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[moongate]

Today I tried to use MC 12 with my video collection for the first time.
I wanted to import the whole directory as I was used to with my music files.

Most of the file were imported without any filename or description at all.

So I marked all imported files and tried the function "fill properties from filename" and [Filename] as the filename.

It turned out that MC 12 is not able to import filenames longer than 8 Characters. Can this be true? I remember this restriction from DOS times but with windows applications? no way!

All I can say is that MC 12 does not display any kind of file description for videos with a name longer 8 and that is too short.
A name like video-200.wmv would already be too long and instead of the name there is nothing displayed to be able to identify the clip.

Any suggestions or is this an issue that needs to be patched?

Any hints welcome

Moongate

[glynor]

MC certainly supports filenames far longer than 8 characters.  The [Name] and other fields can be of any arbitrary length (I'm sure there actually is a max but it's very high -- I've never hit any maximum).

Perhaps it would help if you described exactly step-by-step what you did to import your video files, with examples.

There is no standard internal file tag format for most video file types.  MC will try to use whatever it finds, but these are often not accurate for video files (even ones I encode I don't generally embed the proper tags inside the files at encode time).  MC uses the Filename as the [Name] tag when you import them usually, unless it finds a field in a tag inside the file that should be used instead.  If you want to fill the [Name] field inside MC with the contents of the filename, you simply select the files you want to change and use the Fill Properties from Filename tool.  Put a check in the filename box and put [Name] in the textbox.  This tells MC to look at the filename and fill the [Name] tag with the contents of what was in the filename.  So, if you had a Video file called Saving Private Ryan.avi and you want MC to "call it" (which means you want the [Name] field to be) "Saving Private Ryan", then you'd just put [Name] in that filename box in the Fill Properties from Filename tool.

You can use this tool to fill multiple fields all at once.  So, for example, if you had a file called:

Pearl Jam - Ten - 09 - Garden.mp3

You could put this in the Fill Properties from Filename tool:

[Artist] - [Album] - [Track #] - [Name]

And it would fill all those fields for you.

If you put [Filename] in the filename box, then it would try to change the Filename (which is the [Filename] field) to match the current filename.    That doesn't make any sense!  You wouldn't want to change the filename to the filename!  It already IS the filename.  I'm not sure WHAT would happen in this case, but it might not be good, because if you change the contents of the [Filename] tag inside MC, it actually moves and renames the file... 

If you indeed did do this, I hope nothing bad happened!

[rjm]

Confirming that the maximum file name length is a limited by Windows and not MC. I run into it all the time. Windows limits the total combined length of all nested directory names plus the file name to something like 256 characters.

[Alex B]

As a test I just imported about 300 video files of various formats to a new empty MC12 library. All files imported using the standard Windows XP long file name, which can be seen in the Filename field.
Also, the name field was correctly populated with the long filenames, except my few wmv files, which have different Name values in the Windows Media tags. These files have correctly the tagged Name values.

Windows Media Video is the only video file format that supports physical file tags. I wonder if this has something to do with moongate's problem. The example filename seems to be ".wmv".

[glynor]

My MKV files regularly import and fill the [Name] tag with the contents of the in-file "Title" tag, so WMV isn't the only file format that supports tags in MC...

[Alex B]

My MKV files regularly import and fill the [Name] tag with the contents of the in-file "Title" tag, so WMV isn't the only file format that supports tags in MC...

Interesting. J River has not mentioned anything about expanding the tag reading support. Possibly this works similarly like the limited MP4 tag reader that has been used for a long time. Yaobing, can you provide any details?

In any case, I think wmv is the only video file format that supports writing physical file tags. MC uses the same Windows Media tagging system that is used with wma audio files.

[Yaobing]

Windows Media files are analyzed through our WM plugin. We try to get whatever tag info from the file. Other DirectShow files are analyzed differently (in JRWorker), but the tagging portion maybe similar. We use Microsoft's IAMMediaContent interface to read a few tag data. I know for sure RealMedia files use this interface. Other files may do too (I do not have MKV files, so I am not sure if their tags are read this way, most likely they are).

The IAMMediaContent has a field called  "Title". Some files have the track name in it. Real files have three tag fields in it: Name/Album/Genre. We look for "/" and separate them out. Other fields available through this interface are: "AuthorName" (which we treat as "Artist"), "Rating" and "Copyright".