Fast and easy way to delete duplicates in iTunes? I have 1000 original tracks but 2 additional copies for each original track. 3000 total files. Help!
Posted Apr 27, 2009, 1:47 AM UTC
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Use the show duplicates function
http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/ipodsupport/duplicates/index.shtml
Also, I found that the main reason why I was getting duplicates was that I was adding the play list files at the same time as the song and iTunes isn't smart enough to recognise that you don't want 2 copies of the same thing in there.
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Show Duplicates is OK in a bind, but it leaves a lot to be desired, not least of all because it only matches by artist and title (meaning if you have singles or live versions or whatever of the same song you're going to have to pick through them all one by one).
If you're using a Mac i think the best tool for this is Dupin, which has tons of options on how to match, &c., with the goal of making it almost entirely automatic, with no manual sorting required.
edit: Whoops. I guess Dupin's not free. It has a trial version though. :/
edit2: Here's a (slower and more limited) free equivalent: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=corraldupes
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Honestly, I wrote my own script to do mine. It's really basic javascript and takes a huge amount of time to run (I didn't have the time to optomize it), but you could edit it for your own use?
EDIT: I just realized I wrote a C# program to do something similar that I could easily modify. I'm working on it at the moment.
EDIT: http://antidense.googlepages.com/iunduplify.zip All fixed. Should work pretty well. Run at your own risk though...:-P Tested on two computers.
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Already tried that. That shows the original and the 2 copies. I would have to manually select 2000 times or deselect 1000 times. Is there an easier way?
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Could you specify exactly what you need? I could probably work something up in C#. Do you want to find duplicates based on the file checksum, album, artist, etc.? Do you need to converge any data like playcount, comments etc?
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Something very basic. They are exact duplicates so checksum seems enough.
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http://antidense.googlepages.com/iunduplify.zip
I cleaned up the program, so it's much more straightforward now. It works pretty well on my computer & my cousin's. It looks for duplicates based on file checksums and puts adds them all to a playlist called "Duplicates". You can then delete those yourself as the program doesn't touch your files.
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Try Songbird. I use WinAMP or Foobar on a PC and Songbird for Mac. It's a litle buggy sometimes, but I hate iTunes for exactly the reason you put here, among others. I had 200 Gigs of music turn into 400 Gigs of duplicates over the course of a month and that just sucks. I only ever use iTunes for podcasts, and not on a PC.
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Anyone else think for the longest time that this was some sort of strange I-tunes DRM because you would delete duplicates or rename files and have them return upon re-opening I-tunes (Using PC) I ended up searching a bunch of threads and found its because the ID3Tags don't always save properly. In any case I'm in a similar bind, there has to be an easier way. There are plenty of programs out there that claim to do this but the few I've tried were just an extra pain. I-tunes needs to improve show duplicates.
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there are over 9000 subreddits for this question
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If you're on a Mac, you can run any number of scripts, like Corall All Dupes (sorry, you didn't specify which OS you're on, so ignore if you're using a PC).
edit: Sorry, I see this has been posted already...
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wow, it Just Works(tm)!
Great work, rnelsonee! Gonna try this when I get home. I've got like 120 gigs and no idea how much is duped.
God damn searched the whole internet, and the answer was here on Reddit all along. Kudos to you sir.