[Black_MDK]

i tried to upload all my music to xbox but i learned the hard way that there are certain limitation to the file names that xbox will accept. i noticed that some of the non english characters either don’t display properly or even crash the ftp upload. same goes for commas in file names and limit to the length of file name. i looked around to see if anybody wrote any utility to help find and rename files before upload but i could not find anything. is there any such utility and if not is there any interest for such utility to be written. it might not be problem for most users but i have some 60gb of music that i would like to upload to the xbox and it would be very hard to go trough every single file. i already wrote something similar because my mp3 player in car cannot show non english characters and crashes badly when there is non mp3 file present on the disk (mainly stupid windows thumbs.db).

[jmarshall]

the xbmc ftp server can do it for you, up to a point.

the only thing it can't handle is transfering folders where they have long names, as the server will rename the folder, and most clients will then request the working dir and compare to the folder name (which will have been truncated) so it fails.

for just long files it's no issue.

and yes, there are ftp apps for windows about that do the renaming - try xbox-scene.com

cheers,
jonathan

[Black_MDK]

i did noticed that xbmc ftp server simply truncates file names which is fine in some cases but when the files have same 40 caracters at beginig (like artist-album-songname) of file only first file can be copied. i could not find app that will deal with this in any way. and there is still problem with replacing the non english caracters and comas. i think i'll go ahed and make something that will do this for me.

[Nuka1195]

this may not be an option for you, but importing your songs into itunes renames them to i think 40 characters.

[SydneyGuy]

just leave the files on your pc and share the top level folder, eg c:\mp3 then create a bookmark in xbmc that points to that share. do it again for movies, tv shows etc. this works well for me and the filenames can be anything that your pc operating system allows.

[Black_MDK]

i thought that whole idea behind big hard drive and xbmc is not to have files on pc. i sold my media pc in favor of xbmc.

[jiz_king]

there are several mp3 renamers already written specifically for xbox users. see xboxify renamex etc. there is also a specific mp3 renamer. in my experience they are all a bit unstable, but usable.

have a sniff around the usual place and try a few before writing your own.

[SydneyGuy]

i thought that whole idea behind big hard drive and xbmc is not to have files on pc. i sold my media pc in favor of  xbmc.

a big hard disk in the xbox is good (i have 250gb in mine).  i have about 100gb of games on that.   i do store some movies/tv shows on it as well but i find having most of the video and all of my music stored on my server pc is a better alternative as the pc can serve the files out to other places around the house apart from just the xbox.  apart from anything else it gets around the problem of the 32 character filenames which way too short for most tv shows and music which is the subject of this thread.

[Black_MDK]

you do have a point there but i would like to stay clear of pc. i see xbox as good media server, instant on cheaper and quieter then pc. like i said i sold my media pc already. i'm making good progrees on my utility and it will be finished today if there is intrest i'll post the download link

[Loto_Bak]

just fyi, limitations are

4096 files/directories per directory
40 character limit

[spiff]

42 chars