Author Topic: Beginner...starting from scratch  (Read 1580 times)

sep

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I am brand new to MusicBee.  I am newly retired and my next project is organizing all my digital music. (then, there are all the vinyls I have to digitize!)  Thanks in advance if someone could tell me if I’m attacking this in the correct steps:

I have 150k files. … tons of duplicates due to backups (thankfully), bad management on my part, iTunes duplicating everything after one update.

I scanned the drive containing all the music.
It is now in my “inbox.”
I plan to attack groups of files and auto-tag by track.
Then, have MusicBee auto-organize the library.
Next, duplicates. I’m thinking I should move duplicates to a playlist…and gradually delete the files from there. Or should I use a separate de-duper program and do that first?

Your advice?

hiccup

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Welcome to the forum sep.

Personally I would start by trying to find and remove as many as possible duplicates using a duplicate file finder tool before importing them in MusicBee.
This because the success rate of such software often depends on filenames and filesizes.

When you first import them into MusicBee, and use auto-organising features, or add albumart etc., then the filesizes will change, and possibly also the filenames, reducing the chances of success when using duplicates finder software.

sveakul

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Personally I would start by trying to find and remove as many as possible duplicates using a duplicate file finder tool before importing them in MusicBee.
I couldn't agree more.  The tool I have used is AllDup (https://www.alldup.info/alldup_help/alldup.php).  It is free, has a Portable version, offers multiple matching criteria including byte-by-byte, and has special options for music files.  That said, the options in general are a bit "hairy" to initially set up.  I'm sure there are many other apps that work equally well, "but this one is mine (yikes!)."

sep

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