Like most of you guys, I try to be careful to not duplicate mp3 files on my hard drive(s). How do you guys identify and eliminate duplicates?
How do you weed out duplicates?
- Thread starter rickryan.com
- Start date
I keep a master library. Isn't that what everyone does? If I'm editing a song for a clip or ring tone I copy it to my desktop and work on that copy. I do the same with photos if I'm cropping someone out or whatever the original stays in the master library and I work with a copy on my desktop.
The only time I've had issues with dupes is when I ripped compilation CDs like the Now series and had already owned the album. You just delete the dupes before copying the rest into your master library.
Now that most of my music is sourced from Amazon downloads there are no duplication issues.
in my case i have to identify by listening to the tracks and then delete as needed.i will have for example same title sung by same artist but on different rythyms,so the process is a bit harder in my case.example below>>
[video=youtube;Wi1jW1X9m2M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1jW1X9m2M[/video]
[video=youtube;j4IsPe8nLds]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IsPe8nLds[/video]
[video=youtube;Wi1jW1X9m2M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1jW1X9m2M[/video]
[video=youtube;j4IsPe8nLds]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IsPe8nLds[/video]
yorofl:
That's funny right there Danno...
I take extreme care with my working library, although my master has dupes, as it's a WAV master, and I just rip everything onto it. What makes it from there, and gets encoded to MP3, is a cherry pick, so there are no dupes in my working library, as I encode them in small batches, then listen to each one.
I swear though, I get 4-5 calls per week, from some customer who just got a hard drive from his buddy with 140,000 songs on it -- while I don't want to be an enabler, that's why the dupe scanner is built into Rockit, so I don't have to field 100 calls a week
I don't bother with it at all. The cost of more hard drive space is significantly lower than the cost of time spent eliminating dupes.
If we were talking about CDs then YES, the effort to eliminate duplication has important value in space, weight, transportation, and ability to locate tracks. But those days are over.
TIME CURES ALL!
For example, consider just Promo Only. There is a great deal of duplication between Mainstream and Urban or Rhythm series. However, as the years pass on you can simply delete or archive entire years of the Urban or Rhythm series since most of the popular cross-overs will still remain in the Mainstream collection. If needed you can always re-acquire a song for a particular client from your original disc or iTunes.
It's just not necessary anymore to spend a great deal of time on music management.
This is also an example of the changing paradigms that we always need to concern ourselves with. (Especially those DJs wondering whether they should stay or go.) Technology and how people apply it is constantly changing the value of many skills (like music management, AV or IT knowledge) that were once an important consideration to our career value. As the need for these skills diminishes you have to have new frontiers toward which you are moving.
If we were talking about CDs then YES, the effort to eliminate duplication has important value in space, weight, transportation, and ability to locate tracks. But those days are over.
TIME CURES ALL!
For example, consider just Promo Only. There is a great deal of duplication between Mainstream and Urban or Rhythm series. However, as the years pass on you can simply delete or archive entire years of the Urban or Rhythm series since most of the popular cross-overs will still remain in the Mainstream collection. If needed you can always re-acquire a song for a particular client from your original disc or iTunes.
It's just not necessary anymore to spend a great deal of time on music management.
This is also an example of the changing paradigms that we always need to concern ourselves with. (Especially those DJs wondering whether they should stay or go.) Technology and how people apply it is constantly changing the value of many skills (like music management, AV or IT knowledge) that were once an important consideration to our career value. As the need for these skills diminishes you have to have new frontiers toward which you are moving.
There's more to it than the cost of hard drive space Bob -- robust performance!
Most software keeps it's library in memory, and sorts and searches that library. If you have 5,000 dupes in there, you are not only eating memory, but exponentially slowing down the sorts and searches.
If you eat too much memory, Windows will start paging back and forth to disk, thereby slowing your entire system down.
If you have say 50,000 tracks, and say 10% are dupes, the search and sort algorithms have to work much longer to accomplish the same goal. So you will spike CPU for a disproportionate period of time, which can throw a hiccup into your playback.
Like anything else in this business -- those who devote the time to proper music management, will be in a better position than those who don't...
That's why I now drag n drop from windows and search by windows. Never an issue anymore. And I'm with Bob, I don't care too much about dupes, but when I spot them, I delete them.
I'm assuming you have search indexing turned on for your music drive.
Windows search is far slower than any DJ software, and uses far more resources, even with indexing on!
I'm sorry to say Hank, but yer going backward, instead of forward. Those of us that write DJ software, take great pains to build algorithms that speed things up 100 fold over what Windows can do on its best day.
Perhaps it gives you a warm and fuzzy, and/or yer tags are not quite done properly -- but Window's search is slower than a herd of turtles walking across molasses in January...
I'm assuming you have search indexing turned on for your music drive.
Windows search is far slower than any DJ software, and uses far more resources, even with indexing on!
I'm sorry to say Hank, but yer going backward, instead of forward. Those of us that write DJ software, take great pains to build algorithms that speed things up 100 fold over what Windows can do on its best day.
Perhaps it gives you a warm and fuzzy, and/or yer tags are not quite done properly -- but Window's search is slower than a herd of turtles walking across molasses in January...
I'm sure that's true, but again, no issues. I don't depend on tagging either. Just the file name. Not about the warm and fuzzy, just ease of doing things. Besides, I rarely have to search as I know my own library very well. I mean, hell, I built it.
I just can't be bothered to rescan the library into the software every time I add stuff.
You've seen first hand how fast I can pull things up on the fly during lounge casts. (and that's when I'm drinking) :tribiggrin:
Not to mention that my Vaio is also broadcasting and running the green screen at the same time. The machine process has only hit about 60% during all that.
I'm assuming you have search indexing turned on for your music drive.
Windows search is far slower than any DJ software, and uses far more resources, even with indexing on!
I'm sorry to say Hank, but yer going backward, instead of forward. Those of us that write DJ software, take great pains to build algorithms that speed things up 100 fold over what Windows can do on its best day.
Perhaps it gives you a warm and fuzzy, and/or yer tags are not quite done properly -- but Window's search is slower than a herd of turtles walking across molasses in January...
I'm using OTS and I haven't noticed any such slow down with searching etc. even with video on the drive. I must have about 15,000 files and I'm certain I have at least 5,000 dupes just as you suggest.
There will come a day when I may want to do some clean up - or maybe I'll die of old age first! Technology may even present yet another data and archive structure that would make even this unnecessary! (The cleanup that is, not death.)
We exist on two different mountain tops Hanky
To me, the tags rule -- I couldn't care less what the file name is. The files could be named Sam_Adams_xxx.mp3, for all I'm concerned.
I want my data. I want album art, I want genre represented properly, I want years, et. al. Even my WAV files are tagged.
Can you imagine what you could do, if you actually used the tools built for the purpose...
I could tell you some stuff, but then you'd be jealous
Duplicates are removed manually as there are different versions of some songs or I have modified the songs in Sony Acid, they're all there. Every single tag has been corrected as well as notes on the tracks using Tag & Rename.
We exist on two different mountain tops Hanky
To me, the tags rule -- I couldn't care less what the file name is. The files could be named Sam_Adams_xxx.mp3, for all I'm concerned.
I want my data. I want album art, I want genre represented properly, I want years, et. al. Even my WAV files are tagged.
Can you imagine what you could do, if you actually used the tools built for the purpose...
If the library was only for me, I reside on the same mountain top. The case is that I just want the song to play out of the damn speakers for the people that want to dance and could care less about that stuff.