Thank you Damien,

I actually made a mistake when I said ~12k files; it was actually closer to ~20k files and strongly dependent on the length of the file names.

That workaround seems like it could be a great solution!

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Thanks for this. Perhaps another workaround would be function in Anki to rename the media files to shorter file names.

Also see this thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/anki-android/tI_FTtbAqas%5B1-25%5D

As per link in above thread, renaming to shorter files would increase limit to 65,536 which is more than I currently have in my collection.media folder (50,000) but others may have even more. Additionally the zip file solution has the advantage that it's MUCH faster to copy the media files to the phone with USB2. As per above, another workaround (requires root and external SD slot) is to format your SD card as NTFS or EXT4.

>>As per above, another workaround (requires root and external SD slot) is to format your SD card as NTFS or EXT4.

Just did this and it worked. Besides root, you also need an app to mount the card as by default Android will just say it's an unsupported format. The app is called NtfsSD and it's free in the Play Store.

Thanks for your help!

 Issue 1480  has been merged into this issue.

One possible option that has not been mentioned yet is ExFAT, which is supported out of the box on some devices.

 Issue 1469  has been merged into this issue.

What about mounting the archive like e.g. ubuntu does? So, leave the mp3 in the archive (zip, tar.gz etc) and access the files that way. Peter.

If there's any solution then it'd be good because I'm  not so tech savvy and rooting is just beyond the scope of my ability :(

 Issue 1597  has been merged into this issue.

Another approach could be to use sub-folders and sort the files into those by very specific rules.

Mediawiki does this, when you look at a full-size image on Wikipedia, you have something like "/X/XY/" in the URL/path with two hex digits X and Y.

I am not sure about the rules, probably some kind of hash on the file name.

Is it true that this issue is only relevant for VFAT file systems?

>Is it true that this issue is only relevant for VFAT file systems?

Yes, only FAT has this very low limit.

But i tried and couldn't get anything else to work. 

(Might be related to the fact that it's a cheap no-name model...)

If you use an external SD card then NTFS is confirmed to be working. It
should also be possible to format the internal SD card as either NTFS or
EXT3/4 with a bit more work, though I don't think anyone here as reported
doing this yet.

Oh.
I had tried the "NtFS Mounter", *that* din't work.

Now i tried "Paragon NTFS", looks like that works. So i'm just now copying a ton of media files. :) 

Can we get a real solution to this problem within AnkiDroid's code? Nested folders as suggested by #13 would be perfect. Media zips as suggested by Damien would be ideal for transfer speeds.

After updating to JB, I can't mount NTFS or EXT3/4 anymore. Which really sucks as I hit the file count limit way too easily. Managing which media files I need for the week is nearly impossible.

Since it seems like NTFS is no go for me unless I jump back to ICS, is there any good workarounds for this? Like a script to sort out all the media on cards that will be due within the next week, and/or a script to rename all the media to shorter filenames?

It shouldn't be too hard to make an add-on for Anki Desktop which splits the media files into subfolders and updates the path accordingly on each of the notes. I think it should work out of the box on AnkiDroid.

You could try giving it a go yourself... or someone here may have already made one; I think Houssam is doing this.

No, I'm not working on an add-on. I manually moved files into subfolders. I still had them in separate folders from before the upgrade, so it was easy to tell which files belonged to which deck. Then it was simply a matter of changing my template to have <img src="mySubFolder/{{imgfield}}"/>

If your image field already has the <img> tags in it, you will need to remove them with the search and replace feature in Anki's browser. It supports regex, and the example in the manual is exactly like this case, so you can copy it. One problem I ran into with that: my fields were using double quotes (src="asdf.gif") but Anki was showing them with single quotes (src='asdf.gif') in the HTML editor (ctrl+shift+x), so the regex didn't work until I figured that out and changed the quote style.

Ah I see, thanks for the clarification. It sounds very straightforward; maybe I'll add it to the FAQ.

#19 daichi09:
> (... I)s there any good workarounds for this? Like (...) a script to rename all > the media to shorter filenames?

Well, it is very much not a *good* workaround, as at the moment it gives *longer* file names, but maybe my Dehasihlator add-on attempt could be used as a starting point. It does go through the collection and renames media files and changes the cards to use the new file names.
It works reasonably well when you only have one image or video in each field and use each image/video on only one note. If that is not the case your collection may (or may not) end up in a mess. (It worked well enough for me, so i just left it there not really finished after my collection was done.)

Of course to be a solution to this problem, you would have to change the bits that return the new file name and those that determine what counts as "problem" files.

See http://ospalh.github.com/anki-addons/Dehashilator.html 

I mentioned (#13) the way Mediawiki uses subfolders like "4/41/asdf.gif".
See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgHashedUploadDirectory they use MD5 hashes of the file name.

 Issue 1830  has been merged into this issue.