Can't use "/" in track names when exporting multiple

[foxylady]

I received an Ion USB turntable as a Christmas gift, along with a copy of Audacity, and have been busily copying my extensive vinyl collection on my PC with Windows XP.

I got as far as "B" for "Bach", and had set up track labelling according to track name as listed on the album cover - "01 Overture", "02 Rondo", etc.

Each time I tried to "Export Multiple" to MP3, the process was aborted, with the message "Unable to open target file for writing".

Inspection of the target directory revealed that only three tracks had been exported, and the first missing track was "04 Bourree I/II".

Fixing this by changing the track name to "04 Bourree", I came across the same problem with "10 Gavotte I/II", and fixed it in the same way.

I presume that Audacity is regarding the "/" character as a directory separator, and is trying to save a file called "II.mp3" in a subdirectory called "04 Bourree I".

There appears to be no mention in the manual of a restricted range of characters allowed in the track labels.

My Questions:

1. Is my interpretation correct?
2. If so, shouldn't disallowed characters be trapped by the "Export Multiple"? (I suppose I'm asking for the forum's support for this as a Request For Change).
3. Shouldn't the error message have been more explicit? I have some years of experience with *nix as well as Windows, and know about "" and "/", but not all users (particularly of USB turntables) will have submitted themselves to this sort of torture.
4. Would it be possible to improve the editing of track labels to include cut & paste? I like to record tracks in the form "Artist - AlbumName - nn TrackName" and it would be helpful to be able to paste "Artist - AlbumName - " into each track label as I go, appending the unique track number and name for each label. (this is also a Request For Change).

[waxcylinder]

1. yes
2. would have been good - Audacity has a number of areas where error reporting is por, confusing or lacking
3. as above
4. you can do this in the Beta version of the software - 1.3.x where label handling is much improved.

Note that if you have installed Audacity from the CD that came with your ION, my betting is that you have version 1.2.3 which is a old release (which IIRC has memory leak issues). At the very least you should down load the latest version 1.2.6 from the Audacity site http://audacityteam.org/ - or even 1.3.4 (I ran an ION on 1.3 very successfully).

WC

[foxylady]

Thanks, WC.

My version of Audacity (as supplied by Ion) is 1.2.6, so obviously Ion Turntables have been flying off the shelves!

In general, I don't try beta versions until I'm thoroughly familiar with the latest stable version, as it's hard to know whether a fault is due to my lack of experience or to an "undocumented feature". In this case, I'd really like to have improved label editing, so I'll take the plunge.

Foxylady

[waxcylinder]

Foxylady,

I now use 1.3 all the time and it has proved eminently stable and usable for LP transcription and repair - and despite the "unstable" label that this releases has - the latest versions of 1.3 are in fact pretty stable now. 1.4 is currently being worked on (based on 1.3.5) and should be released soonish.

Note that you can have both 1.2 and 1.3 on your computer at the same time, but don't try running them both at the same time. Note carefully too that Audacity projects created in 1.2 can be opened in 1.3 (Audacity will warn you - but the project should normally open) - BUT once a project has been opened or created in 1.3 it can never be opened again in 1.2.

In addition to better label handling in 1.3 you will also get a very useful Effect called Repair which allows you to fix up to 128 sound samples (good for the occasional click/pop). You do need to zoom in to use it effectively. Though for clicks and Pops I now use an additional piece of software called ClickRepair - see this thread http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1994 - if you have records with lots of clicks and pops it could save you a lot of time.

BTW 1.3.4 is the latest version for PC's - if you have a MAC you will need to consult the MAC part of the forum.

Have fun with your transcription project.

WC

[kozikowski]

Slash marks cause problems in all three computer platforms, and yes, the system sees them as directory/folder separators. You should probably stay away from most punctuation marks in filenames as a general practice. There is an unfortunate problem of becoming accustomed to your particular system and getting a nasty shock when you have to push files to somebody else.

Not all file systems support spaces in the filenames and periods can mean things, too. Some systems are sensitive to upper and lower case. If you post pianoRecital.wav to your web site but program the HTML language to look for Pianorecital.wav, most web services will lose the file.

Macs try really hard to isolate the users from all this craziness and they actually backslid a little when they went from OS-9 to OS-X. I think you can use slash marks in OS-9.

Not any more.

Koz

[foxylady]

I suppose I was looking for the developers to create a lowest-common-denominator filename from the track labels I put in.

Clearly, track labels from 1950s vinyl recordings weren't created with filename conventions in mind, and if a project is being saved as a project (rather than splitting it up into individual tracks), there's no problem with the character set used in the track labels.

I've learned my lesson from this exercise, but others who enter "Bourree I/II" straight from the record label into the track label in Audacity may take a while to work out what's going wrong when "Unable to open target file for writing" comes up, without an indication of what might be wrong.

I expect that someone somewhere has a list of all characters which might cause problems in filenames, which could be used to check filenames at the beginning of the "Export Multiple" process, and put up a warning (preferably with a "don't warn me about this again" tick-box). This might even have to include the "8.3" convention used by MSDOS (and CP/M!), but I think it's unlikely that there are many music players that are so restricted.

The user could then go back and change offending labels and try again, but I think there should also be the ability to get the tracks copied out using the %20 technique you see used for URLs which contain space characters.

Since I'm only using Audacity to transcribe my own vinyl collection I don't foresee any difficulty in moving my mp3s to other operating systems (he said, sanctimoniously!).

foxylady

[kozikowski]

It's not that you always run into troubles or create damage, but there is an easy way, and then there is everything else. It didn't take many Mac files called Todays Layoff From Avid 2.wav round trip to the Land of Linux to reveal that a pain in the butt that was--not going up to the Linux machines, that's two key clicks in Fetch, but coming back in manual FTP. The Linux folks were quite firm about filename conventions. I believe they mentioned damaging internal organs if we didn't pay attention.

I suspect if you were designing Audacity for only one platform, you could put filename traps in, but you're not. Quick, what happens in Linux when you save two projects, one Piano and one piano? What happens in Windows?

I think we're all happy if the programmers can keep up with basic audio handling in the face of major Operating System changes and upgrades. There is a place to post program changes and suggestions.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=20

I believe underline and dash are the only two universally acceptable characters. The jury is out on the "+" character. Period is close, but you can get into very serious trouble by putting one of those in the wrong place.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

Foxylady: "I expect that someone somewhere has a list of all characters which might cause problems in filenames, which could be used to check filenames at the beginning of the "Export Multiple" process, and put up a warning (preferably with a "don't warn me about this again" tick-box)."

Just to be clear, these nine characters cannot be used in file names on Windows:

/ : * ? " < > |

As I understand it, only the colon is actually illegal on Mac and slashes are allowed but converted internally by the system. Despite that I think Audacity does throw a warning on Mac when you use either slash in "Export Multiple".

On Windows, all the above characters are intended to give a "cannot export audio to" error when using export multiple, but Foxylady has pointed out that ":" does not, and just allows export to produce an empty file. We'll look into that. Also in the Beta only, I see that some formats e.g. MP3 allow the export to produce an empty file when there is any illegal character in the label, instead of throwing the intended error. Again, we'll look into it.

As for the error message itself , the one you get that should stop the export occurring is "Cannot export audio to <name of file>". I agree it's not ideally specific, but there might be other reasons you cannot export apart from the character in the label, e.g. you might be exporting to a disconnected network drive. I'll see if I can get the wording changed to something that suggests a character in the label might be at fault, but as Koz says this is a cross platform program so we can't be ideally specific. The problem of illegal characters with export multiple is documented at
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ate_tracks

but it might be worth having a FAQ for it as the issue does of course come up with users. We'll see.

Gale

[Gale Andrews]

As for the error message itself...I agree it's not ideally specific...I'll see if I can get the wording changed to something that suggests a character in the label might be at fault...

Well in the end we decided to overhaul the whole export multiple regime and in 1.3.5 I think you'll find it much improved. Labels and track names are now scanned for system-illegal characters before export multiple starts. If you input any illegal characters you'll get a dialogue for each instance that offers to replace the illegal character with an underscore, but you can rename it to what you like. Then you'll get an ID3 tag dialogue for each file, and then export should proceed properly and unattended for all the files. All formats not just MP3 will have a metadata tag dialogue for each file (we'll probably add a checkbox to the export multiple dialogue so you can stop the tag dialogues coming up if required).


Gale