beaTunes News

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Deleting orphaned Files

beaTunes2 logoAs most of you know, beaTunes has the ability to find and delete duplicates. Up to version 2.0.7, these duplicates were only deleted from the iTunes database, but the actual files were not removed. I changed this in 2.0.8 - whenever possible, files are now moved to the trash/recycling bin or are simply deleted, should trash or recycling bin not be available (e.g. on network drives). But if you have deleted duplicates with an old version of beaTunes, it might be difficult to identify the files that are not referenced by iTunes anymore.

To solve the dilemma, I wrote a little plugin, that compares the iTunes database with all the files in a folder, i.e. the music folder where you keep your mp3's etc. in.

Note that this only makes sense, when you let iTunes manage your music collection or all your music files are in one folder that contains nothing but those files!

To install the plugin, download deleteorphans-1.0.0.jar and place it in your plugin folder (see this posting to find out where that is). The next time you start beaTunes, there will be an additional entry in your Tools menu called Delete orphans. Click on it and enter the location of your music folder, which is usually called iTunes Music. This folder should contain nothing but your audio/video files!

The plugin now compares the iTunes library with the contents of that folder and presents a list of files it found in the folder (or its subfolders), but not in iTunes. Review the list carefully and make sure you only select those files that you actually want to delete, then delete them.

For those of you interested in how the plugin works, take a look at the sources.

This plugins has been updated!

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posted at 10:46

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Will beaTunes identify duplicate files/songs by the song's bom, key, language or other characteristics? I want to remove duplicates songs that do not necessarily have the same title,album title etc...

If beaTunes will do this, then you have a customer.

Thanks

May 28, 2009 at 7:28:00 PM EST  
Blogger beaTunes said...

beaTunes regards songs as duplicates when either their title or some song id is the same.
A song id can be for example the MusicIP PUID. So you could first analyze your songs for PUID with beaTunes (check the corresponding box in the analysis options, uncheck other options to speed up analysis). After analysis is done, run the duplicates inspection.
Note that analysis for PUID is fully functional in the trial version. Also displaying issues and possible solutions works in the trial - only applying those solutions does not work.
So give the free trial a shot. If you like what you see, I 'd be very happy to have you as a customer.

May 28, 2009 at 9:33:00 PM EST  

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