The Christmas break seems to have cleared my head.
I ran a search on a folder with 19,912 MP3 tracks, ostensibly all music (not audio books, not movies)The first two items in this list have different names (Bach, Bruckner) But playing them shows that they are the same audio track (I would say bit-fot-bit) and I have already deleted one of the two tracks.
The remainder of the list appear to be truly duplicates. I suspect these duplicates arise because on 2022/11/15 I say to myself "I really must download that Dolly track", forgetting that I did download the Dolly track five days ago. In other cases (Zimmerman at foot of image) I appear to have done some re-filing and Copied a track from 2023/02/28 to the Chopin folder, instead of Moving it.
That is, my list of duplicates is correct except for those first two tracks. A simple playback of the files tells my ears that they are copies of each other.
HERE IS WHERE MY HEAD CLEARED UP: I was, as usual, looking for a automated way to eliminate duplicates, and that meant an automated way to get rid of the clear duplicates and focus on the two problem tracks. (Think "Exported file list converted to a BATch file ..."). That is the wrong approach. I am better off dealing manually (as I did) with the obvious flaws in the sense of Bach and Bruckner tracks, and then using the neatly-paired list of just34 tracks (17 pairs) to apply a little automation, in my case perhaps - deleting one of a pair where both pairs end in an eight-digit string.
Even manually, that Everything does NOT automatically refresh the list can be seen as a non-issue:-
<Delete>; <confirm>; <down-arrow> (rinse and repeat)
Thanks for all you help.
Cheers, Chris
I ran a search on a folder with 19,912 MP3 tracks, ostensibly all music (not audio books, not movies)
Code:
t:\music\ ext:Mp3 dupe:size;sha256 The remainder of the list appear to be truly duplicates. I suspect these duplicates arise because on 2022/11/15 I say to myself "I really must download that Dolly track", forgetting that I did download the Dolly track five days ago. In other cases (Zimmerman at foot of image) I appear to have done some re-filing and Copied a track from 2023/02/28 to the Chopin folder, instead of Moving it.
That is, my list of duplicates is correct except for those first two tracks. A simple playback of the files tells my ears that they are copies of each other.
HERE IS WHERE MY HEAD CLEARED UP: I was, as usual, looking for a automated way to eliminate duplicates, and that meant an automated way to get rid of the clear duplicates and focus on the two problem tracks. (Think "Exported file list converted to a BATch file ..."). That is the wrong approach. I am better off dealing manually (as I did) with the obvious flaws in the sense of Bach and Bruckner tracks, and then using the neatly-paired list of just
Even manually, that Everything does NOT automatically refresh the list can be seen as a non-issue:-
<Delete>; <confirm>; <down-arrow> (rinse and repeat)
Thanks for all you help.
Cheers, Chris
Statistics: Posted by ChrisGreaves — Mon Jan 13, 2025 6:46 pm