Author Topic: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion  (Read 60690 times)

abdu

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Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« on: December 02, 2010, 17:23:46 »
I would like to choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion.

Example: I have two folders, 'folder 1' & 'folder 2' which contain many duplicates. I would like to be able to tell Similarity to choose 'folder 2' when it deletes  the duplicates. Think of 'folder 1' being the master folder. When the deletion is complete I can then copy the rest of the files (merge) from 'folder 2' into 'folder 1'.

I am not sure if this feature is supported. If not, please add it.

hsei

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2010, 10:00:23 »
I agree in part to that proposal.
Having a master folder (better: master tree) and deleting automatically all duplicates in a candidate folder is for me not an optimal idea, since the candidate file might be of better quality. There is an option in the full version where  the frequency content is evaluated. It's not perfect but gives reasonable hints in most cases. Having the option to keep the better one and to eventually replace the file in the master tree would be very helpful (just swapping files to have the better one in the master would practically do the same). The full version has the option to form groups of directory trees which is one step in that direction. But at the moment it seems to me that the candidates for deletion are chosen more or less arbitrarily, so I have to go through the duplicate lists manually.
Moving (merging) the residual (non-similar) files from a candidate directory to the master directory is a single drag and drop in the explorer. I doubt that it is worth the effort to add that to the similarity program.

abdu

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2010, 18:29:01 »

What do you mean the candidates for deletion are chosen arbitrarily? I thought you can choose a criteria like bitrate. It keeps the file with the highest bitrate and deletes the lower ones. Does it do that?

The merging and moving of files is done through file explorer. That's what I meant when I said 'I can then copy...'.

abdu

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2010, 19:04:08 »
The results page doesn't make sense to me. Each file is in bold and then the duplicates are indented. Indented based on what? It's not bitrate because sometimes the bold one is of a higher bitrate and sometimes it's lower. File size? random? That's why I am saying to show the auto markings in the free version because I don't know if auto marking works the way I like. Until I know how it works I don't want to get the premium one.

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2010, 08:40:58 »
The results page doesn't make sense to me. Each file is in bold and then the duplicates are indented. Indented based on what? It's not bitrate because sometimes the bold one is of a higher bitrate and sometimes it's lower. File size? random? That's why I am saying to show the auto markings in the free version because I don't know if auto marking works the way I like. Until I know how it works I don't want to get the premium one.

Please, read article: Working with groups in Similarity - about rearranging groups in Premium subscription.

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2010, 08:43:46 »
I would like to choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion.

Example: I have two folders, 'folder 1' & 'folder 2' which contain many duplicates. I would like to be able to tell Similarity to choose 'folder 2' when it deletes  the duplicates. Think of 'folder 1' being the master folder. When the deletion is complete I can then copy the rest of the files (merge) from 'folder 2' into 'folder 1'.

I am not sure if this feature is supported. If not, please add it.

You can use folder groups and select group field in priority tab:

hsei

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2010, 11:30:05 »
If you just want to know which titles of folder 2 (candidates) are already in your base tree and you want to delete/disregard them and just copy/move the rest, grouping (available in premium version) does that job. Automatic tagging in free version is almost unusable for larger collections.
You can rearrange groups by bitrate, length, duration etc., but these are no quality criteria in a strict sense and thus arbitrary from that point of view. I agree that these criteria may be sufficient in many cases, but a 256 kBit MP3 encoding obtained by reencoding a 46 kBit file is worse than a one-step 128 kBit encoding. A file with longer duration is typically less prone to truncation at the beginning or the end at an average, but a file with one second missing in the middle and additional 5 sec silence at the end is definitely not the better one though it's longer.
Adding quality to rearranging criteria is promised for a later version, but to be honest: for critical (e.g. historical) samples I would look into the quality comparison (clipping, spectrum ...) or even listen to both files before I would rely to any automatic criteria to delete one of them.

David

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Re: Choose a folder in automatic marking for deletion
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2011, 05:00:40 »
I agree with Abdu's request.
I think it is an absolutely basic requirement to be able to specify a folder or a directory tree.
I would therefore also like to be able to choose whether or not the selection would cascade to include sub-folders.
Another good feature would be to have the possibility of inverting the selection.

I have subscribed to the premium version and look forward to the programs development.