How To Filter Duplicates Properly

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Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

I have the Duplicate Titles/Artists showing all duplicates in my collection. Even after sorting, the information shown is not so easy to work with. What I would like to do is filter the shown content to show single albums. Here is an example of what I see right now:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/4pk ... icates.png

There are three sets of duplicates I have highlighted above all from a single album: Winter of Love. The duplicates continue onto the next screen. What I would like to do is add a filter to show only Winter of Love album to work with a single album at a time. This should be simple to do, but look what happens right after I create the filter:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zis ... _album.png

What happened to the duplicates?
IanRTaylorUK
Posts: 536
Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2019 4:41 pm

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by IanRTaylorUK »

Looking at your screen shots the highlighted tracks do not look like duplicates i.e. different track titles.

You might want to consider organising the columns to be sort of hierarchical as that will better show what is / is not a duplicate (or alternative version of a track).

I like to have the columns (left to right) as follows:

Type / Artist / Album Artist / Album / Disc / Track / Title (genre, BPM and Bit Rate are also useful)

So I would expect the Type to be Music and the Artist to equal Album Artist unless a collaboration or compendium. If you sort using one of the first few columns (particularly album) then you might see some valid duplicates e.g. same track title but on a different disk. I my own library this would not be a duplicate as I am not too worried about have "alternative" version of the same track. I used rating the express my preference of one "alternative" version over another.

When adding music be very careful to get consistency in the naming of the Artist (ACDC vs AC-DC va AcDc...), Album and Title. Where possible always add the Disc number and Track Numbers.

Use the search / filter the home in one a single Artist / Album etc if that helps. Use "Artist:ACDC" or "Album:Are You Ready" in the search / filter to be very specific in your searching.

Finally, if you click on the Duplicate Content node, MMW will "calculate signatures" - a digitally explicit way to distinguish between differing tracks.

https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/kno ... ow-to-fix/

Hope this helps.
Ian Taylor
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

They are duplicates. If you look above all of the blue items highlighted, you will see the duplicated files. There are three from different albums.

I am not and will not delete any content from my library. I manage duplicate content via m3u8 playlists to play specific songs. MediaMonkey is insistent on deleting files that I do not do.

This looks like a problem with the filter.
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

It is the filter causing the issue. This looks like a flaw.

I am expecting a filter to filter against content currently shown on the screen. This is typically how filters work across many applications.

MMW5 has been designed such that the duplicate content check will function only against what you set for the filter. What I am looking to do has not been coded to be handled, and this is why all duplicates vanished when I filtered on Winter of Love. There are no duplicates in this album alone, but the logic is only looking for duplicates for this single album I filtered on.

My expectation was that there is an output list of all duplicates that was shown prior to adding any filters. This list remains fixed once it is shown. I am expecting to be able to filter this fixed list to show a subset of criteria based on the filter. Sorting does this today. However, the code was written such that adding a filter causes the duplicate check to run again against the filtered criteria only.
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

I found a work-around for this issue. Remove all filters from Duplicate Titles/Artists. After that, right click it and send to a New Playlist. I named the playlist Duplicate Music. I can then create an auto playlist from Duplicate Music that filters on specific albums. This will work-around this issue for the time being.
Erwin Hanzl
Posts: 1189
Joined: Tue Jun 13, 2017 8:47 am
Location: Vienna

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Erwin Hanzl »

Duplicate Title/Artists ONLY checks for the "Title" AND "Artist" fields.
Activate the ColumnFilter and select "Album" from the field.

Image
MMW 4.1.31.1919 Gold-Standardinstallation
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

Thank you. That will do it, but believe it or not my work-around is simpler. For the column filter, I have to scroll through a very long album list. I cannot even get type ahead to work properly.

For the work-around I stated, I got it done in a few seconds:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/eik ... around.png

Now I know there are nine total tracks to exclude from this particular album.
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

I think that filter that already exists on the duplicate node could have instead been implemented as I stated. It would have been less work for the development team, and it gets the job done.
IanRTaylorUK
Posts: 536
Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2019 4:41 pm

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by IanRTaylorUK »

Dryst wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:37 am They are duplicates. If you look above all of the blue items highlighted, you will see the duplicated files. There are three from different albums.

I am not and will not delete any content from my library. I manage duplicate content via m3u8 playlists to play specific songs. MediaMonkey is insistent on deleting files that I do not do.

This looks like a problem with the filter.
Hi Dryst,

Maybe semantics but I am not seeing 4 duplicates but 4 alternatives renditions e.g. same track title but different album / date or length. I know some for some artist they publish identical tracks on different albums and to be honest I take the view that it is a different album.

I agree you only want to consider deletion of "true" duplicates - where the "signature" shows it is a true duplicate. I have not experienced MMW insisting on deleting files. This uses the 3rd MMW5 option "Duplicate Content" i.e. the one that calculates signatures.

To be quite honest I find the Duplicate Title/Artist and Duplicate Title or limited use and prefer the Duplicate Content node.
Ian Taylor
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

Hi Ian.

The specific items I highlighted in blue are exact duplicates of the same song. There is at least one duplicate of the same song being re-released. The MMW5 software itself is not suggesting or even forcing me to delete any song; however, all over the MediaMonkey documentation it is clearly stated that I need to delete files to handle this scenario. If I do not delete these duplicated files, I will hear the same song on different albums played repeatedly that I do not want to hear. I am not including remixes (even though there may be a remix too listed. I include remixes, because they are different).

https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/kno ... ow-to-fix/

This is the reason I have spent so much time creating m3u8 playlist for specific genres that have guaranteed unique files of exactly what I wish to hear. MMW5 currently does not have a graceful way to handle the same song appearing perhaps five different times on five different releases (other than deleting the extras you don't want per the documentation). My custom playlist has the exact single song that I want to hear. My entire library is filled with this scenario, and my library is an archive of album content.
Dryst
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by Dryst »

Here is a perfect example to illustrate this issue. I have a collection of music from Prince (R.I.P.). Let's take the song "Purple Rain" as an example. Here is where this exist throughout my library:

Code: Select all

\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince And The Revolution\1984, Purple Rain (192kHz)\09-Purple Rain.flac
\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince And The Revolution\1984, Purple Rain\09-Purple Rain.ape
\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince\1993, The Hits\36-Purple Rain.ape
\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince\2015, Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)\09-Purple Rain (2015 Paisley Park Remaster).flac
\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince\2015, Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)\27-Purple Rain (7 Single Edit).flac
This is the same song, but it exists five times. The only one that I have a desire to hear is this:

Code: Select all

\\QNAPNAS\Media\Digital Audio\Prince\2015, Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)\09-Purple Rain (2015 Paisley Park Remaster).flac
If I did not create my m3u8 playlist, would MMW5 guarantee that AutoDJ would only play that one version above? If no, is there a better fix other than deleting excess files that I refuse to do?
IanRTaylorUK
Posts: 536
Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2019 4:41 pm

Re: How To Filter Duplicates Properly

Post by IanRTaylorUK »

Hi Dryst,

Yes I see the issue. In my arrangement / set-up you have four "Albums":
1984, Purple Rain (192kHz)
1984, Purple Rain
1993, The Hits
2015, Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)

And 5 "alternative" tracks - even if they are digitally identical content:
09-Purple Rain.flac
09-Purple Rain.ape
36-Purple Rain.ape
09-Purple Rain (2015 Paisley Park Remaster).flac
27-Purple Rain (7 Single Edit).flac

I would also handle this using Playlists as I create a Playlist for each album.

I have "culled" some tracks when I have found "alternatives" of lower quality (I personally use only MP3). Typically these lower quality tracks have come from "Various" artist albums! For example, building on your "Purple Rain" example, I have 3 albums:

All Time Classic Tearjerkers
Love Bites & School Nites
Purple Rain

And 3 tracks - all Purple Rain - Title and Filename.mp3. None of them as high as the quality you have!

With my MP3s I tend to put disc / track / dates and anything version related into other tags. The main reason for this is that I like to keep things as short as possible as I load music onto small devices e.g. a Garmin GPS.
Ian Taylor
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