Subject - Duplicates for Handhelds
Ok, this is something that I have never seen in the forums, so I don't know how much use it will be, but here goes;
I use continually changing playlists for my nomad, so I don't convert songs on upload, as this would take too long. Instead, I keep a library of duplicate tracks for use on the nomad. To keep this library's size to a minimum, I only convert tracks with certain criteria; for example, year of release. What this set of playlists does is find duplicate tracks with where the date is missing in one. I could go on about this, cause I've got quite a complicated setup, but hopefully people will find it useful - I'll be happy to answer any questions, and even happier to get suggestions!
*NOTE* See update below before doing all this - there are 2 ways to skin this cat!
1.
Name: All Duplicates([Media Type]=[Audio] -[File Type]=[cda],[mid],[wav] ) ~dup=[artist],[name] ~sort=[name],[file type]
This identifies all tracks with duplicate artist and name fields for the file-types that have music I want on my nomad
Create Playlist Group, called Date
2.
Name: With Dateplaylist=All Duplicates -[Date (year)]==0 ~nodup=[artist],[name]
3.
Name: Without Dateplaylist=All Duplicates [Date (year)]==0 ~nodup=[artist],[name]
4.
Name: Comparer(playlist=With Date or playlist=Without Date) ~dup=[artist],[name] ~sort=[artist],[name],[date]-d
That's it. What I then have is a Playlist Group called 'Date', with 3 playlists, one of which is called 'Comparer'. When I click on 'Comparer', I get a list of all tracks with duplicate artist and name info which have different dates, sorted for easiest editing (ignore the 'Unconverted APEs' list):
http://www.alluvialplains.com/Images/MC/playlist.jpgHope this is of some use, and PLEASE, if there's a better way of doing this, let me know. It's pretty tortuous doing this for everything I want to weed out inconsistencies for! For example, if you wanted to get a list with
inconsistent dates, you'd have to set up a similar group for
each individual year!
Update 13/04/06:Well, I found an easier way to do the above:
~nodup=[Artist],[Name],[Date (year)] ~dup=[Artist],[Name] ~sort=[Artist],[Name],[Date (year)]
Quite a saving on work and space! However, the more complicated system above works for something else, which can be quite useful: instead of just using the date field, if you wanted to find items of a particular year which are out of synch, you would use [Date (year)]=1970 or whatever year you were after. (See my comment about inconsistent dates).
While it might not be so practical or useful for dates, the more complicated system could be useful for things like [keywords]=Single etc. Having to set up 3 lists for each entry is a lot, I know, but if you want to keep duplicates for your portable player you might find it helpful.