Q: how to delete duplicated songs all at one time?

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

Try repairing iTunes from the programs and features control panel.

tt2

Perfect! Oh, so simple.

Thank you for all your hard work tt2.

Cheers!

You're welcome.

tt2

Can you help me figure our who I am getting this error message?

Thanks!

Is your system language something other than English?

tt2

No, it is English.

OK, then I'm not sure why the error. Does it happen if you run the script on a small sample, e.g. one albums worth of tracks and their duplicates? Bit hectic at work for the next couple of days but I'll try and work out what is triggering it, or how to safely ignore it. Give me a nudge in a few days if I haven't come back to you.

tt2

Doesn't appear with a few albums, only when I try to run it with the full music list of over 10,000 songs.

Thanks

Checking in to see if you have had the opportunity to look into the error message further?

Thanks,

Dan

Not yet, but I'll try tomorrow.

tt2

Hi Dan,

Sorry for the delay. I've uploaded a new build that should tell you which file it had trouble deleting. Perhaps there is some kind of permissions problem with them. Could you post an error message if/when it shows again?

tt2

After searching the forums I think DeDuper may be the answer I am looking for but does it recognize if the file link exists or not before deleting the duplicate meaning will it delete the missing link one before the other?

jcs

After posting this I continued to search and I think i need to start a new thread -  wanted to delete this post but apparently I can't  - only moderators can so please ignore.

Thx

jcs

Hi,

The various types of duplicates are handled with the following criteria:

1. If the script is running against a playlist and there are two references to the same iTunes track object the later one will be removed.
2. If there are two entries linked to the same file on the same path the script will keep the earliest import.
3. If there are two entries linked to the same file via different paths the script will keep the earliest import.
4. If there are two files that appear to be physical copies of each with the same details and file size, the script will keep the earliest import.
5. If there are two files with the same details but different sizes the script will keep the largest, unless you edit a preference flag to choose the smaller, or one format in preference to another.
6. If there are two entries with the same properties, one of which is connected to a file, and the other has a broken link (i.e. the file is not where iTunes expects to find it) then it will remove the broken link.

In all cases other than the first one play/skip counts/dates are merged to the track that is kept, and this will be added, if necessary, to any playlists that the removed entry was a member of.

tt2