Bug in Nero 6 handling of long filenames

[cfitz]

First, the good news. There is a new option on the ISO tab to "Relax Joliet Restrictions - Allow more than 64 characters for Joliet names" Using this option I was able to burn filenames of up to 108 characters total (including the extension).

Now, the bad news. Nero doesn't warn you when it needs to truncate one of these extra-long filenames. For example, when I entered a 128-character long filename, Nero quitely truncated it to 108 characters. This might be somewhat excusable in the situation where one has chosen to relax the Joliet restrictions - if you dare to go over the standard, what you get isn't guaranteed.

However, an unequivocal problem is that Nero doesn't warn you even when you don't relax Joliet restrictions. In this case Nero quietly truncated my 128-character filename to 64 characters. Nero 5.5 at least warned you when it was truncating filenames (both by changing the font in the compilation display to italics and by displaying a pop-up warning box), and told what files were being truncated.

cfitz

[dolphinius_rex]

here's a question for you, when Nero truncate's the file length, does it then fail the verification process since the burned file is now different from the original? this might explain some of the other problems people have been having.

[cfitz]

It verifies successfully. Presumably it uses the same algorithm to truncate the names of the files when verifying that it uses when writing, so that the files still match up.

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

only 108! darn!
why not more???

[cfitz]

I'm not sure. Using the NTFS filesystem in Windows 2000, I was able to make a file name 254 characters long on the hard disk. That was in the root folder. The limit gets shorter as you put in subdirectories, since the subdirectories count as part of the overall path limit.

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

I'm not sure. Using the NTFS filesystem in Windows 2000, I was able to make a file name 254 characters long on the hard disk. That was in the root folder. The limit gets shorter as you put in subdirectories, since the subdirectories count as part of the overall path limit.

cfitz

LOL
i've plenty of files with long names located in say:
D:\Documents and Settings\xxx\My Documents\Teaching\xxx\xxx\xxx
etc.

[cfitz]

NTFS supports filenames with a length up to 255 characters. There are some Windows APIs that, in their Unicode variants, can support paths of up to around 32,000 characters total when specified using UNC names, but each component in the path (filename, foldername, etc.) must be at most 255 characters. In addition, as far as I know Windows Explorer doesn't support these super-long paths. At least it doesn't on my copy of Windows 2000. Maybe Explorer is smarter on XP. What is the total path length of your long files?

By the way, I found that Explorer doesn't warn you about truncation in some cases as well. For example, when I take that 254-character long filename file and copy and paste it into a different directory, Explorer says "no can do - filename is too long". But when I copy and paste into the same directory as the original file, windows prepends the "Copy of" piece and quietly truncates enough of the remaining filename to make room for the "Copy of" prefix. Sigh...

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

What is the total path length of your long files?

dunno...i guess i never made it to 255 chars total.

By the way, I found that Explorer doesn't warn you about truncation in some cases as well. For example, when I take that 254-character long filename file and copy and paste it into a different directory, Explorer says "no can do - filename is too long". But when I copy and paste into the same directory as the original file, windows prepends the "Copy of" piece and quietly truncates enough of the remaining filename to make room for the "Copy of" prefix. Sigh...

Sigh indeed...typical windows fu$#@%$@#%!#%$!@%!!!!!!!!! behaviour.

[ric]

That's funny. Nero always warns me if the filenames are too long, although it doesn't give you an opportunity to manually change the filenames and I believe if you cancel so you can manually change them in the layout, they're already truncated so you have to start a new layout, add the files again, then change them. I believe files that are italicized are ones that will be truncated.

Windows Explorer XP supports a total of 255 characters for the filename, including the path. I've definitely encountered problems when trying to copy files with long names to subfolders, as the lower you get in the folder tree, the less space you have left for the actual filename.

As far as I can tell with Nero, relaxing the joliet format allows you up to 255 characters including the path. However, it still only allows 108 characters for the filename itself (excluding the path), even if the total length of the path + filename are under 255 characters. It would really be nice if Ahead would further relax this so that path + filename can be up to 255 characters, with no other restriction on filename. This would make Nero completely compatible with Windows Explorer and satisfy the majority of users. I think they should also allow volume names greater than 16 characters and allow all valid filename characters.

At the moment I use Stomp RecordNow Max when I need to burn long filenames. It has a mode called "iso level2 long" which supports filenames up to 212 characters (even if path + filename > 255 !) and supports 32 or 64 (can't remember which) characters in the volume name.

Ric

[cfitz]

That's funny. Nero always warns me if the filenames are too long, although it doesn't give you an opportunity to manually change the filenames and I believe if you cancel so you can manually change them in the layout, they're already truncated so you have to start a new layout, add the files again, then change them. I believe files that are italicized are ones that will be truncated.

Nero 5.5 or Nero 6? What you describe is what I am used to seeing in 5.5, but what Nero 6 doesn't do. Hence, the bug in 6.

cfitz

[wonderwrench]

why would you need a file name that long ? just wondering

[Inertia]

why would you need a file name that long ? just wondering

It's an Accessibility accommodation for stuttering typists.

[cfitz]

LLLlllLlLLllLLOooOOoOOoOoLlllLLLllLlLL

cfitz