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iPod iTunes Clean up - How to?
- Thread starter dkranz
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If you don't mind doing it yourself, you can tell iTunes to show you the duplicate tracks by going to File>Display Duplicates and you can select the ones you wish to delete yourself. Although, depending on how itunes chooses to organizes the tracks (I'd recommend date added to help sort the tracks, then you can highlight and batch delete the tracks), I can see how this method isn't for everyone.
I've also seen other member recommend the application Dupin for this particular situation.
I've also seen other member recommend the application Dupin for this particular situation.
I don't know which one works the best as I have only tried one, dupin from Dougs scripts. It was free then, alas a lite version of it costs usd8 nowadays.
The lite version works fine. Does the job, damage free.
I don´t know what other 'clean features' you would want to use.
Basically dupes are about the only issue that a user would need help with because of the tedious nature of doing it manually, especially if you have identical keeper tracks.
ps. I never noticed that File - display duplicates - before. And as I have no dupes at present, all purged with dupin, I have no idea how it works.
I recently moved my entire library, about 120gb, from my macbook to a Mac Mini to use as a server and somehow I lost a ton of info. The tracks are all still there, but artist, album etc. .. all disappeared. I am hoping when I tunes match is released when I upload my songs I'll be able to get the info back, otherwise it is 2,000 songs worth of track naming I have to do.
That's a really odd occurrence! If you haven't deleted the library from your macbook, you can always try again. If manually copy and pasting still doesn't work, you should be able to import the songs via home share and retain the metadata.
Otherwise, I'm not sure what kind of software could help you tag music that doesn't have the appropriate track name. You might want to check out Tagalicious, since it supposedly analyzes the audio of the track to determine what metadata to fetch for it.
I use Tagalicious by The Little App Factory. It won't delete duplicates but it did do a VERY good job in adding all missing information (album art, genre, artist, etc) to my songs.
music brainz/picard might be useful. has been using it for years before i tried something else (paid!) that made a total breakfast of the library.
so now im waiting for cloud/match to come live and do a library backup/restore on a new system. mostly for the same reasons you are. exporting thr library always leaves something out.
i just hope Match/cloud are clever enough with playlists and ratings...
so now im waiting for cloud/match to come live and do a library backup/restore on a new system. mostly for the same reasons you are. exporting thr library always leaves something out.
i just hope Match/cloud are clever enough with playlists and ratings...
I used Tune Up to clean up all my music files. I originally tried to do it manually but I have over 10,000 songs. Around song #50 I said screw it and bought a license for Tune Up instead.
Tune Up is about 90% accurate IMO. It'll nab the track listing numbers, cover art and whatever else data you want for the given song. Last time I checked it could only do 500 songs at a time? Might be different now but it was a limited set of songs you could process at a time.
The vast majority of my music was cleaned up and all the data points were filled in. Every once in awhile, specifically for cover art, it'll tag the weirdest photo to your song as cover art. Not an actual album cover, but a photo. It'll even add the TinyPic image where it says photo not available or something. Kinda weird but it's to be expected somewhat.
Overall, I thought Tune Up was well worth the price. You'll need to be careful when signing up since they automatically enroll you for another year once your subscription runs out. AND the software automatically tags every song with "Cleaned up by Tune Up" which gets quite annoying. You can disable it through the settings menu though.
Tune Up is about 90% accurate IMO. It'll nab the track listing numbers, cover art and whatever else data you want for the given song. Last time I checked it could only do 500 songs at a time? Might be different now but it was a limited set of songs you could process at a time.
The vast majority of my music was cleaned up and all the data points were filled in. Every once in awhile, specifically for cover art, it'll tag the weirdest photo to your song as cover art. Not an actual album cover, but a photo. It'll even add the TinyPic image where it says photo not available or something. Kinda weird but it's to be expected somewhat.
Overall, I thought Tune Up was well worth the price. You'll need to be careful when signing up since they automatically enroll you for another year once your subscription runs out. AND the software automatically tags every song with "Cleaned up by Tune Up" which gets quite annoying. You can disable it through the settings menu though.
here is an article which reviews some popular tools which help clean up iTunes.
I recently found out about TuneUp and have been very much willing to try it as at least it looks like a cool addition to iTunes. However, I have not heard too much great comments about that program. This is from their own support forums:
http://support.tuneupmedia.com/entries/20108867-do-not-purchase-tuneup
In fact many are not positive at all and I am now trying to see whether there is some alternative. I badly need to get rid of my duplicates in iTunes. Besides doesn't TuneUp only find artwork?
I recently found out about TuneUp and have been very much willing to try it as at least it looks like a cool addition to iTunes. However, I have not heard too much great comments about that program. This is from their own support forums:
http://support.tuneupmedia.com/entries/20108867-do-not-purchase-tuneup
In fact many are not positive at all and I am now trying to see whether there is some alternative. I badly need to get rid of my duplicates in iTunes. Besides doesn't TuneUp only find artwork?
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