Hi,
Will arrange this post in order of increasing complexity:
1. Basic find of duplicates:
Type into search box: ~dup[Name],[Artist]
MC will display all copies of all duplicated songs.
2. To only show one copy of each one so that you can then delete the one copy:
Create a smartlist with two modify rules:
only duplicates of
Name and
Artist (plus anything else if you want to filter further)
remove duplicates of
Name and
ArtistThe smartlist will show one copy of each song. You could then delete these files, then refresh to show more if there are multiple duplicates of some, and delete again. This of course will indiscriminately delete songs.
3. To show the lowest quality copy of each duplicate:
In between the only duplicates and remove duplicates rules:
Sort by [bitrate]
4. To make sure you don't delete the copies you do want (eg, if they're part of albums you want to keep together rather than just random songs), you could:
Create a playlist, put in all the songs that you want to keep, then add a rule to your duplicates smartlist to say
Playlists is not any...5. I have a set of smartlists for duplicates, so that I can remove them from any other smartlists as such:
Duplicates:
Only duplicates of [Artist],[Name],[live]*
Sort by [Artist],[Name],[Approximate Duration]*,[Bitrate]
Duplicate Keeps:
Only duplicates of [Artist],[Name],[live]
Sort by [Artist],[Name],[Approximate Duration],[Bitrate]
Remove duplicates of [Artist],[Name],[live]
Duplicate Removals:
Playlists is all: Duplicates
Playlists is not: Duplicate Keeps
*[live] is a custom field which I just put a number in if the track is not the standard studio version, therefore not removing alternate versions of songs.
[Approximate duration] is a custom field calculated as =formatduration([duration]). Allows me to remove shorter versions of songs, without selecting a 128kbps copy instead of a 256kps just because it was 2 seconds longer...
Sorry have probly gone into far more detail than you really wanted here, but, point being, you can create smartlists as such to make sure you can remove the not so good copies of songs and keep the better ones, whether deleting them altogether or just stopping them being played. Why do you want to delete the duplicates altogether? It's generally nice to at least keep albums complete if possible, so if you've got compilation albums with them in it's usually best to leave them there.
Hope it helps (some of it at least) anyway