Rockbox and long file names?

[jvhc]

Hi

Recently I added Illinois by Sufjan Stevens to my gigabeat.

It played fine until recently, when it loads the song, but gets stuck on 0:00 and doesn't start playing. I can fast foward into anywhere in the song, but it still doesn't play.

I haven't noticed this hapenning with any other files yet, and i'm wondering whether it's because the file names are so long.

E.g:

"They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!"

They're not all this long, but they're longer than most song titles.

I've tried deleting the folder and transfering it across to the gigabeat again, but it doesn't make any difference.

It's only certain songs that don't play, half of the songs play fine.


Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[soap]

FAT32 has a path limit of 255 characters.  This is including directory names, file name, and extension.
Some programs seem to have an almost magical ability to break this, and create files which break the limit, and are unusable by any other program.
Perhaps this is your problem?

[jvhc]

hmm I don't think it's that, cos they're not as long as 255 characters..

I don't know why, it just doesn't like anything by Sufjan Stevens  

I just ripped the cd again in different settings and file names but it still won't play..

[saratoga]

How did you rip them?

[jvhc]

Ahhhh I think i've sorted it now.

I ripped them using Windows media player.

I think it was because I had 'cache disk' on. As soon as I turned it off they worked. I also shortened the file names loads just in case.

Hmm, any idea why cache disk had that effect?!

Thanks!

[saratoga]

Ahhhh I think i've sorted it now.

I ripped them using Windows media player.

I think it was because I had 'cache disk' on. As soon as I turned it off they worked. I also shortened the file names loads just in case.

Hmm, any idea why cache disk had that effect?!

Thanks!

Disk cache means you must unmount your drive before unplugging it otherwise files will not be copied over correctly.  Otherwise it has no effect.

[jvhc]

sorry? unmount?  

[ColdSphinx]

Let me try to explain "unmount":
disconnect the drive
or for windows users "Safety remove".

[jvhc]

Oh, yeah, I always safely remove it.

Although I didn't know it made that much difference..

[Yotto]

If you just plug the device in to charge it and it happens to be in USB mode, then just unplugging it doesn't do a thing (Well, Windows might be accessing the drive without your knowledge or something I guess).  However, when you copy files to the device, they don't actually get written right away so if you unplug without unmounting (ejecting, safely removing, whatever) you will (at best) lose some data or (at worst) corrupt the file system entries for those files.

[psycho_maniac]

Since the problem is solved it is safe to post this off topic thought. With the original firmware on my h120. I could only have 32 characters. Just like when you burn a cd. Thanks to rockbox I never have this problem anymore

[soap]

Ahhhh I think i've sorted it now.

I ripped them using Windows media player.

I think it was because I had 'cache disk' on.

Where is this "cache disk" setting?

[jvhc]

Oh, it's actually called 'Directory Cache', my bad.

Settings --> General Settings --> System --> Disk --> Directory Cache --> Yes/No.

[jvhc]

Okay, so now I think I have a better idea of what the problem is.

What happens is when I load some music onto the Gigabeat, then disconnect the cable (safely) then try to play the music I just loaded on, it doesn't play. It stays put on 'LOADING'. I have to turn the battery switch off and on again to restart the player. I can't imagine this is any good for the disk, so is there something I'm doing wrong - like should I be switching off disk cache before loading music on?

Thanks.