Dealing With Multiple File Formats

Support
#1

Hey everyone! I probably have an uncommon problem, but I will throw it out there to see if anyone has an easy solution! I am looking for a way to deal with duplicate songs in different file formats. My current library is formatted as follows:

ALBUMARTIST / YEAR - ALBUM (FILEFORMAT) / DISCNUMBER-TRACK - TITLE

I like using the file format after the album because it is easy to see what upgrades I can make to my library easily and it has kept the different file formats separate without having duplicate files in one folder. I just realized (for some reason) that keeping both MP3 and FLAC is useless and I want to take action. Is there a change that I can make to the Tag-Filename code to delete (or skip past) the lower-quality version of a song if I already have it in FLAC? This isn't the case for my entire library. Maybe 10% of it has this issue.

This is the Tag-Filename format string I am currently using:

%albumartist%[%year% - ]%album% ($upper(%_extension%))[%discnumber%][-$num(%track%,2)] - %title%

I would also be open to any kind of suggestions, feedback, or tips that would improve my folder structure. All of my songs are fully tagged, so reformatting my folder structure would be a simple task if need be! Any help anybody could provide me with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

  • Tyler
#2

The files would not be duplicates as they would have different extensions.

I would filter for MP3 files,
rename their folder so that the FLAC files and MP3 files end up in the same folder.
Now filter for flac files and rename the folder again so that all files in the folder are moved to the new folder, e.g. d:\my music\ALBUMARTIST\YEAR - ALBUM_allfiles
This should leave all folders untouched that contain only MP3 files.
Now filter for the MP3 files again where
NOT %_DIRECTORY% HAS FLAC AND %_EXTENSION% IS MP3
this should show all MP3 files that have been moved along with the flac files which means that there are already flac files for that album.
These files could be deleted.
Now filter for the extension MP3 again and rename the folders back to your original naming scheme and do the same for the flac files.

To rename a folder, use Converter>Tag-Tag for _DIRECTORY and enter a full path like
d:\my music\%ALBUMARTIST%\%YEAR% - %ALBUM% (%_extension%)
do not add the filename part.

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