Character Replacement

[MouseAT]

Old versions of dbPowerAMP always had the ability to replace illegal characters in file names with alternatives. I generally prefer to remove illegal characters (otherwise I end up with stupid upside down question marks and the like in file names), but I can't find the option to configure character replacement in V12. has it been removed, or am I just not looking hard enough?

[Spoon]

We automatically remove the illegal chars and replace with the nearest, so ? will become upside down ?.

[MouseAT]

See, that's the problem. I don't want to replace illegal characters, I want to remove them outright. Otherwise the file names just look ridiculous.

[dizwell]

Seconded.

I thought I remembered version 11.5 having this capability, but it could have been a Linux-based music ripper I am thinking of. Whichever, it had a table of substitution characters, with things like ¿ being default replacement for ? -but if you wanted to just remove it or propose some other substitution character, you could do so easily enough.

Right now, I have file names like:

11 - Alas! Where was I¿ Dead¿.wma ....and
22 - What¿ Do you know me then¿.wma

...which might be OK if you're Spanish, but doesn't look good to me!

A wishlist item, I guess...

[Wayne]

dMC 11.5 definitely has this feature

[MouseAT]

dMC 11.5 definitely has this feature

I know that, as I used to change the setting in 11.5. Now I've got the wonderful all singing all dancing version version 12, but for all its wonderful features, it takes me longer now to rip, as I've got to go back through and 'correct' all the file names by hand.

[dizwell]

I'll say it before someone else does -though remember I'm on your side and want this feature back in dMC!

MP3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) will strip anything out of tags and filenames, so long as you are a dab hand at regular expressions (which I'm not, and why I want this as an editable table in dMC!).

[MouseAT]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to look into that program. It's been a while since I last used regular expressions, but I'm sure I'll be able to put something together.

[Spoon]

We will endeavour to make this option re-appear for R13.

[MouseAT]

We will endeavour to make this option re-appear for R13.

OK, thanks Spoon. It's a great program, light years ahead of anything else I've ever used, and the only CD ripper that's ever caused me to part with money :D

I'll just have to spend an hour or so working on a little program to recursively search my music directories and rename anything with the special characters in them.

Just for the record, any chance you can post a list of the special characters that dbPowerAmp replaces so that I know what I need to search for and 'correct'?

[Spoon]

wchar_t DefaultReplace[] = { '"', '\'',
'>', 187, // '»'
'<', 171, // '«'
'?', 191, // '¿'
':', ';',
'\\', '-',
'/', '-',
'*', '-',
'|', '-',
'\0', '\0'}; // NULL TERM

[kfal]

We will endeavour to make this option re-appear for R13.

Is this still the plan?

Alternatively and for my purposes actually the best option would be to allow creating ascii file names only. I have the problem with the currently (12.3) generated filenames that I can't backup to DVD because of the there illegal characters. They have also proven to cause problems with Linux file systems.

An additional question in this context, since I have already created more than 4000 files, is there a utility other than MP3tag which (recursively) converts file and directory names to ascii?

[Spoon]

Yes, should be back in R13