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[smOOzz]

Using ver 11.0.149, on more than one occasion recently duplicate music files for some complete albums have been created in the library after importing/updating from the music database where there are no duplicates in the database itself.

Any obvious reasons for this?

[Shrubman]

I have this same problem since updating to MC 11.0.225. For my APE + CUE files, the individual track listings are imported and listed each time I import new tracks to the library, resulting in a number of duplicate files shown, matching the number of times I've updated the library.

Please advise.

Evan

[Alex B]

I have this same problem since updating to MC 11.0.225. For my APE + CUE files, the individual track listings are imported and listed each time I import new tracks to the library, resulting in a number of duplicate files shown, matching the number of times I've updated the library.

It is a blessing or an annoyance. That depends on how you see the matter.

I think it is a blessing because in that way I can make several virtual links to the same big music files on the disc. It is possible to leave only some of the duplicate tracks for making "Best of" albums. Those duplicates can be tagged differently (album, year, cover art, etc) and the excess tracks can be deleted from the library.

It is certainly an annoyance if the user makes constantly global imports starting from the base folder and including everything. That doesn't bother me because I have passed the mass importing stage years ago and I currently import new files by right-clicking the selected folders or files. I never import the same folders again.

Actually MC doesn't need or use the cue files after the initial import. You could delete them from the music folders or you could do as I do: I add .txt endings after the .cue endings and import them to my library as documents. I give them some basic tags and leave them as they are. I handle them as auxiliary supporting files in my collection. The database just keeps account of them.

If I later need to burn an audio CD with a cue file I just make copy of the file and remove the .txt ending. The file will be functional again e.g. with EAC.

[Shrubman]

Well,  I guess I need to change my import method for one thing. Also, though I know how to search for duplicates, is there a tool to automoatically delete all but one of a file? I have quite a few to do it manually.

[Alex B]

- This search should find all CUE based library items: [Filename]=;
With it you can check what you have.

- This should find them and exclude all duplicates: [Filename]=; ~nodup=[Filename]
Send the items from this search to a new playlist named e.g. "cue".

- Make new search for [Filename]=; and add an exclusion for the playlist "cue" (right-click the search window > playlist > ...)
The search should look like this:

[Filename]=;  Not Playlist: cue

You can safely delete the resulting tracks from the library.

However, make a library backup before starting. Just in case...

EDIT

If the plain ";" finds some other than CUE tracks you could add the file type ending (dot + three letters) to the search string, for example: [Filename]=.ape;

[hit_ny]

Actually MC doesn't need or use the cue files after the initial import. You could delete them from the music folders or you could do as I do: I add .txt endings after the .cue endings and import them to my library as documents. I give them some basic tags and leave them as they are. I handle them as auxiliary supporting files in my collection. The database just keeps account of them.

If I later need to burn an audio CD with a cue file I just make copy of the file and remove the .txt ending. The file will be functional again e.g. with EAC.

Is this wise ? i usually keep the cue files as is. I listen to the cue files in FB2K and make any corrections to track names within FB2K as it edits the cue files directly, something i was hoping MC 11 would do, alas no, maybe in v12.

[Alex B]

At first I must say that it was a big mistake from MS to make the associated file type extensions hidden by default. MS tried to make Windows look more like Mac OS, but because Window lacks the build-in file resources it was a wrong decision.

If somebody asks PC help in my "real life" usually my first step is to make the extensions visible and give a quick lesson about the file extensions. I often forget that many users here may have the known extensions hidden and that makes many things more difficult to understand. (I am sure this doesn't apply to you, hit_ny.)

Back to the topic...

Don't know if it is "wise". It just makes my life easier since I can double-click a ".cue.txt" file in MC and it opens in Notepad. I can edit it if needed and save it with the original .cue extension. For me it is a master that I don't change.

Usually I make APL files for FB2k since it can easily make them with single right-click. I am still hoping that someday MC will support other formats besides APE inside APL.

From time to time I use the APL files with FB2K for file operations.

For usual playback and database handling I use MC 100%. In my opinion it's still far superior to anything else. About a week ago I was curious and downloaded the demo versions of all new 4-5 star rated jukebox programs from Tucows that I haven't tried before (I was already familiar with FB2k, MMJB, iTunes, Winamp, Real and WMP). Some of them had a few nice functions that MC doesn't have, but I must say that there was no program I would change to without feeling a great loss.