Syncing edited songs without creating duplicate files ... ideas?
I'm thrilled you can now move songs via iTunes to different computers. My issue is that I want to move songs when I change info for a song (ie. star rating, comment, etc.). If the song already exist on the other computer moving the song via iTunes creates a duplicate on the receiving computer. Ideas?
While also time consuming, the Consolidate command will do it and is automatic.
What you would do is go into your iTunes preferences and change the iTunes Music folder location. Pick something like a spare external drive or if you have enough room on your internal to duplicate your whole library, another spot there.
Now invoke the consolidate command. What this command does is copies any files not in the currently identified iTunes Music folder location into that location and updates the database so the song is now accessed from that location. Since you just change the location to somewhere else, ALL of your library is outside that location and will be copied into it.
So here is the part that helps you. All those 19 gigs of orphaned files are left behind. If the file is not used by iTunes it is not copied. So the new iTunes Music folder location ends up being a clean folder with only those files actively used by iTunes.
As that point you can either continue to use this new location and delete the old location from your computer. Or if you want everything back in the same place, clear out the old folder then change the location back to that folder and consolidate everything back. Again, will take a fair bit of time for many many gigs, but you can start it and go to bed, go to lunch, work, go watch a show as it is done automatically.
Cheers,
Patrick
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Problem #1: You said that "iTunes only creates duplicates if you ask it to...". Well my goal is not to create duplicates but to avoid them and the problem with iTunes is that it does not seem to offer an easy way to do this. Do not get me wrong, I like iTunes but let's call black black and white white. So the way I read your answer is: no iTunes does not support a way to add the same folder twice without creating duplicates.
Problem #2: The answer to the second question is also no, iTunes does not offer any way to monitor for new files in a folder or folders.
I wish the above were incorrect but from what I hear and from what your wrote I conclude iTunes does not support any of that.
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I will have a closer look at the iTunes Folder Watch program. Unless I am misinterpreting something I think it should do what I want to do.
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I have a huge iTunes library I've created over the years. 50,000+ songs. No problem, other than my desire to whittle through it slowly and pare it down to only the 22,000 or so I want to keep as my primary library. I haven't gone through the effort of creating multiple libraries yet, I simply delete songs or albums from the library as time permits without deleting the original file. I figure iTunes' database will be my primary and in the long-game, I'll create a new library that holds everything, but for now I'll just keep whittling the dB structure away until I get what I want (this is a slow, multi-year project I'm undertaking -- no rush here).
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<sigh>
Thanks for reading through all this!
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Mac Mini OSX 10.8.3; iTunes 11.0.2 (26)See this thread for background on why iTunes can end up with duplicates and how they can be systematically removed. The script there is for Windows users and the "show duplicates" menus have moved around in iTunes 11, but the advice on clearing recently made duplicates should still hold.
As given in my older post "Reorganize library" is meant as a one time command to change the structure of a pre-iTunes 9 library into the newer layout that places music in its own subfolder of the media folder. Once used, if the option becomes available again that suggests that a file called .iTunes Preferences.plist in the media folder has been deleted or editied.
See also this post.
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Saving tiff or jpg files within a single, existing psd file without creating new files
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ITunes creating duplicate files under a hidden folder named "Volumes".
It seems my iTunes program is secretly making a duplicate file in a hidden folder called "Volumes" on my laptop hard drive. It's now maxxed out my drive and I need to both remove the "Volumes" folder and make sure it doesn't get created and happen again.
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Using a Powerbook G4 with an 80gb drive. Using iTunes 8. The iTunes library program is in the usual place on the lap top hard drive but the music library folder, where all the files get saved to, is on an external drive labeled "Media".
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Help, I have 2gb of free space left!
Thanks, JamesHi I am having a similar issue, It all started when I tried to restore from the Time Machine and it threw a error back stating that there is no disk available. I was wondering how come and went to find out what is happening and was shocked to find out that actually my entire Macintosh HD has a duplicate copy inside the /Volumes folder. I went to the XTERM to investigate and found that the / (root) has a Users folder where all my stuffs like pictures, music, movies, documents reside and the same data or content is duplicated in the /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users folder
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Thanks
Regards
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Hi everyone, I've got a question. I've noticed that Itunes says me exactly the number of times that I've listened a song since I've put it on the library. Well, I've just put on some new music and I was wondering if there is a way to reproduce only the songs that Itunes nerver played without creating a new playlist.
Thank you
SimoneWelcome to the Apple Support Communities
This isn't possible, but this is a great idea > http://www.apple.com/feedback -
I recently purged my iPhone 4S of most of its music because I didn't have enough gigabytes of free space to download the latest iOS (my phone was actually completely full). That ticked me off but I didn't have time for a backup. I transferred all purchases to my library and I deleted the music from my phone.
Since then, I've been annoyed that I don't have all my music but I've been enjoying the free space that I have, so I prefer to restore songs from my library individually now, depending what I'm in the mood to hear, and I don't miss having a full phone.
However, whenever I try to manually sync music that was ripped from a CD, music I didn't download from iTunes, but is playable in my iTunes library, iTunes thinks it has to download the entire library, which I don't even have the space for, anyway. However, my iPhone seems fine wirelessly (I have Home Sharing turned on) syncing individual songs which were purchased in the iTunes store.
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How do I regain the ability to sync a single song at a time?
This has been exasperating me.While your iPhone is synching in iTunes, do the following:
1. Click on your iPhone's icon on the left.
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Guidance on importing 1000's of tracks without creating duplicates?
I am helping a friend consolidate his music library.
He has an existing library that I organized and is currently in great shape, no duplicates, tags are all good.
I have collated about 40,000 tracks from various sources he had into another library to work on. Once I have it cleaned up I would like to add it to his existing library, but there are thousands of duplicate albums spread through out the library.
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Henrywhile dupes are easily dealt with (IMHO), you might want to take a look @ SuperSync.
the developer claims the app is able to *Compare and merge any two music libraries*, and more besides.
JGG
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