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iTunes duplicates. (1 Viewer)

B

Bubbs

Well-known member
This is sort of bird related and I'm hoping someone can help me.

Following yet another mystery iTunes disappearance off this new PC my question is this; I managed to eventually recover most of my bird recordings but I am now left with many thousands of duplicate bird songs. I do know how to find and delete them but the downside is they have to be 'ticked' one by one and then deleted. This will take me weeks to go through the library and I just wondered if anyone can offer advice on deleting them en masse but obviously leaving just the one original? Perhaps there is some software that one of you can recommend that finds and deletes mass duplicates safely.

iTunes support have been of no use whatsoever.

I hope this makes sense.

Bubbs.
 
There are indeed tools available to help with that. I haven't used any of them myself, so I just want to point you in the right direction, but am unable to give you a definite recommendation based on my own experience.

This discussion on the Apple forum has a link to a free program that tries to do the job. You should also read the first page of that discussion, where the creator of the software describes how duplicates arise, and why removing them is non-trivial.

The same discussion also contains a link to commercial software that promises to do a thorough job even where the issue isn't restricted to itunes.

Andrea
 
Thanks, Andrea. It looks like it's going to be a long job...again.

This is the second time in two years that I have had to 'tick' each individual duplicate in order to delete. Why iTunes doesn't have a similar programme to DeDuper is beyond me. Meanwhile...back to 12,000 duplicates :C
 
Are the duplicates just duplicate records in iTunes or are there actually two copies of the file on your computer each with its own entry in iTunes?

If the duplicates are just in iTunes and they make up a sizeable proportion of your library then it would probably be easier just to delete your entire iTunes library, (just from iTunes keeping the actual file!!) and then just re-import all the files en masse. Any tags you have added in iTunes are saved into the file itself, so they are safe. If you have duplicates of the files as well then Windows has more tools for finding and mass deleting things than iTunes, so prune out the duplicate files before re-importing into iTunes.

It might sound drastic but it is a choice between that or hours of monotonous ticking of boxes I know which one I would prefer.
 
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Bubbs, I am using the paid-up version as the free version has its limitations. The songs that are identified with certainty as being duplicates can just be deleted; TuneUp gives you the possibility to review the songs it is not sure about. What I do like about TuneUp is that it also adds missing cover artwork. Not a perfect program, but the best I found.
 
Mono said:
Are the duplicates just duplicate records in iTunes or are there actually two copies of the file on your computer each with its own entry in iTunes?

If the duplicates are just in iTunes and they make up a sizeable proportion of your library then it would probably be easier just to delete your entire iTunes library, (just from iTunes keeping the actual file!!) and then just re-import all the files en masse. Any tags you have added in iTunes are saved into the file itself, so they are safe. If you have duplicates of the files as well then Windows has more tools for finding and mass deleting things than iTunes, so prune out the duplicate files before re-importing into iTunes.

It might sound drastic but it is a choice between that or hours of monotonous ticking of boxes I know which one I would prefer.
Click to expand...

Too drastic for me I'm afraid but thanks for the advice ;)
 
Hanno said:
Bubbs, I am using the paid-up version as the free version has its limitations. The songs that are identified with certainty as being duplicates can just be deleted; TuneUp gives you the possibility to review the songs it is not sure about. What I do like about TuneUp is that it also adds missing cover artwork. Not a perfect program, but the best I found.
Click to expand...

Thanks Hanno. The paid version is £32.25 which is pretty drastic just to delete the duplicates. The missing artwork can easily be replaced back into the library just by saving the album in pictures and then pasting in album info.

I now know that duplicates is a VERY common problem with many people who have a sizeable library with iTunes.
 
If you tick or single click one song you can then press shift and click on another song much further down. This will highlight in blue every song between the two you have ticked/clicked. You will then be able to delete all those highlighted in blue.

This obviously isn't any good if the ones you want to delete are spaced out which I suspect might be the case here.
 
DaveN said:
If you tick or single click one song you can then press shift and click on another song much further down. This will highlight in blue every song between the two you have ticked/clicked. You will then be able to delete all those highlighted in blue.

This obviously isn't any good if the ones you want to delete are spaced out which I suspect might be the case here.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dave. That's what I've been doing but most albums have five duplicates for every song. Albums with 14 tracks on will have up to 60 or 70 duplicates.

Before iTunes mysteriously dissapeared my library was perfectly organised with no duplicates whatsoever. This has actually happened before when I once upgraded to the latest version of iTunes. It upgraded successfully but when I opened my music everything had gone! A seemingly common problem so I am told.
 
Do the duplicates have the all the same attributes? If they have been added on different occasions then the "date added" field should be different. Right mouse on the bar with the field names on and select "date added" if it is not showing already. If you then click on the top of the "date added" column they will be sorted by that field. So if you go View > Show Duplicate Items then sort the duplicates by date added you can use the Shift Click method above to select en masse duplicates added in a particular event.

On another point I have tried adding again a file that is in the iTunes library already and it just doesn't go in. So I'm guessing that that you actually have the multiple copies of the actual files on your computer. There are two ways, at least, in which iTunes can generate multiple files. If you a version in a different format (or even an MP3 with a different bitrate to your default) and ask iTunes to Create MP3 Version, it will put the new MP3 version in a new folder and you will have the old and new file versions appear in iTunes. Also if you have organised your music files on the disk yourself and then ask iTunes to "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized", it will create a new file structure with artist and album folder names and these copied files will appear as new items in the iTunes library as well as the old ones.
 
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Mono said:
Do the duplicates have the all the same attributes? If they have been added on different occasions then the "date added" field should be different. Right mouse on the bar with the field names on and select "date added" if it is not showing already. If you then click on the top of the "date added" column they will be sorted by that field. So if you go View > Show Duplicate Items then sort the duplicates by date added you can use the Shift Click method above to select en masse duplicates added in a particular event.

On another point I have tried adding again a file that is in the iTunes library already and it just doesn't go in. So I'm guessing that that you actually have the multiple copies of the actual files on your computer. There are two ways, at least, in which iTunes can generate multiple files. If you a version in a different format (or even an MP3 with a different bitrate to your default) and ask iTunes to Create MP3 Version, it will put the new MP3 version in a new folder and you will have the old and new file versions appear in iTunes. Also if you have organised your music files on the disk yourself and then ask iTunes to "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized", it will create a new file structure with artist and album folder names and these copied files will appear as new items in the iTunes library as well as the old ones.
Click to expand...

Hi Mono,

Many thanks.

The date added are all different but the updated date are all the same after recovery. I think perhaps not checking the 'Keep iTunes Media Folder Organised' will prevent mulitiple copies in the future...but I'm no expert on technology!
 
After weeks and weeks of deleting duplicate tracks I finally came to 'C' in the alphabet.... and I still had 7,989 duplicates to delete one by one!

After reading reviews I came to the decision to spend some money on a 'cleaner' download. 'Tune Sweeper' was my choice to save me more weeks of laborious deleting. The free version would find my duplicates, group them, but not clean until I purchased - no surprise there then!

£15.00 lighter and one hour twenty four minutes later my library is now clear, and no doubt my hard drive has more space.

Hoping this helps and many thanks to those who replied ;)
 
And almost one month on I cannot recommend Tune Sweeper high enough. OK, it is £15 but I believe it can be downloaded onto three PC's and it's a lifetime one off purchase ;)

Hoping this helps.
 
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