File Naming Compatibility Options

These options determine how Picard handles compatibility of files when they are saved with updated metadata.

Replace non-ASCII characters

Select this option to replace non-ASCII characters with their ASCII equivalent (e.g.: ‘á’, ‘ä’ and ‘ǎ’ with ‘a’; ‘é’, ‘ě’ and ‘ë’ with ‘e’; ‘æ’ with “ae”). More information regarding ASCII characters can be found on Wikipedia.

Windows compatibility

This option tells Picard to replace all Windows-incompatible characters with an underscore. This is enabled by default on Windows systems, with no option to disable.

As of version 2.9 Picard allows the user to specify what replacement characters to use as replacements for selected characters.

Allow paths longer than 259 characters

This option allows the user to disable the 259 character path limit Picard would usually enforce in Windows compatibility mode when renaming and/or moving files. This is possible both on Windows and on other platforms with Windows compatibility enabled.

Warning

Enabling long paths on Windows might cause files being saved with path names exceeding the 259 character limit traditionally imposed by the Windows API. Some software might not be able to properly access those files. In particular Windows Explorer cannot rename files with long path names or create new files inside folders if the resulting path length would exceed the length limit.

Replace spaces with underscores

When enabled, this option directs Picard to replace all spaces with underscores in the file path and name generated by the selected file naming script.

Replace directory separators with

By default Picard will replace any path separators (slash or backslash) with an underscore when using a tag or variable value as part of the file path and name generated by the selected file naming script. This option allows the user to set a different replacement character other than the underscore.