Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 51)

Reasons Example characters Avoid
You cannot use colons (:) in the names of files and
folders because Mac OS 9 (Classic) uses this
character to separate directories in pathnames. In
addition, some applications may not allow you to
use slashes (/) in the names of items.
These characters are directory separators for
Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and DOS (Windows)
respectively.
: (colon)
/ (forward-slash)
\ (backward-slash)
File separators
These characters may not be supported or may
be difficult to work with when exported to certain
file formats, such as EDL, OMF, or XML. ¢ ™ Special characters not
included in your native
alphabet
These characters are often used in scripting and
programming languages. . , [ ] { } ( ) ! ; " ' * ? < > | Punctuation marks,
parentheses, quotation
marks, brackets, and
operators
White space is handled differently in different
programming languages and operating systems,
so certain processing scripts and applications may
treat your files differently than expected. The most
conservative filenames avoid all use of whitespace
characters, and use the (underscore) _ character
instead. White space characters
such as spaces, tabs,
new lines, and carriage
returns (the last two are
uncommon)
Restricting Length of Filenames
Although current file systems such as HFS+ (used by Mac OS X) allow you to create
filenames with a 255-character limit, you may want to limit your filename length if you
intend to transfer your files to other operating systems. Earlier versions of the Mac OS
allow only 31-character filenames, and if you want to include a file extension (such as
.fcp, .mov, or .aif ), you need to shorten your Mac OS 9-compatible filenames to 27
characters.
For EDL files, which may be stored on DOS-compatible disks, you should limit your
filenames to eight characters plus a three-character file extension (.EDL).
Using Filename Extensions
Mac OS X and other operating systems can use file extensions when determining which
application to open a file with, or what method of transfer to use for a network transfer.
If you intend to transfer your media or project files to non-Mac computer platforms, you
should use standard file extensions for your files. Some common file extensions include
.mov (QuickTime movie file), .xml (XML file), .zip (ZIP compressed archive file), .aif (AIFF
audio file), .wav (WAVE audio file), .psd (Photoshop graphics file), .jpg (JPEG graphics file),
and .png (TIFF graphics file).
51 Chapter 3 Understanding Projects, Clips, and Sequences