Author Topic: Playlist has duplicate file instead of original  (Read 2009 times)

factsonly

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My library got all fudged up.

Right now my playlists have many songs that are duplicates of the original. So I can just remove duplicates because it will remove the song from my playlist.

Is there any way to automate my playlists to update to the original song name somehow? This way I can permanently erase the duplicate file without messing up my playlists?

phred

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I'm not sure I understand. Playlists are only lists of the various tracks and the path to them. How have you determined that there are duplicate -files-? Does the playlist contain two copies of each track? Or is the same track referenced twice?
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factsonly

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I'm not sure I understand. Playlists are only lists of the various tracks and the path to them. How have you determined that there are duplicate -files-? Does the playlist contain two copies of each track? Or is the same track referenced twice?

Basically I have 2 files in my music library.

The track that is in the playlist is the duplicate. I know this because when I look at the file name it is (Tupac - Blablabla_1.mp3) and not (Tupac - Blablabla.mp3)

So then I need to delete the duplicate which is obviously the file with the "_1" in it, but if I delete that file then the playlist loses that track. I could drag and drop the other file in the playlist from my music library but it would be a lot of work to go through thousands of songs in my playlist.

phred

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Thanks for the clarification. I suppose the easiest way to delete all the xxx_1.mp3 files would be to do a custom search using the criteria Filename contains _1 and once the search returns the results, select them all and delete them. But make sure the playlist does contain the original files (without the _1) before deleting. I suggest only deleting a couple at a time until you're certain it's doing what you expect.

My further question is how did those files get there? MB would only add the _1 to a file if the same filename already existed. How exactly did you put the tracks in the playlist? Did you copy them from within MB? Did you drag/drop from within MB? Or did you put them into the playlist using a file manager from outside MB?
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factsonly

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Thanks for the clarification. I suppose the easiest way to delete all the xxx_1.mp3 files would be to do a custom search using the criteria Filename contains _1 and once the search returns the results, select them all and delete them. But make sure the playlist does contain the original files (without the _1) before deleting. I suggest only deleting a couple at a time until you're certain it's doing what you expect.

My further question is how did those files get there? MB would only add the _1 to a file if the same filename already existed. How exactly did you put the tracks in the playlist? Did you copy them from within MB? Did you drag/drop from within MB? Or did you put them into the playlist using a file manager from outside MB?

That is a great idea to refine the search function with that.

It happened when I didn't realize what I was doing. It was so long ago that I don't remember what happened. Probably a combination of me not fully understanding what the "tools" in MusicBee were actually doing when I was trying to moving my music library to a different drive.

I think I am just going to have to go 1 by 1 in my playlists and make sure it is the original file.

I also have CBS and Flac of the same songs too, so I am not comfortable running the duplicate feature that comes in musicbee.

I have  75,000 songs and with that custom search it shows 7,500 songs with xxx_1

I was deleting duplicates before, and I probably deleted originals not realizing which file I was deleting. Another reason I can't just delete all the _1 files.

My motivation to go through my library has been low

Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 01:59:45 AM by factsonly

psychoadept

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If the files ending in _1 are exact copies of other files in your library, it won't matter which one you remove.  And if the original copy had been removed, as you seem to think some of them have, you can use the file organization told to rename the files so there is no longer the _1.
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phred

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I have  75,000 songs and with that custom search it shows 7,500 songs with xxx_1

I was deleting duplicates before, and I probably deleted originals not realizing which file I was deleting. Another reason I can't just delete all the _1 files.

My motivation to go through my library has been low
So only ten percent of your library is showing the _1. And you don't know how many of those are true dupes or not. Yeah, I can understand the lack of motivation to undertake this project.

And thanks for owning up to admitting what you did. Many new users will state that they "didn't do anything - it just happened by itself." Depending on what function you were doing when you didn't fully understand, there should have been a checkbox asking if you wanted to overwrite existing files. And if you didn't allow that, it would've created the _1 files.

Glad you know what you did, sorry to hear that you're going to spend some time correcting it.
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factsonly

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If the files ending in _1 are exact copies of other files in your library, it won't matter which one you remove.  And if the original copy had been removed, as you seem to think some of them have, you can use the file organization told to rename the files so there is no longer the _1.

This is an example of some of the issues....

And some files (to other songs) now that I look at them are exactly the same except a different album. From compilations etc. UGGHHH brb 3 years while I go 1 by 1.... lmao
Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 02:44:31 AM by factsonly

psychoadept

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That's a mess for sure, ouch. I can't advise you on versions to keep, side from the highest bitrate, but the .asx files are just placeholders. They're used to store multiple sets of tags for the same audio file (different albums and such, as you mentioned).

I've had some luck using standalone duplicate finder software to identify files with actually identical content, regardless of file name. My current choice is CloneSpy. Might speed things up a little.

Since you mentioned being concerned about playlists, another thing that might be helpful is to make a highlighting rule using the "Playlist" value to easily see which tracks are in playlists. I believe that only works for static playlists, though.
Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 10:48:25 PM by psychoadept
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billouparis

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Hi,

I have the same issue, I don't know what creates these duplicates, but I have plenty!
Maybe, this happens when I invoke one of the available tools, organize, auto tag, playlist files import, or something else...

Bill


phred

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MB would only add the _1 to a file if the same filename already existed.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
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psychoadept

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It won't solve the problem in the short run, but one thing I've done to help catch duplicates is create a highlighting rule for files ending in _#
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