Karaoke Forums

So let's say you painstakenly ripped your entire collection of cdg's and now you have X amount of files on your hardrive taking up valuable memory like me.
All the files have been "zipped" for further space savings.  

But now looking at the "list" I see that I have 8 versions of "I Will Survive"
from various manufactureres.   What is the best way to "selectively" weed out the unwanted duplictaes ( I know you may need a 2 versions of a song for singers who actually prefer DK over Sound Choice)  but I DON'T WANT 8 verisions of any song

Anyone else facing this dilema ?  Suggestions? Solutions (besides deleteing 1 by 1 )

#1 Delete them 1 by 1, shouldn't take that long, but it's painfull.
#2 At the cost of HDD's today, I wouldn't bother removing duplicates. At and average of say 5MB/file (zipped), $150 for a 250GB HDD, you can store 50k songs.

Allstar

Besides the "space issue" it would just be a more efficent drive if all unwanted files are removed.   When searching for a song I don't want t have to look and choose between SC / Nortstar  / SGB / All Hits.  I prefer to have my 1 or 2  top choices in there only.  When creating lists - I don't want 6 copies of a song showing up --especially if they are all 1 manuf !

Totally understand and agree. Unfortunately, there is no easyway

IMO, take the time and remove the files you don't want.  When I first went digital I made sure I only had one version of any song.  I always went with what "I" thought was the best version; closest to the original.  This usually ends up being Sound Choice or Chartbuster.  Most of my crowd who previously liked "other" versions eventually came around and admitted the version I had was better.  Usually it's just what the singer has at home and has got used to.  For a while people brought their own disks.  But soon heard other people singing "my" version and the disks from home have stopped.

It is a rare occasion that anyone brings a disk in anymore.

Kelly

Kelley

Deleting manually track by track is the only way ?????

Yes it is...

Also, why not MOVE them into another folder. That way just in case someone asks if you have other versions, you can quickly check.

I don't mind the dupes. I have all my tracks for each disc in their own respective folders.

So when someone asks for SC8125-02, I go to the hard drive with the discs, click on the folder called discs, click on SC, click on 8xxx, then go to 81xx, and then the disc number.

It SEEMS like a lot of work to be so organized... but it's just like running discs, and I have my songbooks still organized by discs. For the customers, there's no change.

I am too in that process of removng dupes....

With my hosting softwarte I can output the song list to Excell, and then use Excell to find all dupes.

When I have the dupes nailed down, I am listening to each one of them to see which I think is the BEST, and 2nd best, and I keep them.  I figure I am going to elimante about 500 songs or so.  I am not doing this to make disc space, since that is cheap you can get a terabyte of storage for $700, but I am doing it to eliminate pages in my books.


My hosting software keeps track of each song that was sung in the last 90 days.  I am using that to weigh in on which songs I keep too.  If there is a MM song that I think is not good, but is sung a lot, I will keep it.

at over 16,500 songs, there's no way I could do that. I'd rather list what I think is the best version, in my singer's book, and then in my masters book, have the rest.

I HAVE had choosy customers come in and want what I felt was an inferior track... but it's what they were the most comfortable with!

Ultimately, it's they who pay my bills.

I still have over half of my hard drives not being used. Space is NOT an issue for me!

Is space an issue?  Remove them from your books, but keep them on your drive in case someone WANTS to use the obscure version you personally think sucks, but is the one they are used to & want to use.
As far as duplicates go, just rename all the ones that you won't use by placing an x at the begining, then when you sort, they will all be placed in one section....?

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I put the one best version of each song in the book.    As far as the hard drive and the computer.  That thing will instantly find a song even if you have 100,000 songs.    A 400 gig hard drive is just as big as a 6 gig one, size wise.   When it's in the external fan box.    I'm lost on that issue.


But I will probably use only the best musical version on the hard drive, when I get to that point.    I'll need two hard drives, when I'm done.

Personally for me I don't want to keep 8 variations of any one song .
We all know what the top 2 or 3 mfgs are for each genre and if someone wants a version of a song from one of the "other" mfgs that I deleted...We'll  (sorry)

Let me add I currently do one bar gig a week and already know WHICH versions my regulars prefer so I plan to keep those ( even if I  feel the version is inferior).

I plan to keep ALL MY FILES on a back up drive just in case - But for the drive I take to each gig - I want it to be as efficient as possible --JUST WHAT I NEED.

So guess I will go song by song and delete ,  I am currently doing the same with my REGULAR DJ music but have found plenty of programs that can identify duplicate MP3 files and give you a choice if you want to delete or not.

Once completed I then can reprint my books but will probably only list each song ONCE.   Regular KARAOKE SINGERS will usually ask which version ...and this singers just out for a good time don't have to ask me " HOW COME YOU HAVE SO MANY VERSIONS OF CRAZY LISTED ?  ARE THEY DIFFERANT ?  WHICH ONE IS THE REAL ONE? WHICH ONE SOUNDS JUST LIKE THE RECORD ?  arggggghhhh

Tank!!!!!  YOU

I use Beyond Compare to do that, free download & shareware.

I wrote a duplicate detector a long time ago and just re-posted it.  It has the wrong email address on it but I seem to remember it worked pretty well.  www.freewebs.com/sacksonuts and then click the link to the freeware at right.  It's called DupDetect.  FREE!

Ditto that....
In all reality is haveing 9 different versions of "SUMMER NIGHTS" going to get you any more gigs?  NO.

Yes pleasing the customer is good, but if you don't have it, you don't have it.

It is a LOT BETTER to keep you song selection up-to-date, rather than having 9 versions of one song.  There is one KJ in my area that hasn't gotten any new songs for 1.5 years, and another that has not gotten any new songs for 3 years.  Whereas I get new songs every month or 2.

I wholeheartedly agree with Lonnie's suggestion.  Remove the unwanted songs from your book and rename them so that they won't be lumped in with the others.  You never know when someone asks for that other version of the song that you didn't think was not good enough.

When you have tens of thousands of songs, it becomes difficult for the singers to choose songs.  I would tailor the list depending upon the type of people.  If you have a lot of older people, standards would be good to have, for example.

I really does pay to have a good hosting software.  Most hosting software are smart enough to pull up the list of songs quickly.  I happen to use Roxbox because it does so seamlessly, and I can have two players going on: one for karaoke and another for fill music.  

Cheers,

JD

I have had some very selective singers come in and when they complained about my singer's book only having one of each, I kindly handed them my master book. And they found many of the selections that they preferred.

I hear what you're saying... but IMHO, you're going about it the wrong way.

List your fav version in the BOOKS, but leave the files alone!

But again, that's just  my

Go ahead and delete away. Having dupes doesn't make my computer ANY heavier. I do the editing on my singers book, but the master has it all. And for those picky people, they can look through it to their heart's delight.

To say "Well... sorry!" to a customer when you HAD it... that just seems like a crime! Cause they'll find someone that DOES have it.

If you live in an area that doesn't have a lot of competition, fine. Me, I'm looking for the long haul, as opposed to the here and now.

Never slice off your foot to cure a hangnail!

Lets say I have a chartbuster and soundchoice of the same song.. Since my song book is made from the files Here is how I do it. I have a dups folder and move one into it Then name the song remaining like  Patsy Cline - Crazy(SC).zip All know now that there are 2 or more versions.


there are certain country songs on cb that I have sang for years If I go to a place with sc it sometimes throws me off for half the song....

Knightshow posted




I do the same... this way if I ever need to reburn the complete disc for any reason I have the whole disc. I paid for it so I'm keeping it

Actually I have two hard drives one master and one for shows

I prefer Sound Choice songs.  So when I search for songs, I always add SC after the name of the song.  That allows me to pull up all of the SC songs.  If I dont have any SC song under that title, I then remove the SC text which invariably pulls up songs from other brands.