RadioBOSS - Identifying and removing duplicate music files in music library

Dmitry,

We got into some bad habits in the Radio Dungog studio in the past 3 years.  The main problem that continues to trouble us is the duplicate music files.

In the early days we had a problem with the RadioBOSS playlist content being deleted.  That has been fixed - but to get around the problem our presenters created Windows folders for themselves and for the shows and stored extra copies of the music in them.

The end result was we ended up with music in our master library folder and multiple duplicates of the songs in the private folders.  The presenters also added new music to their private folders - so no copies of this in the master folder.

I want to fix this up by:

1. Retaining our master library folder (music ripped from CDs)

2. Eliminating duplicate files from the personal folders AND retaining any unique files from the personal folders that are not present in the master library folder.

The numbers are extreme - 100,000 songs in the master library folder and 65,000 songs in the personal folders (many of which are duplicates)

When complete we would end up with:

a)  Master library:  w:\m11

b)  Auxiliary library:  w:\m99

c)  Where the complete library ends up being:  w:\m11  +  w:\m99


Can you think of a way to do this ?



Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
In the early days we had a problem with the RadioBOSS playlist content being deleted.  That has been fixed - but to get around the problem our presenters created Windows folders for themselves and for the shows and stored extra copies of the music in them.
I'm not sure why playlist can be deleted, except for operator error (manual playlist deletion, or event scheduler which clears the playlist). In any case, to backup the playlist, they could simply save it: File->Save As.


radiodungog said:
The end result was we ended up with music in our master library folder and multiple duplicates of the songs in the private folders.  The presenters also added new music to their private folders - so no copies of this in the master folder.

I want to fix this up by:

1. Retaining our master library folder (music ripped from CDs)

2. Eliminating duplicate files from the personal folders AND retaining any unique files from the personal folders that are not present in the master library folder.

The numbers are extreme - 100,000 songs in the master library folder and 65,000 songs in the personal folders (many of which are duplicates)
I'd suggest using specialized software to clean out duplicates.
 
Dmitry,

The playlist problem was fixed ages ago.  Any suggestions on some software to clean up duplicates ?


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
The playlist problem was fixed ages ago.  Any suggestions on some software to clean up duplicates ?
I don't recall any good duplicate finder software, sorry... I'm not sure, but probably CCleaner had this feature.
 
If you search the web for duplicate music finder, you will find many and most are free.  I have used one of them in the past with good results, however it will take time as most want you to select which directories you want to scan and then mark the songs you want to delete.  I could not find the one I used listed as it was from 2007,  I would suggest a complete backup of your music files before hunting for duplicates so if a mistake is made, you can recover from it.  Hope this helps.

David
 
I had this same promblem when bringing all my libraries together. I found a (free) product called "Similarity" which does a good job of identifying duplicate tracks.
If you pay for the full version it will do a really clever trick of analysing the waveform of the tracks to do the compaisons (so not just looking for same filename/trackname etc). This will identify different rips of the same track.

It's a bit slow but then it's doing a load of work, leave it to run overnight. Again, the paid version allows you to stop and restart (the free version starts from the beginning each time).

Good luck, I hope this helps
Steve
station owner, CrowZone Radio.
 
Thanks guys,

Another thought.  If there are song files that have been copied and pasted (and thus duplicated) then the file names will be the same.

If I create a new folder to hold them, then use Windows to cut and paste, Windows will identify any duplicates and offer to copy them and rename them.

Example:

\Night_Show_20141106\Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young.mp3

\Night_Show_20141215\Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young.mp3

\Night_Requests_20150120\Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young.mp3


Cut and paste to new singles folder

\Singles_Collection\

Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young.mp3
Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young(1).mp3
Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young(2).mp3

The duplicates with numbers in the filename could be searched and copied into a duplicate folder form safe storage:

\Singles_Collection_Duplicates\

Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young(1).mp3
Youth_Group_-_Forever_Young(2).mp3


This might be a very simple fix using technology that works simply and that we understand



Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
It will only work if file names are the same. But it will not catch the same file under different names. A specialized utility to search for duplicates is better solution, it also involves less manual labor :)
 
This is a really serious problem and shortcoming of the program and this function should be mandatory. For example, "[removed]" it has all series and is wonderfully useful because withdraw all duplicates. Well this program "[removed]" also has serious drawbacks, and I used to use, but I have a lot more quality radio BOSS. My opinion is that it should be mandatory to add to all versions of your program BOSS, or do this add-on download as an additional file.
 
I'm not sure why RadioBOSS needs to include duplicate searching feature. If you use Playlist Generator, then it's repeat protection feature will filter out duplicates as tag information is the same (file name doesn't matter in this case).
 
Uh sorry. I was not aware of this option and that there is protection duplicate songs. But will need to learn in this way to put play list. Thanks for the explanation and help.
bye
 
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