MediaMonkey ignores dots in folder names

[BunnyGandhi]

I almost got a fing heart attack here...

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Story time (context):
Tried to rename a video in MediaMonkey. After renaming MediaMonkey is like "Video? What video? There is no video with that name..." so I got into the directory and sure enough - it's fing GONE. And it was one of those unrecoverable "cannot just redownload it from youtube" personal clips.

Now luckily ever since Apple introduced itunes and the first version of that software deleted a lot of people's local music files without warning while autotagging/foldering/naming them I make backups before touching any software that messes with my files. So I could easily recover it. My heart still sank.

Now that I had recovered I wanted to screenrecord this behaviour to make a post about MediaMonkey deleting files on rename. While doing so I noticed a new folder on the drive where my media is. Same name as the one my media is in minus the . at the start.

I use . or .. as a way to get certain folders or files to the front of alphabetical sorting.
This way, sorted from A-Z, ".Sports" will appear before "Cute cat videos", allowing me to have a few very important folders in front of the bulk of other folders that I want sorted alphabetically.
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So the problem is that MediaMonkey straight up ignores certain elements in folder names.

So when you rename files in those folders it will recreate the entire folder structure from a point where no such issue exists and put the single file lonelily in there.

Example:
1. There is a file I want to rename.
D:\Media\Movies\.Favourites\.Tarrantino\Kill Bill pt1.mp4

2. I tell MediaMonkey to rename the file to "Kill Bill vol. 1.mp4"

3. MediaMonkey
a) renames the file
b) creates a new directory D:\Media\Movies\Favourites\Tarrantino\
c) puts the file in that directory

While this is better than straight up deleting my precious files, it's still a very stupid behaviour and poses an actual issue to me right now. I kinda struggle to understand why it would even do this.

But yea. I honestly think you should look into this. Meanwhile I guess I'll have to go an excessively impractical route and handle the metadata of my files in MediaMonkey while handling the filenames in the default explorer. Great


Version: 5.0.4.2692

[Lowlander]

This is by design as this creates hidden files/folders on Linux systems, which many users use when using a NAS for file storage.

Although not recommended, you can change this yourself in the [FilenameMappings] section of the MediaMonkey.ini.

[BunnyGandhi]

This is by design as this creates hidden files/folders on Linux systems, which many users use when using a NAS for file storage.

Although not recommended, you can change this yourself in the [FilenameMappings] section of the MediaMonkey.ini.

I may want to do that. Could you give me a short hint on why it is not recommended? This would be a massive boon to my current undertaking.

And since we're apparently a couple hours apart it'd be cool if you'd include which setting to change how to do that. I'm looking through it right now but in case I don't find it, it'd be nice if I didn't have to wait another day for each of us to go through our 24h cycles to be awake


edit: Didn't find any line that looks like it'd be responsible for ignoring .s

An alternative solution to a possibly problematic change in the .ini would be to replace the . with something else. It'd have to be some letter/sign that gets sorted ahead of 0-9 and A and does not clash with MediaMonkey.

Would MediaMonkey treat + normally?

[Barry4679]

Could you give me a short hint on why it is not recommended?

My guess is because:

• it is not a supported part of mainstream MediaMonkey; it may not work. It is not even documented.

• It is more complex than you think ... that section of the ini file is just a list ascii character pairs, there is no clear option that you can set

• the period is a reserved character in Linux file names, and most NAS units use a Linux OS and file system .. there may well be parts of MM that are not expecting folders with name having embedded periods

• it was not a serious suggestion aimed at helping you AFAICS ... as you have noted, the suggestion and the link are highly unlikely to be actionable by yourself, nor anyone else on this forum

This would be a massive boon to my current undertaking.

I would suggest that you have better options.

• Firstly you could prefix those file names with something that is not a reserved character. Something like an underscore (_) or a crosshatch ... both of those will force the file name to the top of the list.

• Or you could browse using metadata, rather than file name.
  I don't use MM for videos, but in music I would never browse tracks by file name ... it is always by Album, or track name, etc.

I haven't verified the behaviour that you are reporting.
He says that the behaviour is by design, but in my view if that is the case, it is a very bad design.
If you tell MM to rename a file, and does the rename using a modified file name, without warning you ==> that is a bug.
It should refuse the request, saying the proposed new file name is invalid.

[BunnyGandhi]

I just edited my last reply while you posted yours.

Basically arriving at a similar conclusion to exchange the prefix with a sign that does not clash with MediaMonkey (+seems like an intuitive choice for priorization). It'd be nice to get confirmation on whether + works or I'd have to do testing myself later.

I agree with you that the behaviour - even if intended - seems like a bad choice. Apart from being confusing as hell I don't see why . being used to make folders invisible in Linux would be an argument for this behaviour. If I make my folders/files invisible there is a good reason for that and I wouldn't want MediaMonkey to drag it into the light, no?

As for not sorting by file name - it's just how I historically did it in the Windows Explorer. It's easy, it's default, it's not dependant on extra Software, it works. While I can think about different approaches to sort stuff within MediaMonkey, I'll definitely still keep things sortable by file name regardless. It just seems like something that works fundamentally well. If my system crashes and needs a fresh install or if I plug my external into a different PC everything will be easily navigateable with the standard Windows Explorer.

[Lowlander]

When MediaMonkey renames folders/files and the become invisible on Linux users can no longer find them. This is a serious issue, thus it's prevented. They're reserved characters on the Linux OS system, similar to how you can't use \ in folder/filenames on Windows as it would create folders.

[BunnyGandhi]

When MediaMonkey renames folders/files and the become invisible on Linux users can no longer find them. This is a serious issue, thus it's prevented. They're reserved characters on the Linux OS system, similar to how you can't use \ in folder/filenames on Windows as it would create folders.

I understand that it might be inconvenient if something without a . gets renamed to something with a .

But if my files already have a . - if I maybe WANT my folder to be invisible - it makes no sense at all to change it, no?

From what I gather you want to make sure files/folders don't vanish by the user accidentally or unwittingly adding a . and making them invisible. - FAIR

But practically you make it impossible for users who already intentionally have such a folder/file structure to manage their media in there.

. Apparently also excludes folders from search in Windows. Which might be something I want to do with guilty pleasures, clips of sexual encounters or porn. It's quite literally impossible to manage media in such files with MediaMonkey the way it works now.

I have switched to using +s to change the sorting order of my files/folders now and it seems to work, but generally maybe you want to look into... a setting with a warning or making this behaviour exclusive for the Linux client. Just a thought.