Maximum file name in PT

[quadraphonics]

What is the maximum length that a clip or session can be in Pro Tools 2019.x including file path?

I remember this used to be 128 in the olden days. Does that still apply?

Thanks,

[Frank Kruse]

I think a sound file can have 255 characters on HFS+ (probably incl. the extension but not sure about that).

File paths can be way longer. 1024bytes on OSX I think.
F.

[epm]

I've experienced weird behavior when the filepath of a video file is greater than 128 characters. (skipping frames, etc) i reached out to an avid support person but never got a satisfactory response.

[Frank Kruse]

PT will cap names automatically when you try to name a session or a file/clip inside PT with too many characters so it should not create files that are not cross-compatible with Windows.
Besides that there were some PT versions that would not play videos that contained umlauts and other non-ASCII characters in the path name but that was a bug now fixed. Maybe you saw that?

F.

[epm]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

PT will cap names automatically when you try to name a session or a file/clip inside PT with too many characters so it should not create files that are not cross-compatible with Windows.
Besides that there were some PT versions that would not play videos that contained umlauts and other non-ASCII characters in the path name but that was a bug now fixed. Maybe you saw that?

F.

Nah, it's not non-ASCII characters, just path length. I've done pretty extensive testing on it and it's on every Mac system i can get my hands on (don't have access to a windows PT rig)

Give it a shot, make several nested folders with long names that result in an absolute filepath greater than 128 characters and import the video file, PT will either just freak out, or you'll get non-sequential video frames playing, or the video engine sometimes just crashes too.


We've been just working around it, but it's very annoying because we have specific folder and file naming conventions to keep track of when and from who elements are received from and it just breaks when the filepath gets too long.

[quadraphonics]

Thank you Frank and Evan.

This has inspired me to do a bit of testing

Pro Tools seems to handle clip/file names that are 242 character - regardless of file path length.

Frank, while we deal with foreign(to us) territories, everything will be entered with the English language set.

I was able to verify that Pro Tools will not deal well with videos that have file paths that exceed 240 characters in length. I was able to get videos with file paths that exceed 128 characters to play, but I didn't test extensively.

Is there any documentation from Pro Tools that either of you know of that outlines any of this?

Thanks,

[epm]

Originally Posted by quadraphonics

Thank you Frank and Evan.

This has inspired me to do a bit of testing

Pro Tools seems to handle clip/file names that are 242 character - regardless of file path length.

Frank, while we deal with foreign(to us) territories, everything will be entered with the English language set.

I was able to verify that Pro Tools will not deal well with videos that have file paths that exceed 240 characters in length. I was able to get videos with file paths that exceed 128 characters to play, but I didn't test extensively.

Is there any documentation from Pro Tools that either of you know of that outlines any of this?

Thanks,

yes, it's 240 character file path, not 128 i just misspoke(typed). I don't know of any limitations laid out in Pro Tools documentation that would/should cause that.

[Frank Kruse]

Name length is mentioned somewhere in the PT reference guide. Try a search there. The 1024 bytes for the path length is an OSX thing, which could differ from what PT can do so take that with a grain of salt ;-)

For OSX and other (*IX systems)
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1785953

255 for individual file/folder name, with the path being a total of 1024 characters, with all the "/" and path prefix to a given file.

ProTools internal maximum might differ of course...