Using a Semi-Colon ";" within Folder- and File-names? CAUTION!

[Frank de Jong]

I think we all know that it is not possible to use a Colon ":" within a Folder- or File-name.

The reason for this is that it is used for addressing a Drive-letter. C:\  D:\  etc.

I've been replacing the ":" with a ";" because Windows does accept this character within the Folder- and File-names.

So "NCIS: Los Angeles" will become "NCIS; Los Angeles".

Problem Solved. :-)

I've been using TVRename with my MEDE8ER MED500x for about 3 years by now.

It uses a harddisk (mine is 1,5 TB), which is divided into 3 partitions:

1 small Linux-partition for it's OS

1 small Linux-partition being used for the Swap-file

1 large NTSC-partition for all media-files

All my Series are stored on the MEDE8ER in a folder called \Series

I am running TVRename on a PC with Windows 7 (x64). Both my PC and the MEDE8ER are connected to a home-network.

My PC sees the Series-folder as: \\Mede8er\hdd1\Series which I have linked to the drive-letter A:\

So, instead of \\Mede8er\hdd1\Series\Bones I can use A:\Bones

I've always had 1 problem with the MEDE8ER:

Every now and then there was a problem with some random files. 

Some suddenly appeared 2 times as exact copies and some were present but when I wanted to delete them the MEDE8ER told me they were not present on the harddisk.

A typical File-system error. The only solution was to connect the MEDE8ER with a USB-cable to my PC and run CHKDSK with the repair-option. (CHKDSK does not work with network-drives)

Some month ago, after another File-system error, I suspected that perhaps there were to many files on the harddisk for the MEDE8ER to handle correctly.

I downloaded and installed Matroska Batch Merge and MKV ToolNix. (Matroska Batch Merge is a program which uses MKV ToolNix to create MKV-files)

Matroska Batch Merge takes a movie-file and looks if there is a srt-file with the same name, and then creates 1 MKV-file containing both the movie-file & srt-file. If there is no srt-file with the same name, it will also create 1 MKV-file which will contain only the movie-file.

A MKV-file is actually nothing more than a container like a ZIP or RAR file. Most of the time, the MKV-file has a smaller size than the size of the movie-file (or movie- + srt-file combined).

SO: If you've got 1000 movie-files with a srt-file for each movie-file, you've got a total of 2000 files. By using Matroska Batch Merge, and after that deleting the original processed files, you will end up with only 1000 files AND more free space on the harddisk!

However, after some time I got a File-system error again, but this time I noticed something else:

- ALL corrupted files were MKV-files!

- ALL corrupted files didn't show a movie-length!

- ALL corrupted files had a Semi-Colon in the filename!

I then took a MKV-file which showed a movie-length and inserted a Semi-Colon in it's filename. Guess what? The movie-length disappeared! After I removed the Semi-Colon the movie-length was shown again!

This strange behavior told me that the Semi-Colon must have been causing all the File-system errors. I had to find a character which I could use as replacement for a Colon and a Semi-Colon.

After some manual testing with different characters, I've chosen the ASCII-character ALT+0151 "—".

The ALT0151 is an em-dash, a dash with the length of the letter M. This character is accepted in Folder- and File-names AND it does not make the movie-length disappear. 

I've set the Preferences in TVRename to permanently change ": " (Colon + Space) and "; " (Semi-Colon + Space) to " — " (Space + ALT0151 + Space).

After I've made these changes, I haven't had one single File-system error again!

[Michael Hurwood]

Apologies to all for resurrecting a zombie post here, but I just wanted to add my two-bob's worth.

While I've never had a problem with semi-colons, I would also recommend people we wary of non-ASCII characters. So in Frank's advice above I'd say use a regular dash, not the ANSI or UNICODE special character he has recommended. The reason is to do with character sets. My files are mostly stored on a NAS box running Linux. (A Netgear ReadyNAS as it happens, but the specifics are not that important here.) Now 99% I never have a problem, but twice I have run into problems and they were both to do with foreign/special characters like "é".

In the first case I ran into problems getting pyTivo running on the box to read folders with non-ASCII characters. I tried a dozen different character set workarounds/settings and never got a perfect solution. But TiVo is now dead in Australia so that problem has in essence gone away for me.

The second situation I ran into was running RSync to backup my data from the NAS box to another computer. There the foreign/special characters got translated into UTF-8 or something and ended up as two characters instead of one, so when at one point I had to copy back from that backup TVRename complained that the folders weren't where it was expecting them.

Anyway, I know it shouldn't be necessary in this day and age, but basically if you're dealing with multiple systems, like Windows/Linux/Mac or Embedded Linux on Media Players like Frank above, I'd recommend sticking to pure ASCII as much as possible as it might save you some grief.

Cheers,

Michael