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More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 01:15:56 am

Title: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 01:15:56 am
I figure there is no way to do this currently (from MC), but thought I would ask in case someone has a solution.  Basically I want to quickly find all duplicates of the same songs (live/studio/remix/etc) when there is no exact name match.

Currently I use 'Song Name (Modifier)' for my titles so if I have a song called "My Song" with original studio, live, and remix versions I end up with:
My Song
My Song (Remix)
My Song (Live)
My Song (Live in the basement)
My Song (some DJ Remix)
etc...

Any thoughts on how to quickly find all versions of 'My Song' in the library?
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: marko on October 05, 2006, 02:08:39 am
[name]=[My Song" will return all [name]s that begin with My Song
[name]="My Song" will return all [name]s that contain My Song
[name]=[My Song] will return all [name]s that equal My Song, ie., an exact match.

:)
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 10:16:44 am
Right, but that just works for one specific song.  I want to find all duplicates like this.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: KingSparta on October 05, 2006, 10:25:57 am
Right, but that just works for one specific song.  I want to find all duplicates like this.

I see no way this can be done with any software.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: edladner on October 05, 2006, 10:56:41 am
Right, but that just works for one specific song.  I want to find all duplicates like this.

Could this not be done with a calculated field that parses out (remix) etc... and then use the calculated field to find duplicates?
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: skylarplane on October 05, 2006, 11:31:23 am
Why not just click/sort the name/song field and you'll see all that is a dup.

Skylar
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: Alex B on October 05, 2006, 12:05:30 pm
A smartlist rule / search like

[Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

or

~dup=[Album] [Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

or

~dup=[Artist] [Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

could help a bit.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 12:40:37 pm
I see no way this can be done with any software.

If there was a function to return the position of a specific character - then it could be done with substring parsing.  Don't see any such function available in MC though.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 12:42:01 pm
Why not just click/sort the name/song field and you'll see all that is a dup.

Skylar

Cause I have over 9000 tracks in my library.  After a while things start to run together.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 12:45:16 pm
A smartlist rule / search like

[Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

or

~dup=[Album] [Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

or

~dup=[Artist] [Name]=" (" [Name]=")]

could help a bit.

While that gives me all of the (xxxx) files, it doesn't return the original too.

I may end up adding a custom field and manually clean it up so it just contains the base name.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 12:47:35 pm
Could this not be done with a calculated field that parses out (remix) etc... and then use the calculated field to find duplicates?

It could be done for predicable (xxxx) values.   Problem is some are track specific like "(Live Acoustic, 24 May, 1987)"
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: JohnM on October 05, 2006, 01:29:35 pm
SQL Server has something called SOUNDEX. Any chance this (and other appropriate functions) could be implemented in MC in the future?

BR John
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: edladner on October 05, 2006, 01:36:29 pm
It could be done for predicable (xxxx) values.   Problem is some are track specific like "(Live Acoustic, 24 May, 1987)"

The () could be used as a field delimeter.  I do it when filling tags from filename.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: KingSparta on October 05, 2006, 02:38:04 pm
Quote
SQL Server has something called SOUNDEX

I created a spell check plug-in based on SoundeX For MC11
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 03:32:45 pm
SQL Server has something called SOUNDEX. Any chance this (and other appropriate functions) could be implemented in MC in the future?

BR John

SQL Server also has CHARINDEX that will find the position of a specific character.
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: Alex B on October 05, 2006, 03:43:04 pm
While that gives me all of the (xxxx) files, it doesn't return the original too.

I know, that's why I said "could help a bit"

At least you can get all (xxxx) files to a playlist so that you can see what you have. I suppose this would make easier to find the missing files.

Quote
I may end up adding a custom field and manually clean it up so it just contains the base name.

I have several custom fields for that kind of purposes.

Alternatively you could make a simple flag field which could tell if a track belongs to this "versioned tracks" group. In this field you could use only two values, e.g. "empty" and "1".
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: benn600 on October 05, 2006, 06:07:16 pm
I bet you anything I can figure this out.  I solved a big issue I had before and posted it but no one cared!  I also want this problem solved.

My last problem was that I wanted a playlist containing all of my favorite songs (rated 3,4,5) and the associated Folder.jpg file.  This was QUITE a task but I did get it worked out.  It allows me to copy music and the cover art for each album to my mp3 player and then see it on the screen.  It only took about 15 minutes but I think that's because I happened upon thinking the best method for accomplishing my goals early on.

What you're asking sounds simple and if I have time this weekend, I'll work on it.  Right now, I am working on a math assignment due tomorrow.  If it was done, I'd work on this right now!

I really like your theory, too!  I like how you should name all duplicate songs with the (Remix) thing.  I do often follow this but it wouldn't be hard to find duplicates and add the necessary info like ( ).  The biggest problem is finding out what version each song is because I have a lot of compilations and duplicate songs from greatest hits, etc., and sometimes, these are remixes and other times they are not.

After rereading your question, I don't really understand what you want to do.  I was planning on figuring out what you wanted later when I was going to begin the project.  Are you trying to create a unique songs playlist?  Do you not want remixes, live versions, etc.?  I
Title: Re: Find duplicates on 'similar' track names?
Post by: BartMan01 on October 05, 2006, 10:39:22 pm
Reason:

I use MC both as an archive and as my primary music library.  I have quite a few cases where I have different versions of the same song as well as true duplicates.  For different versions of the same song, I like to keep their name different so I can tell which is which.  On the other hand, there is usually only one 'studio' and/or one 'live' version that I want to have as the primary(s).  Right now I am using Marko's duplicate handling process to filter out true duplicates and I want to expand it to filter against these tracks as well.