ERROR when playing protected WMA files in Hoster

[gduns - with the Lord]

SUGGESTION,
When I started using media player, and Put them in the default directory like you guys did. But I wanted to be able to use them in my laptop also. so I put them in a directory off the root called music. so the path would now be C:\Music\Aaron Neville\The Very Best of Aaron Neville\Song.wma
In windows media player it didnt change anything as the playlist goes back one directory and looks forward.

I put tham on a usb drive, and also put it in the root. on my laptop I had it search for media files, and gave it the path. it found all the playlists, music, and icons etc. and they all work well that way.

[MTUSUPPORT]

This makes since, the .wma file that Dlc_Drummer sent me I copied into a folder named D:\Songlist\WMA file that Won't play in Hoster\Ain't No Sunshine Lean on Me- The Best of Bill Withers.wma and it played fine.

This could be the issue is that the path that Microsoft allows the Dialog to go down is limited to a certain number of characters.

[jlc_drummer]

It is the number of characters rather than sub directories. I put a new folder on my C drive and copied a song to it, so it was C:/(very long folder name)/song.wma and it triggered the ERROR message in Hoster. Plays fine in WMP 10.

[gduns - with the Lord]

Yes, you are limited to 256 characters, including spaces. But I also noticed an Illegal character in the path name a "." is not allowed in a path name. only as in a filename

C:\Documents and Settings\Wayne.DESKTOP\My Documents\WMA Songs\My Music\Aaron Neville\The Very Best of Aaron Neville\Song.wma

[S. Parks]

That all sounds fine, but why is it then that some files out of the same directory will play, and others will not?

[Wayne White]

The period was assigned to the name by windows & it is not a problem. Songs with short song names, a short artist name & a short album name do play in the original directory. I agree there may be some characters that do cause a problem with specific songs, but, as S Parks indicates, if the period in the filename was a problem, none of my songs would play.

Windows Media Player & Mix Meister both find every song on my hard drive so any limitation that is not built into Hoster has to be from within the Windows dialog box being used for the lookup. I moved my entire directory (very simply in less than 5 minutes) to My Music (Under the Root Drive). This eliminated 4 sub-directory's. Once you get through the Folders for Artist Name & Album Name, the Track #, Artist Name & Album Name are also appended to the Song Title. This is also how they show up in Explorer. You've Made Me So Very Happy is still 157 characters long and still won't play.. When I shorten the Name to just the Song Title, it plays.

Wayne

[Wayne White]

OK, so I have too much time on my hands....

I moved a song into 1 Folder on the root directory of C: (It happended to be You've Made Me So Very Happy). First I took out the ' , & (any abnormal characters) the song still wouldn't play (with the LONG Name). I kept taking out characters until it played. What I found is, IN A FOLDER a total of 119 characters will play. 120 won't. With a file name of 64 & a song name of 55, OK. Increase either by 1 & it will still play IF you reduce the other by 1. If you put a song flat on the C drive (No Folder - which I would never recommend), 121 characters will play 122 won't.

Wayne