How Does iTunes Find Dups??

[Syndacate]

Hey, I got a quick question about iTunes. How does it go about finding duplicate songs? Is it by file hash, or by file name, or by the ID3 tag's "title" field, or what?

The reason why I ask is because I'm removing duplicates in my iTunes library and there's like 20 songs there that it says are duplicates (shows up under "File" >> "Show Dupicates") but if I hit "show all" then type the name of the song in the search field there's only one result that pops up for it. For most of the songs in the "show duplicates" menu it shows both of them - but for some it shows only one - and then when I go back to show all and search for it - there's only one to be found - so I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

Any input on this would be appreciated.

 

[Syndacate]

Aw damn, no responses in 2 days .

Anybody??

 

[Tomorrow]

I believe (based on my experience) that it uses a combination of artist and song names - my iTunes setup found many duplicates in my library where the dupes were completely different recordings, like a studio version and a live version of the same song, for example.

 

[Syndacate]

I believe (based on my experience) that it uses a combination of artist and song names - my iTunes setup found many duplicates in my library where the dupes were completely different recordings, like a studio version and a live version of the same song, for example.

Yeah, I got that part, but the weird part is when I go to "show all" and search for it - I only get one result, so it has to be something different than the title or artist. I have some exact dups - and it's not even finding both of them.

 

[Tomorrow]

Could it be a problem with the iTunes database? Specifically, maybe there's only one song file but multiple entries for it in the database?

See if you can play both dupes individually by double-clicking in iTunes. If you can, and a thorough search on the HD for both song files comes up empty, then I guess I'm stumped.

 

[Galley]

iTunes has an option to show "Exact Duplicates" when you hold down the option button.

 

[Syndacate]

I have another side question that kind of hit me when I'm trouble shooting this:

Say I have all of my songs added to the iTunes library. What happens when I add a song that's already there? ie. I might have the same song in multiple folders, and I usually add songs by folders. So say I add the same song, and by same song I mean same ID3 tags, same version, same exact hash code - will it create another entry but not copy the new one into the database? or will it not create another entry and just play the one in there, or what?

I realize it adds a duped entry when there's discrepancies in the ID3 tags (ie. one song, two different albums), but what if all the information, everything, even the hash, is exactly the same?