INTERACT FORUM

Have you tried the smartlist "possible Duplicates" (right click playlists. add smartlist,smartlist rule)?

I am relatively new to MC - have ripped ~200 of my 800 CDs so far and am currently configuring another PC to use as HTPC which will pull info from my office PC upstairs.  I have not played with the smartlist feature yet, although I've looked at the help which shows all of the search criteria.  

KingSparta, bebop - Can you spoon-feed me a bit?  If I create a smartlist using ~dups how do I then use that list to eliminate duplicates and have the library point back to a single remaining file (for each set of duplicates) that I pick?

Correct me if I am wrong...

You have 3 albums...

Album1
Album2
Album3

YOu have 1 sone that is the same on both : Song3

You want to remove the 2 copies of this sond, and still be able to access that song from either of the 3 albums...

Correct? If so, this has been a requested feature in MC, but not yet possible.


If misunderstood your question, I appologize.

As far as I see MD5 Hash is good for finding the duplicates, but that's all.

It is already possible to use APL files with APE files. Physically they are only shortcuts to an APE file. Maybe something similar could do it? MPL? (For single tracks and all file formats.)

Another thing is that quite often different albums have also different versions of the same songs (length, overall sound quality, mixing, etc).

King.  Your dupe finder is the number one plug in for MC bar none.  (And I'm bragging too 'cos it was my idea).  It's just that I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to implement something like this.  

I just used it to rectify over 500 dups.  I could never manage without this plug in.  Thanks Bud!

... I could manually change the filename field for the songs I don't want to keep to point to the one I do want to keep, and manually delete the rest.  Not pretty, but wouldn't that work?!

No. One disk file can exist only in one MC Album. You can make your own tags for the other album names, but MC don't handle them as separate albums. The only way to keep them together is to do a playlist for them.

Currently it is possible to have one huge APE file for the whole Album (one CD disk). Monkeys Audio can do APL files for linking a certain position of that APE file to a logical track. An APL file includes also tag information for an individual track. APL files can be imported to MC and used as regular audio files. It is possible to make a copy of an APL file and change e.g. the album tag and keep both in the library.

What we need now is a similar system for individual tracks. A sort of Media Center link file (could be named as .mcl). That would include tag information and a link to the main file. It should support all audio formats. The mechanism to make them could be in Convert Format (of course "Send original files to recycle bin" should be disabled).

There is already support for the APL files. Perhaps just a slight modification is needed.

Thanks for the explanation Alex B.

I second the vote for a link file.  And it would be nice if it was automated in the manner I described in the original post.

Matt? ...  If not V10 then V11 at some point? ...

Hey, great!  Now we just need automation.  That would be too much work to do for a bunch of duplicates.

Thanks for the experimentation Alex B.

Import just the APL files. An APL file holds tags and a link to a certain position. All files must be in the same folder. You can't rename APE files later. APL files will loose links.

You can also import APE files, but that is not needed. APE files can have different tags. APL files are not using them.