Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Troubleshooting and FAQ

1. “iTunesDSM can find duplicate files but when I click the Clean iTunes button nothing happens.”

This can happen if you try to run iTunesDSM from within the zipped folder (.zip) you downloaded. Extract the zip folder and try running iTunesDSM again.

2. “Sometimes when I click the Add Tracks to iTunes button, nothing happens.”
This appears to be an issue with iTunes and possibly something called JACOB. Unfortunately, this issue is intermittent, and the only way to fix it is to close iTunesDSM and run it again.

3. "iTunesDSM is not finding any duplicated files, but I know they are there."
iTunesDSM relies on iTunes keeping your music files organized. The setting is in Edit > Preferences > Keep iTunes Media Folder organized. If this option is not enabled then iTunesDSM will not find any duplicate files.

4. "Can I search for duplicate files in other directories?"
Yes, just change the music directory for each search you want to perform and then rerun the Find Duplicates and/or Add New Tracks searches.

5. "What are exclusions?"
iTunesDSM has to keep a list of files that have already been added to iTunes from outside of the iTunes directory because adding tracks to iTunes programmatically can produce duplicated files. In other words, you can add files inside iTunes' music directory without incident, but adding songs outside of the directory can cause duplicate files to occur. It's all maintained automatically so you shouldn't need to worry about it.

6. “What happened to Mac support?”
iTunesDSM is written in Java so yes it does work on Mac, but iTunesDSM relies on COM’s to read information from the iTunes libraries. COM’s are not available on Mac so a lot of the iTunesDSM functionality is lost. I have looked into Apple Scripts, but since I don’t have a Mac, I can’t test them.
Be sure your Mac is set to use JRE 1.6 to run iTunesDSM. You can find this option in Java Preferences, search for it in your applications.

7. “What are orphaned files or orphaned tracks?”
Orphaned tracks are those tracks in your iTunes library that have the exclamation mark next to them. The exclamation mark means that the file that iTunes used to use to play that song no longer exists. iTunesDSM can automatically remove these orphaned tracks in the Remove Duplicates tab, while keeping the rest of your library intact.

8. Still having problems? Try the support forum.

22 comments:

  1. Cool! I hadn't heard of that program. Though I didn't see removing orphaned tracks from iTunes or background monitoring which is coming up in the next version :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Downloaded for my mac. Unziped. Clicked on the itunesDMS.jar and it says it failed to launch. Any ideas?
    thanks,
    John

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  3. Problem with DSM
    I run the Duplicate search progress-- it found 28549 duplicates I click on OK and a box comes up that reads scanning 18 essential song. The green bar is half way, then the program stops. Thanks barry

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  4. Scrapman...
    I've replied to your question in the Sourceforge forums.

    Brian

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  5. I have over 5000 songs that show up when I select display duplicates. None of the songs have the exclamation point. I just wiped my computer and added all my music so there is no way to sort the music by date. It seems ridiculous to have to select every other song one by one over 2500 times to delete the duplicates. Is there a way to automatically delete duplicates or to sort the music in a way to delete all the duplicates at once?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous,

    Yes that is what my program here will do for you. It will not show the original files for you to remove, only the actual duplicate files. Therefore, you can select all the files and be sure only the duplicated ones are removed.

    Hope this helps
    Brian

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  7. I have over 8,000 duplicates but it keeps on getting stuck on scanning unknown album and won't even identify the duplicates itunes identifies, help please??????

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  8. Couple of things you can try:

    1. Remove the unknown album from the itunes music folder and scan through the music folder again.

    2. Try scanning each individual folder inside the unknown album folder until you find the offending folder.

    Sometimes the Java runtime craps out on hidden folders and files and it seems that iTunes will place some of those files inside the unknown album folder. Let me know what happens.

    Brian

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  9. Ok, my iTunes library contains more or less 20000 songs... half of these songs are duplicates but when I ask your program to find them it only finds 71 duplicates... ehm, what should I do?

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  10. Make sure they are exactly duplicates i.e. Dream On.mp3, Dream On 1.mp3, etc. Is this the case?

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  11. I tried this program but everytime I scroll files to check it says"there was an error parsing the iTunes xml file" how do I fix this

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  12. I had the same situation as iavarone.daniele: over 5000 dupes in my iTunes library, 85 detected by iTunesDSM. The iTunes "Get Info" function (and the XML file) shows that almost all are duplicate iTunes library entries sharing identical file paths (but with different Track IDs). The rest are duplicated mp3 files with identical metadata but slightly different file names, just like your example of Dream On.mp3, Dream On 1.mp3.

    After removing those 85 dupes with iTunesDSM, about 5000 remain of the identical-paths variety, and perhaps 100 of the second variety mentioned above.

    Another thing: when I tell iTunesDSM to find duplicates, the "Scanning Unknown Album" progress-bar dialog box pops up with a half-finished progress bar that stays up and motionless even after the "No duplicates are found" message pops up. Removing the entire "Unknown Artist" directory (including the "Unknown Album" subdirectory) changes nothing -- what Unknown Album is it trying to scan? No other "Unknown Album" subdirectories remain under the iTunes directory.

    iTunes DSM 0.96
    iTunes 10.1.1.4
    Windows XP service pack 3

    Any ideas? Thanks,

    Christian

    ReplyDelete
  13. Do you need to find duplicate files?

    Improve computer performance by deleting duplicate files
    Identical files not only waste your hard disk space, but also may cause system slowdowns. By deleting duplicate files you can reduce time needed to defragment your hard drives and minimize time used by antivirus to scan your computer.


    Sort and organize your media collections
    Media files collections, such as music, video, images and photos, often become the primary source of identical files. If you have a music collection of several hundreds or even thousands mp3-files, you may want to sort them by deleting identical tracks.

    With Duplicate File Finder you can organize your media files and increase free disk space needed to enlarge your collection.

    Find duplicate files by content!
    Duplicate Files Deleter has the MD5 search engine which allows the program to search for duplicate files by content, regardless of other match criteria. It would be helpful, for example, when two identical mp3 tracks or video files have different names.

    http://duplicateFilesDeleter.com

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  14. Brian, when I select Display duplicates in ITunes, there are over "29,000 duplicates". However, many of these duplicates are live versions of songs or extended (longer) versions. Does ITunes DSM take any of those things into consideration before it considers a song a duplicate?

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  15. In this situation I used DuplicateFilesDeleter for great effect. It searches two or more duplicate files in one or more selected search paths and removes them.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I ran the DSM and it deleted my dupes, but they still show in iTunes? Why and how can this be fixed.

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  17. DSM finds 11793 duplicates, but I cannot select all or clean them. The whole program freezes and won't do anything. Please advise.

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  18. All my music has been erased from my itunes music folder I am just left with empty folders

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Its ok I somehow hid all my music through Itunes

      Delete
    2. Its ok I somehow hid all my music through Itunes

      Delete