktop:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop

Your iTunes music directory:
c:\Users\Administrator\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media

Since the iTunes music directory is the longer name of the two, I'm adding up the total filename length of:

iTunes Directory \ + Artist name \ + Album name \ + MP3 name = total

and making sure that never goes over 240 characters.

There were about a dozen albums at Magnatune that had files that went over this limit. I've gone ahead and "fixed" those.

So... if you ever had trouble drag and dropping files out of a ZIP file on Windows, hopefully now you won't!

-john

Very high quality iTunes AAC files now at Magnatune

All the AAC audio files at Magnatune are now downloadable at very high quality.

Previously, we'd been using a quality=3 settings, which yielded audio files that were about 150 kb/second in audio quality. Here is a typical file:

Now, all Magnatune files are available at quality=7, which yields a file around 260 kb/second, and a significant boost in audio quality. These files are pretty hard to distinguish from lossless.

Now, the ZIP files of the albums encoded at this higher quality are larger, but with disk space being plentiful these days, and the stack of emails I have from people asking for high quality iTunes AAC files, I thought this move made sense.

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LOSSLESS? Speaking of lossless, I just recently figured out how to make "Apple Lossless" files, with full metadata, so this will be an alternative download format in a few months, as part of the new rewrite of Magnatune.

-john