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[hit_ny]

Placeholders (or shorcuts/some catchy name ) to manage duplicates.

I'm sure people with large collections will notice that 10-20% of their collection is dupes. The larger the collection the bigger the waste of space. Yes hard drives are getting cheaper which only compounds the dupe problem in the long run.

There is currently no way to say create a shortcut/placeholder of a file that is pretty much the same and have MC treat it as a unique file. Think shortcuts in windows. I'm not saying MC should use shortcuts as i'm not sure it possible to store any MC specific information in it. So it could be a library only thing.

It could also simplify smartlist creation whose main purpose is to avoid dupes to a certain extent.

Alex B has asked for this many times as a way to keep unique playing stats for custom playlists.

I'm not aware of any other media manager that has a way to deal with this atm, so here's a chance for MC to blaze a new path.

What are the issues involved here ?

[Simple]

...The larger the collection the bigger the waste of space...
...What are the issues involved here ?

'Task -- possible Duplicates' = '11858 files (61.5 GB - 33.7 days)'

A good question.

[kaiynne]

Can Someone explain to me the reasons/benefits of having duplicate files.  I have about 800cds ripped, and store them as both mp3 and ape, but i get the impression this is not what you are talking about.  Other than storing multiple formats, i don't have a single duplicated song in the same format, how exactly does this come about for you?

[Simple]

Imagine you have the following two tracks on different albums:

'Pale Shelter' from 'The Hurting' by 'Tears For Fears'

'Pale Shelter' from 'Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits `82-`92)' by 'Tears For Fears'

Would be nice to have 'virtually' both without loosing disk space.

[hit_ny]

OR if you have Various Artist compilations of which there seems to be no end coming out these days. If you stick with just artist albums, then its true the amount of dupes will be limited. But i like VA albums as many times i discover new artists from them.

Also i was referring to dupes that are not mixed, as this entails a shorter version of a track as its mixed in at the beginning and the end. In this case you would keep the mixed as well as the unmixed.

[kaiynne]

Ok I see your point, my only follow up question would be, what percentage of songs do you have as duplicates?

just out of curiosity.

[Simple]

Around 18.5 %.

[Matt]

Imagine you have the following two tracks on different albums:

'Pale Shelter' from 'The Hurting' by 'Tears For Fears'

'Pale Shelter' from 'Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits `82-`92)' by 'Tears For Fears'

Would be nice to have 'virtually' both without loosing disk space.

Except that different CDs often have the song mastered differently, so they aren't exact copies...

[Simple]

Concerning my example:

'Pale Shelter' from 'The Hurting' by 'Tears For Fears'
Duration 4.34 - Bitrate 128

'Pale Shelter' from 'Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits `82-`92)' by 'Tears For Fears'
Duration 4.39 - Bitrate 192

So there is a decision between the 'original' and the better bitrate.  Or other factors.

Matt, don't move .

[bseller]

I really love this idea. Take as an example the UK and US versions of "The Clash" (first album). They share 10 songs in common out of 14 and 15, respectively. Right now, is see two approaches: 1) rip both albums in their entirety, doubling the necessary disc space for the ten, or 2) rip one album with shared tracks in its entirety, only the non-duplicated tracks for the other, and then create a playlist re-building the entire other album. But I think most MC users conceive of playlists and albums very differently -- we want actual albums to show under Artists/Alblums in the Audio tree, whereas playlists are for dance mixes, collections for moods or BPM or whatever, ways to organize transfers to external devices, etc.

So to expound on hit_ny's original idea -- Perhaps the ability to drag & drop a track from album A to album B, where it would do something like pop up a dialog box asking for track # and any other relevant information, but otherwise would take on the attributes of what it was being copied to. And most importantly, you would not actually be copying the song, just providing an alternate set of tagging information (?) to avoid using the extra disc space, or the confusion of creating a playlist where you really want to see the tracks in album list style.

(Things would of course be a little more complicated if you selected such a shortcut, or placeholder, or whatever you'd like to call it to transfer to a portable device, or to burn a CD. Should it copy the linked-to file? Probably...)

Thanks!

[GHammer]

So, it would be like an APL file. Just really a pointer that can be tagged as a standalone selection.
Not a bad idea. I have some 'Best of' that duplicate selections from complete albums. Since I rip to a single file and use APLs to index into them it would not help me though it would be handy for those who use seperate files for each selection.

[hit_ny]

So, it would be like an APL file. Just really a pointer that can be tagged as a standalone selection.

Exactly, but without an APL actually living on the hardrive. I'm thinking it would cause less clutter that is MC specific on the hardrive. Similar in behavior upto a point to missing files in MC.

I'm thinking of referring to it as a link. This way it could point to virtually any kind of media.

If one wanted to create such a link, it would be enough to right click on the media and select make link. This would produce a link with identical tagging as its parent in the same directory. Maybe its icon could have a tiny arrow/chainlink in it to indicate its a link.

One could then drag it anywhere desired (within MC of course) and modify its tags if appropriate. The library would ensure it was always in sync since it could not be seen/accessed  from outside MC.

But I think most MC users conceive of playlists and albums very differently -- we want actual albums to show under Artists/Alblums in the Audio tree, whereas playlists are for dance mixes, collections for moods or BPM or whatever, ways to organize transfers to external devices, etc.

Thats the idea

Some cases need to considered.

• When looking at an album with links in a viewscheme or smartlist, one would expect to see the total size of the list at the bottom, (including the space occupied by files linked to) but they would not be taken into account when looking at the total library size as they dont take up any filespace.
  
  I'm not sure about this one as how does one decide that a list is big enough to include/exclude space taken up by a linked file. Its applicable in some views but not all.
  
  One wants to know how much space a linked-to file takes up when burning a Audio CD. But would not expect to see linked to file size when looking at the whole library.
  
  I guess this could be thought of in terms of what level one was looking at. A link should display its size if its been seen at the level of its parent directory otherwise not.
  
  
• Deleting links would happen like with other files, but if a linked-to file was deleted, one would expect some warning, indicating the links that were still attached to it would be removed as well.
• Transferring albums with links to other storage is an interesting case. How to distinguish between moving a link to another album vs syncing to an external player for example. In the former the link is moved over whereas in the latter, the linked to file is moved over.
  
  I guess MC would need to recognise if a link was being moved to be burned or synced to an external player, that it should use the linked-to file instead.
  

[Alex B]

Linking of any audio file is already possible by writing a custom cue sheet as I wrote in the Cue File Support thread. The mechanism is already inside MC. Only the user interface is missing.

CUE entries have still those disadvantages I found earlier. Have you ever tried to move CUE album files to another folder? It is very difficult (impossible?) if you like to keep the tags. That is why I would prefer physical APL type link files with APE2 tags.

MakeAPL and Foobar 2000 can make APL files from CUE sheets pointing to MP3, Musepack and Ogg Vorbis audio files. Foobar 2000 can play them flawlessly. MC accepts only the APE variant.

I have made a little test package that includes a small audio track in various formats, cue sheets and APL files (made with MakeAPL and Foobar2000).

Perhaps Matt could have a look for it. I wonder if only a minor tweaking is needed. It is here (about 4.5 MB).

EDIT

Even though customized CUE sheets can be used for making APL link files I would like to have a build-in link option too.