After years and years of adding to my iTunes mess, I finally decided to clean up my library.
After looking through a bunch of limiting time sucker “dupe finder” apps I had a feeling that an apple script would do the job more efficiently .
Found one!
1. Set Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Library Location, to the new destination [usually on your external with lots of free space].
2. Go to File > Library > Consolidate Library and make sure you use the same location as in step 1.
Note: “Consolidate Library” does note delete anything, none of the automated steps here do. It will actually just duplicate your library in the new location. It will also include any files that where not copied to the library, and reside in other locations.
3. Download and install the script at this link.
4. Run the “Corral iTunes Dupes” script.
I used “Match” > Name + Size [cmd + click to select more than one parameter at a time]
Note: You will get an option to choose if you want all the files [original + duplicate] or just the duplicates added to the “Dupes” playlist.
Choose > “Duplicates”
Another Note: The script basically just gathers all the dupes and lumps them into a playlist called “Dupes” you can then OPTION – DELETE that playlist and nuke your duplicates!
5. The files will be in your Trash, so test everything before clicking “Empty Trash”.
Another suggestion I can make here if you are looking to totally clean up your iTunes library:
The ID3 tag version will make a difference in audio programs such as SCRATCH LIVE, I had a pretty big issue once with BPM’s [Beats per Minute] showing up in iTunes but not in SSL…
I got a great bit of info from one of the admins from the SSL forums:
This causes confusion in SSL.
To fix this issue you will need to strip the tags from your files and convert to version 2.3.
Unfortunately stripping the tags will delete any cue points and loops .
Try it out on one track.Stripping tags and converting to version 2.3.
1. Close all programs.
2. Open iTunes.
3. Click on your ‘music’ to show all the songs in your library.
4. Select all (apple+a Mac) (ctrl+a PC).
5. Click on the ‘advanced’ column.
6. Select ‘convert id3 tags’.
7. Check the ‘id3 tag version’ and select ‘none’.
8. Press ‘ok’.
9. Click on the ‘advanced’ column.
10. Select ‘convert id3 tags’.
11. Check the ‘id3 tag version’ and select ’2.3′.
12. Press ‘ok’.After all of this rescan your id3 tags in SSL.
