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[MartinH]

I have a query regarding smartlists and have searched the forums but to no avail.

Basically I want to make a smartlist that will select only songs by one artist and not duplicate tracks.

To illustrate my point. I have a few Frank Sinatra albums including "Best of" types. When I create a smartlist to select just Frank, no problems but a few songs are duplicated because they're on a proper album as well as a best of album. I was hoping I could just use "no duplicates" to sort out the problem but that actually removes all instances of a track if it is duplicated.

How would I create a smartlist that will only show one instance of a track should it appear on a couple of albums that are included in the smartlist?

Hopefully that's clear .

[jleerigby]

To my knowledge this is not possible.  I've asked for this feature many times.  The way I did it was:

Create a view scheme based on the dups feature to identify all dups.  I applied a sort so all dups were next to each other and the file I'm likely to want to give priority to is listed first (Best bit rate, duration etc).  This is the view scheme:

~dup=[artist],[name] ~sort=[artist],[name],[bitrate]-d,[duration]-d

Create a custom field called Duplicate with allowable values of 'Play' and 'Don't play'.

Then I went through all tracks listed and applied the appropriate value to every track listed.  This took a few hours but was worth it.  I added a pane to the VS for artist (grouped) and did one letter of the alphabet at a time.

Now all my view schemes and smart lists exclude tracks where Duplicate = don't play except for the album-based ones.

[If you want to go one step further you can find more duplicates than MC will find by pasting your whole library (artist and track name) into Excel and use an appropriate formula and macro to identify 'near' matches.  This helped me find another couple of hundred duplicates.  The formula uses half the artist name and half the track name and concatenates them together.  The macro removes non alpha characters.]

[KingSparta]

this has been requested many times.

[MartinH]

JLee, thanks for the tips, looks like I'll have to go that route.

KingSparta, sorry, I did search but didn't find anything relevant.

Is it a hard thing to implement?  I would've thought the duplicates modifier could take a number as an argument and that would restrict the smartlist to only show n number of tracks if there are duplicates.

[jleerigby]

JLee, thanks for the tips, looks like I'll have to go that route.

KingSparta, sorry, I did search but didn't find anything relevant.

Is it a hard thing to implement?  I would've thought the duplicates modifier could take a number as an argument and that would restrict the smartlist to only show n number of tracks if there are duplicates.

It might happen it might not.  My advice is to do what I did.  At least that way YOU get to choose which version of the track you want to have in all your smartlists.

[KingSparta]

KingSparta, sorry, I did search but didn't find anything relevant.

that does not mean it is not there.

it was many moons ago, and many cow chips have hit the fire since

[jleerigby]

King - Are you drunk?

[KingSparta]

King - Are you drunk?

I can't drink "The White Man's Wicked Water",

My Dr. Said

A Lady That I Know Just Came From Columbia
She Smiled Because I Did Not Understand
Then She Held Out Some Marijuani Ha-Ha
She Said It Was The Best In All The Land
And I Said:

No No No No, I Don't Smoke It No More
I'm Tired Of Waking Up On The Floor
No, Thank You, Please,
It Only Makes Me Sneeze
And Then It Makes It Hard To Find The Door

A Woman That I Know Just Came From Majorca Spain
She Smiled Because I Did Not Understand
Then She Held Out A 10 Pound Bag Of Cocaine
She Said It Was The Best In All The Land
And I Said:

No No No No, I Don't Sniff It No More
I'm Tired Of Waking Up On The Floor
No, Thank You, Please,
It Only Makes Me Sneeze
And Then It Makes It Hard To Find The Door

A Man I Know Just Came From Nashville Tennessee Oh
He Smiled Because I Did Not Understand
Then He Held Out Some Moonshine Whiskey Oh-Ho
He Said It Was The Best In All The Land
And I Said:

No No No No, I Don't Drink It No More
I'm Tired Of Wakin' Up On The Floor
No, Thank You, Please,
It Only Makes Me Sneeze
And Then It Makes It Hard To Find The Door