HELP! iTunes Misorganises Albums When Using Roman Numerals to Number Albums

T4R,

Example, sort by ALBUM NAME, ALPHABETICALLY, it will do this:

Pirates I
Pirates III
Pirates II

I can’t seem to fix it. Anyone got any ideas?

I Unfortunatly Don’t Do Roman.

I Do 01, 02 ect…

I Unfortunatly Don’t Do Roman.

I Do 01, 02 ect…
How exactly is that supposed to help me? LOL

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/yes-wait-wtf.gif

How exactly is that supposed to help me? LOL

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/yes-wait-wtf.gif
I Know Sorry. It Is Strange How 3 III Comes Before II.

Does It Do That Each Time? Or Just This One?

I Know Sorry. It Is Strange How 3 III Comes Before II.

Does It Do That Each Time? Or Just This One?

Just this one. It’s fine for all other instances, but for the Pirates soundtracks, it always puts III before II..

Select each movie/album and open it’s "Get Info" dialog. Select the "Sorting" tab and use the sort name field to change the roman numeral to regular numbers. They will sort using the sort name but still display the roman numeral.

I Was Gonna Say That, LOL Thanks Ostgems 🙂

Hopefully That Is All 🙂

Select each movie/album and open it’s "Get Info" dialog. Select the "Sorting" tab and use the sort name field to change the roman numeral to regular numbers. They will sort using the sort name but still display the roman numeral.

That was the first thing I tried, as well as making sure all the composer/album artist and album names were spelled correctly. It even puts IV after II.

Pirates I
Pirates III
Pirates II
Pirates IV

I doubled checked the sort fields but it’s still displaying as that. I restarted iTunes and that didn’t change anything.

You could post on the official iTunes forums to see if there’s a setting or whatever?

No, there isn’t. I’ve already run into this problem before. It doesn’t recognize roman numerals because… they’re not numbers. They’re letters, so it’s sorting them like letters, not numbers. There’s a large explanation about how it is sorting, but I cannot remember it right now. I just gave up on iTunes because this and how slow it became with my large library and how it couldn’t update Genius.

BUT

I heard somewhere else, as I gave up on it, that the trick may be using the unicode characters for roman numerals (like this: Ⅰ Ⅱ Ⅲ Ⅳ Ⅴ Ⅵ Ⅶ Ⅷ Ⅸ). Unfortunately, I never had the chance to try it. Hope it works for you.

^ +1 for unicode characters.

Apple is just flawed, in all arenas, imo.
The only thing they did right was AAC.
AIF/AIFF and ALAC were invented because they didn’t want to associated with WAV and FLAC/APE.

If letters don’t make a difference, unicode is the way to go.
If you’re on Windows.
No idea how MAC or others work.

The Apple industry shows how much faith they have in their consumers.
You and a few people that ask about it isn’t nearly enough for them change their commercial product (albeit a free product).
I can ask 20 people face-to-face about letters and unicode and they won’t know.
Apple depends on that.

Although, I’m always a Windows person, I just opted entirely to rename all libraries to actual numbers.
I’ll rename everything so it’s logically listed in chronological order of release.

Being "true" or a "true fan" of the original naming convention only works when you want to print it out on a booklet.
Word Processor is entirely ignorant.

Series\\\
Pirates of the Caribbean\\
1; The Curse of the Black Pearl\
2; Dead Man’s Chest\
3; At World’s End\
4; On Stranger Tides\
(semicolons because Windows isn’t colon friendly for filenames/filepaths unless it’s a unicode character (which just looks weird entirely).)

Most Mac/Linux users forget that a lot of "safe" characters cannot be used on Windows filepath/filename.
But with updates to 7-zip and WinRAR, it shouldn’t matter when it gets extracted.

I’d rather not worry about pissing anyone or anything or any music-god off about naming conventions.
Really, it’s just how you want to play it back.
Why not do it so it’s less stressful?
Why spend your whole life thinking "But what if" scenarios that will likely never happen?
And if and when they do happen, you can easily rename things for others.
In all probability: 0.000000001% chance someone wants your files.
0.000000002% chance someone wants someone else’ files.

Thank you for that in-depth reply Spark, I always enjoy reading what you post. It’s weird, really,
I have a few other albums such as the six Naruto soundtracks, all named using roman numerals and
it gets ordered just fine, same with Halo 1-4, Assassin’s Creed, etc. Just Pirates that seems to be
wonky, and I’ve never had this problem before. It’s as if it’s a bug or something. I tried removing
Pirates II and III completely from the iTunes library location and re-adding them, but still nothing.
Unicode characters do solve the problem, but why is the problem even here in the first place? That
is what I am now wondering.

…but why is the problem even here in the first place? That
is what I am now wondering.

Short answer? Because customer support is the lowest priority on Apple.

If they can sell 15 seconds of silence for a dollar… I think that shows a lot of how well they manage things. :laugh:

(hands down thee best 15 seconds of Taylor Swift, btw)

(hands down thee best 15 seconds of Taylor Swift, btw)

QFT

It’s weird that even though you’re sorting them in order. All my albums Pirates, Lotr, Hobbit, Star Wars, Transformers, Indiana Jones) every other franchise are all in order. Maybe it’s another iTunes 12.2 fuck-up?

Shorter answer: Itune is a piece of crappy software.

Apple is just flawed, in all arenas, imo.
The only thing they did right was AAC.

1. Agreed.
2. That’s just plain wrong. If I remember correctly, AAC was around well before Apple mainstreamed it by attaching it to iPods and subsequently the Store. I’m thinking a decade or so.

1. Agreed.
2. That’s just plain wrong. If I remember correctly, AAC was around well before Apple mainstreamed it by attaching it to iPods and subsequently the Store. I’m thinking a decade or so.

Nero took up AAC but stopped dead years ago.

I’m mostly referring to present day advancement.
To date, I find the best encoder to be parts of QAAC and parts of the CoreAduioToolbox library that Apple use.
Major products like FhG will update continually, but not often.
Apple doesn’t really release details for their library udpates. That’s all undisclosed corperate information.

QAAC updates reqularily and will fix anything that gets broke from new Apple updates.
Even Foobar2000 has QAAC as part of their encoder pack (but they won’t distribute the Apple libraries alone, as per licence agreements; and recommend to install either iTunes or Quicktime).

I’m mostly referring to present day advancement.

I misunderstood your first post because as it had been phrased it read as "The only thing [Apple] did (developed) right was AAC (as a format)."
I completely agree that their codec is the best. I should’ve been more accurate in my time-citing and said "two decades or so ago"
because that is when the AAC format first came to light and that’s what I was referring to, not Nero’s first release of their Codec
(which by the way, though it may have stopped dead in its tracks 5 years ago at the time of their last version update,
isn’t too shabby). I agree that Apple’s advancements in the field have been the most effective (and profitable).

Working on mostly OSX platforms, I’ve never meddled with QAAC or Fraunhofer considering the Winamp OSX counterpart is a joke.

Guys, iTunes can easily sort by roman numerals. It handles it as if it were a word, and it just so happens the letters are arranged in the alphabet in the correct order.

I, II, III, IV, V

Is the same as saying

A, AA, AAA, AB, B

You sort from left to right. This is a very understood sorting process. AA comes before AAA because AAA has an extra character, thus you process it further, so it comes later.

I don’t use it for music, but I use it for my movies a lot and it works flawlessy in iTunes. I have all the Star Trek movies lined up right. Indiana Jones.

My vote is that there is something else that is causing it to sort wrong. Maybe you have "Disc # of #" enabled on some and not others.

EDIT: I have 10K+ songs and 1300 movies in iTunes. It works.

———- Post added at 08:04 AM ———- Previous post was at 07:56 AM ———-

Westrock is right, it’s exactly what I said earlier. Look for yourselves:

westrock is using unicode, I see it works. I’m puzzled with yours, unless the last version of iTunes is doing differently.

westrock is using unicode, I see it works. I’m puzzled with yours, unless the last version of iTunes is doing differently.

They just look like one character in the album view. If I go into "Get Info" it is displayed as 3 separate I’s.

Using real letters (ie. I, IV, III, etc) in the Album names causes them to sort improperly, but using Unicode roman numerals in the album name fixes this for me.

Using real letters (ie. I, IV, III, etc) in the Album names causes them to sort improperly, but using Unicode roman numerals in the album name fixes this for me.

Is your OS configured differently or custom?
Is the native language for the OS different than "English (US)" ?
Or your keyboard?

Is your OS configured differently or custom?
Is the native language for the OS different than "English (US)" ?
Or your keyboard?

Interesting, I hadn’t thought of that. Both my OS and keybaord languages are set to Japanese. (It’s my native language)
Do you think that could have something to do with it?

It might be.

If you’re retyping them and it’s not working.
Unicode Roman numerals, it’s easier to copy/paste than use the keyboard combos.