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[iamimdoc]

Sorry if this has been answered but I did not see exact question.  Using Version 22, 64 bit, Windows

I have too many albums to deal with manually

When I go to play an Album, I occasionally have duplicate tracks in album which means if I play album, I get Track 1, Track 1, Track 2, Track2 etc...  Not desirable. See attached PNG file as example

These tracks are not really duplicates, however, as they are from different albums.  In example attached one album is FLAC version and one is SACD version. They are grouped in Albums view, however. If I rename the SACD album as "Hope [SACD]", things group correctly as I now have 2 albums in Album view. I am OK with that. Lets me ,listen to different versions as desired, contrast/ compare, etc... See different versions, etc

My question is to how to identify these Albums.  (Maybe I am asking what is the grouper used in Albums View? - not sure).

I have some mild programming skills and currently have export of all Albums data in a Excel CSV file, in an SQL database (if that helps) and can do some things with Python.

Thanks for help, pointers

[~OHM~]

yeah...see those iso files...thats it

[blgentry]

So this kind of depends on how big your collection is, how many different types of duplicates you have in different formats, and how much you care about precisely identifying each version.

I worked on a collection for someone who had many dozens of duplicate albums in various formats.  I spent the time to change the album title on each individual album to reflect it's exact format, thus separating it from the other albums that were duplicates, but in different formats:  SACD, Hi resolution, CD resolution, and a good number of variants.  I also cleaned up a lot of other stuff in his library including finding multiple spellings of artist names, etc.  This was a LOT of manual work.  The results seemed worth the effort to the library owner.

One way of doing this manually is to make an albums view that groups not just by album, but by format and/or resolution.  For example, you can do a categories view of Albums.  But instead of using a Library Field, instead you can use an Expression.  A naive expression to group by would be something like [Album] [File Type] .

I have a tiny number of albums that require this kind of treatment and I have elected to put the extra info about type, resolution, etc into a field called [Album Info].  I use this field in an expression to group by so that the [Album] field and the [Album Info] field are both used to determine what should be shown as a single album.

As I said above, depending on your requirements and your library composition, you might want to do one or the other of these methods.

Brian.

[iamimdoc]

So in an Album view, is Album the “grouper” ?

[swiv3d]

In album view click the down arrow next to albums at the top of the display view, select Sort inside groups>custom and add filetype to the top of any items listed there.

[carlismysecondname]

Why don't you just search for all entries that are sacd and then append all of their album names en masse with [SACD] at the end. Select all sacd entries and in the tagging pane click on the album entry tag and type "=[album] [SACD]" and press enter. And you're done.

[blgentry]

In album view click the down arrow next to albums at the top of the display view, select Sort inside groups>custom and add filetype to the top of any items listed there.

That really won't do what the OP wants as far as I can tell.  The OP wants albums with the same name, but different formats, to appear as separate albums.

This gets even more difficult if the OP has albums that are the same format (say FLAC) but in two different resolutions (for example 44.1kHz and 96kHz).  It's all do-able.  It's just a matter of defining what you want and setting up your views to do it.

Brian.

[iamimdoc]

Brian is correct. I do have multiple formats, resolutions etc of same album in multiple directories on my server.

I don’t mind retagging them manually so they become separate albums.

The issue is to locate them to be fixed.

I think slogging through the data, arranged by album name, and seeing if I have a track 1 an then another track 1 in the same album grouping will work.

Thanks

[blgentry]

If you can identify a few variants of albums you have that are duplicates, other than their resolution, file format, etc, you can probably construct an expression which will allow you to automatically group them together.  In fact, I think I might be able to do that even without you saying anything.

Something like:

[File Type] [Bit Depth] [Sample Rate]

...should be able to uniquely identify most any combination I can think of.  Unless it's different mixes or something like that, in which case the album name or some other field really should indicate that for you.

So you could do a Categories view and use an Expression for your category that contains, the above fields, album name and artist name (via album artist auto).  That really should do it.  Or get you quite close.

Brian.

[~OHM~]

more evidence that a good window structure should be implemented at the beginning of a collection....just saying because of questions and posts about "windows and file structure. 

[iamimdoc]

I think I would prefer to separate out the albums (make each an individual album) and then perhaps delete the dupes that aren't necessary. Maybe I wont use JRiver some day and need them separated out. 

Changing the view makes JRiver display them separately but I still can't tell which are grouped together (as in my original example) as best I can tell.

At any rate, there are far too many files to go back and redo all of them in different windows structure (I presume this means multiple directories by resolution, etc)

Thanks

[blgentry]

When I renamed all of those albums for the person with the big library, I constructed a rather elaborate view that helped me to identify unique albums.  It was still a whole lot of work, but having a well constructed panes view that let me filter on all kinds of things helped me a lot.

Good luck with your project!

Brian.

[blgentry]

At any rate, there are far too many files to go back and redo all of them in different windows structure (I presume this means multiple directories by resolution, etc)

If you go through the effort to retag your albums with unique names like "The Dark Side Of The Moon (SACD)", then you will also be able to easily rename them on disk using the Rename, Move, and Copy files tool.  You don't have to of course.  But if you want your on disk folder names to match your MC Album names, then you should consider it.  It's just one extra step and it's very quick since it's just a rename. 

You might make a mental (or real) list of what you want to accomplish with this project and come up with a procedure and/or a game plan.  I was thinking of offering this as a service to clients at one time, so I've done a good bit of thinking about it.

Brian.

[iamimdoc]

Thanks for suggestions.

A question remains:  In Albums View, what is the "grouper" (expression)  that unites tracks so they appear as one album when viewed?  If I knew this, I thnk I can solve my issues.

Thanks

[blgentry]

By default the "grouper" is just the [Album] field I think.  I deleted the stock albums view a long time ago, so I'm not 100% certain.  But here's how you can change it.  I suggest doing this in a new albums view because the stock one will complain if you try to change it and say "I'm locked, you shouldn't do this, so you really want to, blah blah blah".

With your view displayed, right click on it in the left hand navigation area.  Select "Customize View".

What you will see is that this is a CATEGORIES view.  It should have only one category:  Album.  If you highlight Album and then press EDIT, you can change properties of this category.  When the dialog comes up, notice that on the left there are different types:  Library field, File Path, etc.  What you really want is "Expression".  Click on that and now you'll see some new options including "Expression to Group by". 

That should give you what you want.

Good luck!

Brian.

[iamimdoc]

But albums of same [album name] but different [album artist] group separately.  Doesn't this mean something else is involved beside album name?

[blgentry]

Your conclusion is perfectly logical and I agree.  What makes this odd is that MC has hidden rules here and there for built in stuff so that it works correctly.  I believe that ALBUM, as a Category, has some hidden rules.  Otherwise, every "greatest hits" album would show altogether.

This "greatest hits" behavior *DOES* happen in JRemote views.  It also happens in Panes views.  So I'm relatively certain that there is special logic in the categories view that keeps this from happening.

In any case, you probably don't care too much, because you want to alter it.  I would suggest using: [Album Artist (auto)], [Album], [Bit Depth], [Sample Rate], and possibly [File Type] as your expression to group by.  That should just about guarantee uniqueness.

Good luck.

Brian.