how to delete duplicated songs all at one time?

Interesting. Not sure why there is the "\..\..\..\" but this is what I get for FilePath and FolderName. It seems like the playlist file list where it is located and then points to where the file is located. The two paths are seperated by the "\..\..\..\"

turingtest2,

I am amazed at your knowledge and your willingness to share it!!

I am encountering the error below when I run DeDuper. Any suggestions? My apologies if you have addressed this already and I just missed it when going through the previous posts.

Thanks,

Kent

Hi Turingtest2, many many many thanks for this script, it is a lifesaver, however, can you tell me why I get prompted to delete each and every duplicate, I am running Windows 8 64bit, and, with 13867 duplicates it is going to take quite some time to aknowledge each and every deletion.

I have disabled UAC, I don't use the recycle bin, and, have selected not to be prompted upon file deletes. Your script identifies all my duplicates, and when pressing the yes button to delete all tracks automatically I am presented with a delete file confirmation dialogue box for every dupe:

DeDuper just got an overhaul and is now able to eliminate duplicates where you have both a "missing" track (exclamation mark) and another with identical tag information. Previously all missing files were ignored.

Another recent addition involves alternate dupes, that is files of different sizes or formats that have the same tag details. By default the script will preserve the largest file on the assumption that is likely to be the best quality, but you can set KeepLarge=False to reverse that effect. There is another control variable PrefKind initially set to False. Changing this to True and editing the PrefKinds value allows the script to prefer one file type over another. Multiple file extensions can be listed with the later having higher priority over earlier ones or any not listed. If both files being compared have the same file type, or neither is in the list of preferred types then the choice of which to keep reverts to largest or smallest as controlled by KeepLarge.

As always I strongly recommend that you backup the entire library to another drive before cleaning just in case there are any as yet undiscovered bugs in my code. It is also a good idea to test the behavior with a small group of tracks first so you get an idea of how it works.

I've taken some screenshots of the new version to illustrate it in action.

Having selected some tracks in iTunes that may contain duplicates this is the screen that you'll see when you run the script.

Typically you will answer yes at this point unless you want to test the track-by-track clean up action with small numbers.

If UAC is disabled the script should be able to generate a progress bar so that you see its activity as it scans though the selected tracks a number of times. Closing the progress bar gives an opportunity to abort or resume the script.

Next a summary screen shows the breakdown of the different types of duplicates that have been identified.

The options should be self-explanatory. Choose yes unless you want to go back to check the details of any alternate dupes.

There will be another progress bar if UAC is disabled, followed by the summary of the completed actions taken by the script.

tt2

Just scroll up the page a little... 😉

tt2

Hi tt2

A few years ago I successfully used DeDuper and it was a life saver!

I am back now after merging all of my music together onto my external hard-drive. This hard-drive is synced with my iTunes but has a crazy amount of duplicates again. I have gone to use DeDuper again but I receive this warning and the script cannot run;

Apologies if you have helped somebody else with the same problem previously, I have scanned this forum but couldn't find a similar resolution.

Would hugely appreciate your help.

Cheers

Hi tt2,

I made a fresh install of of windows today on my desktop pc and forgot to backup my itunes library. Thanks to Match, I only thought it to be a minor problem. But I have all my music files on my desktop (not in the itunes media folder) and prefer to use it instead of downloading everything again. But when I add my music, iTunes recognizes 20.000 new song instead of just updating the location of the files.

Long story short: Basically I just need something to tell iTunes the location of my files. I thought your script could merge the play counts etc. from the cloud files with my local files. But the script doesn't detect duplicates:

(see screenhot)

Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks in advance, empi2k

I'm trying to rescue my library, finally, after multiple version of iTunes updates ruined it. I never stored my files in the iTunes directory, but rather on my D:\ drive and iTunes never seemed to be happy. Each time iTunes updated to a newer version, it ruined more and more of my playlists.

I've recently fixed my library and re-consolidated how I originally organized it, but want to try to save my 10 years of playcounts as best as I can.

I was only able to fix 25% of my library with the "FindTracks" tool. The other 75% is still "unfound" in iTunes.

My idea was to add the music from my directory to iTunes and then use the "DeDuper" tool to merge the broken entry with the new filepath entry but it's not working as well as I was expecting.

True path

D:\Users\Michael\Music\Grateful Dead - Tennessee Jed.m4a

Path shown in Get Info > File > Location

file://localhost/C:/Users/Michael/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Grateful Dead/What a Long Strange Trip It's Been_ The/2-04 Tennessee Jed.m4a

Compilation

Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter

Album Artist

Grateful Dead/Grateful Dead

Size

6.8MB/6.8MB

Artist

Grateful Dead/Grateful Dead

Album

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been (Disc 2)/What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: The Best of the Grateful Dead

Disc Number

2 of 2/2 of 2

Track Number

4 of 8/4 of 8

Name

Tennessee Jed/Tennessee Jed

I seemed to have lost a lot of plays somehow, as well. Hopefully, I'm able to recover those from my iPod when I get this sorted. Some of these I may have fixed manually, most that aren't !ed were probably merged by your script.

deadmau5 - Ghosts 'n' Stuff (although the d is lowercase)

Deep Purple - Child in Time

Deep Purple - Smoke in the Water

Def Leppard - Too Late for Love

Def Leppard - Let It Go

Def Leppard - Love Bits

Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar on Me

....

Default - Wasting My Time

Del Amitri - Roll to Me

Before I posted on here, I created a setup that is Artist -> Song in a folder structure.

The same thing happened with Find Tracks with the same files. When it didn't work, I abandoned trying that way.

My test cases: Def Leppard kind of worked (5 failed), but it was listing each success twice (see pic). Aerosmith all failed, Bryan Adams failed, Default failed.

Appears to be taking the first letter on the song title and trying to match it with an artist that starts with that letter

The Beatles:

Ran it on the rest of the library, it kept matching the first letter of a name of the song to the first letter of name of another artist

I'm willing to surrender and hope that I can get SyncStats to work. Unless you're having fun 🙂

Songs bought from iTunes prior to April 2009 will have DRM protection. These can usually be upgraded to iTunes Plus for a fee. Alternatively you can burn and then rip them, but you'll lose more audio quality in the process.

My DeDuper script only works with songs in the iTunes library. There should be no need to re-download the content that should still be on your computer.

I haven't subscribed to match. Main issues I've seen posted about are respawning playlists and where, for example, an explicit version of a song has been replaced with clean one, though for that to have you still have to delete your current copy and then download the matched verison and I don't get why people do that.

If you need to backup your iTunes library see this user tip. Certainly won't take two weeks!

tt2