I did the "show duplicate songs" thing. I highlited everythiung in there, ya know, the ones I stupidly assumed to be DUPLICATE SONGS! and deleted them (although I did hit "No" when it asked to move them to the trash, so technically theyre all still there) and now my music collection is missing tracks all over the place. I mean what the hell else would we do with duplicate tracks? Have you ever thrown a party for them? Baked a cake? Taken them to a movie? NO, but we have all deleted them. SO why would apple be so stupid as to put the originals, AND the duplicates when showing duplicate tracks??? OBVISOULY we know what the originals are because theyre DUPLICATES! Why not just show the duplicates only so we can quickly delete them, wouldn't that make the most sense?? If I lost any tracks Im sending Apple the bill.
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itunes is really pissing me off...
- Thread starter reykjavik
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...because sometimes the songs are NOT duplicates. A different version (live for example) by the same artist will show up as a duplicate, when in fact it is not an exact duplicate.
Sorry for your hassle, but I found it intuitive and obvious that I woulnd't want to delete ALL the songs that showed up...
Sorry for your hassle, but I found it intuitive and obvious that I woulnd't want to delete ALL the songs that showed up...
Scottyk9 said:
Wait a second...I thought when iTunes showed me duplicates they were doing me a favor by showing me the songs that were duplicated (because it is a common problem in iTunes to have duplicate songs, still unsure why, but when I say duplicate I mean exact duplicate, not different version but 2 or sometimes 3 or 4 copies of the same mp3 which seems to be a relatively common problem in iTunes). So I thought by showing us duplicates they helping us get around that "bug" and easily identifying what was a duplicate in order for us to easily delete them.
In my personal opinion there is a HUGE difference between a duplicate and a different version. If iTunes would like to do that, they they should create two options 1) Show All Duplicate Songs and 2) Show Similar Songs
To group them all together in my opinion is misleading. When someone says the word "duplicate" they mean verbatim, exact, full copy. They dont mean "live version" or "unplugged version" because that in fact, is not a duplicate, its varying version. MTV did not come out with MTV DUPLICATES. They came out with MTV UNPLUGGED.
Yeah, but it's silly.reykjavik said:
It's simple what should be used for dupe checking; the checksum. That could be the first level of dupe checking with a secondary filename check as 'stage 2'.
Never happen, though.
In my personal opinion there is a HUGE difference between a duplicate and a different version. If iTunes would like to do that, they they should create two options 1) Show All Duplicate Songs and 2) Show Similar Songs
To group them all together in my opinion is misleading. When someone says the word "duplicate" they mean verbatim, exact, full copy. The definition of "Duplicate" according to webster.com is: "being exactly the same as one or more others of its kind". They dont mean "live version" or "unplugged version" because that in fact, is not a duplicate, its varying version. MTV did not come out with MTV DUPLICATES. They came out with MTV UNPLUGGED.
To group them all together in my opinion is misleading. When someone says the word "duplicate" they mean verbatim, exact, full copy. The definition of "Duplicate" according to webster.com is: "being exactly the same as one or more others of its kind". They dont mean "live version" or "unplugged version" because that in fact, is not a duplicate, its varying version. MTV did not come out with MTV DUPLICATES. They came out with MTV UNPLUGGED.
did you get your songs back? you said that you didnt move them to the trash so all you have to do is open itunes go to File > Add to Library, and then just select your iTunes folder and it will find any songs that are not currently listed.
the reason it shows both of the duplicates is because it obviously does not know which track you want to keep, say i have a track that is on an album and a compilation, iTunes doesnt know which one i want or which one is the original so of course it is going to show both of them
the reason it shows both of the duplicates is because it obviously does not know which track you want to keep, say i have a track that is on an album and a compilation, iTunes doesnt know which one i want or which one is the original so of course it is going to show both of them
reykjavik said:
sorry, you hadn't edited your post yet when I typed my response. my point is duplicate to you may mean an exact copy but obviously to iTunes and most of us it doesn't necessarily. It sucks you lost your music but it seems to me you're just bitter that you made a simple mistake. no offense
According to your suggestion, iTunes would only show songs you'd imported using the same encoding and bit rate from the same album. You'd have few or no such duplicates, ever.
I vastly prefer the fact that I see versions at different bit rates, with different encodings, from different albums, etc. I think the "Show Duplicates" would be essentially worthless if it, in fact, showed only songs that were identical except for the time stamp.
Apple chose the way that is more useful and more intuitive to the vast majority of users.
I vastly prefer the fact that I see versions at different bit rates, with different encodings, from different albums, etc. I think the "Show Duplicates" would be essentially worthless if it, in fact, showed only songs that were identical except for the time stamp.
Apple chose the way that is more useful and more intuitive to the vast majority of users.
File: add to Library.
Choose the folder where your missing songs are.
Only thing missing is play counts.
Or restore your library from your back up. You have a backup, right?
I've never had duplicates of a song, unless I have them on multiple albums, but I keep them to keep the albums complete. I don't know abut this bug you talk about.
BTW: Apple has no resonsibility too for any economic losses you soffer using their products.
Choose the folder where your missing songs are.
Only thing missing is play counts.
Or restore your library from your back up. You have a backup, right?
I've never had duplicates of a song, unless I have them on multiple albums, but I keep them to keep the albums complete. I don't know abut this bug you talk about.
BTW: Apple has no resonsibility too for any economic losses you soffer using their products.
FistfulofAngst said:
Actually I didnt lose any of my music, I just dropped my iTunes folder into iTunes and after it did its thing they all came back. And as for JSW, I guess thats right, it all comes down to majority versus minority, I unfortunately, being in the minority.. Personally I have found many exact duplicates (I use mirriam websters definition of the word) in iTunes, some times Ill have as many as 4 exact copies of an mp3. In fact, I believe someone even came out with freeware at one point to deal with the problem since it was common (this was a couple of years ago so the problem may have been fixed since) which is why, when I saw "show duplicates' I assumed is purpose was to tackle that exact problem. I guess not, I assumed incorrectly and held a minority view on the matter. Fortunately I did not trash anything. However I do think iTunes should use a different word, when you put "duplicate" and "mp3" together, one would naturally think of only one thing: wasted hard drive space and be inclined to delete them. Maybe not, thats just what my thought process would be.
iTunes showed what it thought was the duplicate songs. It is up to the user to make intelligent choices as to whether they are really duplicates.
Like actually look at the album that each track is from.
Another use to the show duplicates function would to be to uncheck the versions of a song you don't wish to normally hear (instead of deleting them).
Remember computers any do what they are programmed to do. Sometimes a human brain is needed to make the final decision.
Like actually look at the album that each track is from.
Another use to the show duplicates function would to be to uncheck the versions of a song you don't wish to normally hear (instead of deleting them).
Remember computers any do what they are programmed to do. Sometimes a human brain is needed to make the final decision.
The only "bug" is you hitting delete without looking at what your deleting. Sheesh, Mac OS-X isnt *that* intuitive.
I think the problem is finding a suitable replacement for the word "duplicate", since "similar" is too vague and "identical" is too strict. Perhaps there could be a preference setting for one's definition of "duplicate" that defaulted to the current behavior but would allow stricter interpretations.
I myself would enjoy such a preference setting - there are times when I just want to see different files that are the same song, [/i]same[/i] artist, and same album, just with (possibly) differing bit rates or encodings, or the same song and artist with times within a second or two.
I myself would enjoy such a preference setting - there are times when I just want to see different files that are the same song, [/i]same[/i] artist, and same album, just with (possibly) differing bit rates or encodings, or the same song and artist with times within a second or two.
In all fairness, reykjavik stated that he thought what was being shown to him were the duplicate files, so the assumption was that everything he saw was duplicated elsewhere in his library.Bear said:
Again, he thought all the selections were duplicates. With that assumption, he deleted them all. I doubt that he is the only user to ever have made such an assumption, and, in fact, it isn't unlikely that someone expecting simplicity of use from a Mac would think that iTunes would provide them with a list of files that could be safely removed.altair said:
Obviously, most people interpret the list "correctly", and I think Apple presents the list most people want to see, but I think reykjavik made a not-unreasonable assumption and acted based on it. I disagree with his preference for what the list should show, but I don't find fault with his initial assumption. It was wrong, not stupid.
jsw said:
Exactly, thank you
I actually like your idea a lot, have varying degrees customizable which the end user can select and view accordingly. But to show us a hodgepodge collection of what Apple deems to be pseduo-duplicates really isn't much help...to me at least.jsw said:
I think had I not had the history of finding exact duplicate mp3's in my itunes folder I wouldn't have necessarily jumped to that conclusion, but given my history with iTunes I genuinely dont think it was nreasonable to come to my conclusion/assumption. Like you said, ultimately it was wrong, but with my itunes experiences/history, I dont think it was stupid/unreasonable.