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[litzy1]

Newbie question:

I have lots of dupilicates in my collection.
I created a smart list with the variables:
audio
show only duplicates

Name
Artist
Album

My question before I select all and hit delete is:
Are the tracks that show up in the smartlist only the duplicates with the above parameters?
If I deleted them will the tracks that they are duplicates of still be there?

Thanks for your help! Wnting to be safe not sorry.

[MrC]

It will show all copies.

If you hit Delete, it will bring up a dialog asking for confirmation of how you want to delete (from library only, from library & toss file to trash, or from library & remove permanently from disk).

[litzy1]

When you say all copies, is there an easy way to delete and leave one of each track in one full swoop. Through the years and adding to my list I have alot of copies.

[MrC]

By copies I meant all matching criteria.

The smartlist it sounds like you've created essentially builds a list of all tracks where [name] [artist] [album] match in more than track.  Thus, you get all of the tracks that match the criteria.

Before you delete, consider that there will be duplicates, that are not necessarily duplicates, but rather just have the same name,artist,album match.  For instance, the Animal House soundtrack has 2 versions of Faber House.  Your criteria will show both of these, and you probably don't want this deletion to occur.  So you have to tighten up your criteria to winnow out these false positives.

You might be able to use another piece of data, such as a pathname, or other field, add that column to your smartlist, sort by that field, and select the tracks you're sure you don't want.

[litzy1]

Again apologize! When you say: "By copies I meant all matching criteria."

If I have three copies of the same song, artist, and album on my drive and in JRiver.

Will 2 show up in dupilcate list or 3. If three what would be the easy way to leave 1. If 2 it will be easy an I can tighten my criteria.

Thanks for your help this program is awesome.

[MrC]

I should have noticed you were new.  Welcome!

This is a nice piece of software, the developers have done a fine job (I'm just a user like you, btw.)

Ok, here's a way for you to confirm your question.  Open a new tab, and in that tab, show an audio view.  Then, in the search area, search for one sample track you're wondering about.  Select the track that matches when the search helper lists possible matches.

In the other tab that contains your smartlist, sort by track name, and find the same track in the list.

You should notice that there are N of the titles in the smartlist, and N matching tracks found in the tab where you did the search.  You'll see the smartlist shows all matches, and doesn't eliminate some randomly chosen duplication from the list.  You'll have to select the one or more tracks you want removed.

[litzy1]

That was what I was afraid of. Very tedious. There also is remove duplicates in the drop down menu's in smart list. Does that also work the same way. At some point I must have duplicated the same music from different hard drives. I have duplicates in the 1000's. It will take along time to click and delete. Thanks for your understanding and help!

[JimH]

You may be able to use the search to help you.  Compare two files that are duplicates of each other.  Is the location slightly different?  If so, search for the one you don't want and delete it.

Another possiblity is to restore a backup.  MC makes them automatically.  File/Library/Restore.

[MrC]

That was what I was afraid of. Very tedious. There also is remove duplicates in the drop down menu's in smart list. Does that also work the same way. At some point I must have duplicated the same music from different hard drives. I have duplicates in the 1000's. It will take along time to click and delete. Thanks for your understanding and help!

Well, maybe you can find some shortcuts that can help.  Look at the different file properties (Action Window > Tag) and see if there are certain fields, such as Date Created, Filename (path), or audio compression type, or quality, or something that helps you automatically select (by sorting) one over the other.  If so, then you can select many at once.

The Remove Duplicates Of modifier would be useful to show only one of anything that was matched by previous criteria (eg. higher in the order of the list of rules and modifiers).

For example, the smartlist:

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~dup=[Album],[Artist],[Name]

would find all titles that were duplicated (considering only the album,artist,name trio).  Add ~nodup:

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~dup=[Album],[Artist],[Name] ~nodup=[Album],[Artist],[Name]

would then remove all duplicates, leaving only one track for each dup matched from the previous modifier.

It is important to note that the single duplicate that remains from the above rules/modifiers is *randomly chosen*.

If you ran this smartlist several times, deleting a set each time, it would winnow out your duplicates (again, based only on album,artist,name, and as I've mentioned, I have loads of albums where that trio would not be sufficient to select duplicate tracks, as the albums have one ore more of the same track name on the same disc of the same album).

Anyway, hope this helps.

[Shiraz]

thanks MrC! your last comment really helped me out.