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Home >> Articles >> EAC & MP3s

Burning Software That Supports Really, Really, Long Filenames - Does It Exist?
August 28, 2002

To quote a line from the mediocre but watchable movie Showtime, "It's like the 50 foot shark. Everybody knows it exists, but nobody has ever seen it. "

Ok, that's not quite true, but I often hear people complain that they have to shorten their filenames, .MP3s in particular, to burn them on CD.

Well I've got news for ya, such burning software does exist, and it can even be downloaded for free.

Any burning software that uses the Prassi engine supports filenames up to 212 characters in length.

If you're a sucker, you can buy Click N Burn Pro 2.0, which is just one of a few packages that use the Prassi engine.

What is it?

A while back, Sony released a piece of burning software they called 'Sony CD Extreme' which was Prassi-based, and free for download.

The Sony CD Extreme interface is exactly the same as all other Prassi-based burning software, and in my opinion is very high quality. It's coolest feature of course is the ability to burn files with really, really long filenames.

I've tried doing the same thing with many other pieces of burning software and didn't have much luck. WinOnCD could burn fairly long filenames, but turned them all into CAPITAL LETTERS. Nero claimed it could burn up to 128, but it never worked for me, it still truncated my files.

Will I be able to read discs that I burn with this software on any computer?

Yep, I've had no problems reading CDs burnt with really, really long MP3 filenames on any computers or in various MP3-CD players.

Cool, so where's it at?

Follow these steps:

1. Download Sony CD Extreme

2. Unzip that file and install Sony CD Extreme

3. Download this update for the Sony CD Extreme software.

4. Unzip that file and update the software.

5. Download this Prassi engine update (for more burner compatibility)

6. Run that EXE to install the newer Prassi engine.

7. The manual can be found here in PDF format.

8. Run the Sony CD Extreme software

UPDATE: You may get the following error if you have a fast burner:

Run-time error '9':

Subscript out of range.

There's no solution for this, you may wish to check out BurnAtOnce which is a free application that supports really long filenames.

UPDATE: Check out my article entitled Another Software Choice For Burning Really, Really Long Filenames which tells you how to set up BurnAtOnce for burning really long filenames.

BurnAtOnce can be used by everyone, fast burner or not.

9. Click on 'go to full application'. Select your burner drive from the column on the left.

10. File --> New Job --> Data disc

11. Enter your Volume Label beside 'Volume Label'

12. Right-click in the middle of your screen and choose 'Add Folder'. Pick the folder you want to burn.

13. Right-click again in the middle of your screen and choose 'Recording Options'. Beside 'File System Type', choose ISO Level 2 (212 characters). Click OK.

14. One note, under the 'Speed' dropdown box, pick the speed you want to burn at instead of choosing 'max'. For some reason on 'max' it would only burn at 4X with my 8X burner, so I had to choose 8X manually.

15. Choose 'record' from the pull down menu. Click the red record button.

And there you have it.






  

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