Replace track option

I think it would be good to have the option in Emplode or JEmplode to "Replace" a current track.

Recently I've been re-ripping a bunch of stuff and when I put it back on the player I find I need to be really carefull to check each track to see if it has refs to other playlists (and many of them do). Sometimes with popular tracks, I have to look through a dozen playlists so that I can make everything as it was.

Having a Replace feature would let you drag a new mp3 track onto the player directly over an existing track, deleteing the existing track and replacing it with the new one in any playlist it was associated with.

Have you tried right-clicking on a track in Emplode lately? Or a very recent build of Jemplode?

I'm still using 2.0 b13 is that in a newer version?

I think that the "Replace Tune" option has been there for many Emplode versions and would still exist in b13. I know that it did not exist until very recently in Jemplode because it was a feature I specifically asked for (and was granted) only a couple weeks ago.

I'll have to have a closer look then. I've been causing myself a bunch of extra work if it's already there, that's for sure!!!

Yeah it's there in 2.0 b13 too. I just never knew it.

Side note - It always blows me away at how much thought and functionallity has gone into this player and the software that operates it. Most of the time I find that I assmue the player and software is not that advanced, only then I find out that someone has already included whatever it is I'm wanting or needing... Un-F'n-believable

Does that allow to replace all instances of an existing track with another existing track? Because, I occasionally find duplicates after I've uploaded to the player.

(I'm not too interested in Emplode, as I don't have a Windows box, but I guess there are some people out there who do, and are )

Toby, I have the same problem all the time.. but I don't know of any way for (J)emplode to know how to intelligently handle it. Often a song appears multiple times because it's included on a CD Single and on the album and on a soundtrack etc etc. But since they are from differant sources, they might not show up as duplicates. Then, some are like a full minute longer but not labled as a "Single Version" or "12" Mix". AND some appear to be like 8 seconds longer because some CD's pad the song with silence.

Maybe if [j]emplode could do a search of all instances where a track that has the same Title and Artist and appears exists as more than one FID (while ignoring bit rate and Source)?

In reply to:

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Often a song appears multiple times because it's included on a CD Single and on the album and on a soundtrack etc etc

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Exactly. If they are genuinely different versions (live vs studio, for instance), then I'll want to keep both. Otherwise, I generally keep the more "definitive" version (studio album beats "greatest hits" compilation beats mixed compilation), toggle coloured on the existing one, and replace it one at a time.

It's this last stage I'd like to automate.

I just spent quite a while replacing about a dozen instances of the 4-minute radio version of American Pie with the full-length one (the hard bit was where I had it in a playlist for recording onto cassette for empegless trips - I had to make an extra 4 minutes of space for it).

You guys are not clearly understanding how the player handles copies of tunes in multiple playlists.

When you select "Replace Tune", it replaces that instance of that FID file on the hard disk. It doesn't go searching for stuff which happens to have the same title, it only replaces that particular song file. Besides, you wouldn't want it to replace every song with the same title. If it did that, I'd lose four of my five different versions of "Closer to the Heart".

The player doesn't care if the song from a movie soundtrack is the same as the song from the greatest hits collection is the same song as the song from the original studio album. You deliberately uploaded the song three different times, so there are three different copies of the song and the player thinks they are all completely different. (And, technically, they ARE different because they were mastered differently on each of those CDs.)

The only time that "Replace Tune" will replace multiple playlist-instances of a song is if they really are the same song, copied between playlists, as described here.

I completely understand what you're talking about Tony, but I have instances where I have duplicates that are not from any particular source on the player that I occasionally want to replace with a tune from a specific source on the player. Often this happens when I've uploaded some new CD's only to find that I had some of the tracks from those same CD's already on the player in various playlists. At that point, I would want to replace them with the tracks from the actual CD and not leave them on the player independantly.

What I'm saying I'd like to be able to do is to select a tune (say FID 0x201) and say that everywhere it appears in a playlist, it should be replaced with a different one (say FID 0x301). So the first one becomes an orphan tune (and candidate for complete removal) and the second one gets n extra references. I suppose it's a special kind of Paste operation ("destructive paste" or "paste over").

In reply to:

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The only time that "Replace Tune" will replace multiple playlist-instances of a song is if they really are the same song, copied between playlists, as described here.

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That's exactly what I'm thinking of. A third of my tracks are only linked once, but of the remainder, 5 or 6 links is common, and some have 10 or 11. The extremum is currently 586, but I don't expect to have to replace that one ever!

The extremum is currently 586, but I don't expect to have to replace that one ever!

Really? IMO that's not even the best song on Power Corruption & Lies...

Peter

I've uploaded some new CD's only to find that I had some of the tracks from those same CD's already on the player in various playlists.

See, I don't actually understand why this is such a problem, unless you're running short on disk space. Anyone care to explain?

Tidiness.

See, I don't actually understand why this is such a problem, unless you're running short on disk space. Anyone care to explain?

It borks shuffle's attempts to deduplicate. This actually happened to me on Tuesday and I got Beat Dis twice within about half-an-hour. Zis is not acceptable, ja? Ve vil eliminate.

Peter

Zis is not acceptable, ja? Ve vil eliminate.

I assume you're thinking of doing something with the RID, right?

Are you sure the RID is going to come out the same for two slightly different masterings of the same song? For instance, a version of a song that got remastered for a greatest hits collection. If I understand the way the RIDs are calculated, even a slight difference in volume would cause a different RID. Or am I wrong about that?

Are you sure the RID is going to come out the same for two slightly different masterings of the same song? For instance, a version of a song that got remastered for a greatest hits collection. If I understand the way the RIDs are calculated, even a slight difference in volume would cause a different RID. Or am I wrong about that?

You're correct. In fact, even a difference in encoding (an upgrade of Lame, for instance, or different Lame options, or the use of mp3gain) would cause a different RID.

Deduplication by RID is a solved problem -- we do it for the Karma. Toby and the others in this thread are talking about deduplication when the RID is different. It's effectively impossible to do automatically(*), but right now there aren't even tools to help you do it manually. It's not IMO a player-side problem, it's a PC-side problem (though it's easiest to patch up when your PC-side filesystem supports symbolic links).

(The "ve" in that comment wasn't "ve at Empeg", it was just meant to be me getting all Dr Strangelove on the ass of my own music collection.)

I've said this before, but IMO the area of tools for letting you get a firm grip on a large music collection is where the next great opportunity lies for being much better than the current state of the art of digital music software.

Peter

(*) "Go" and "Go (Woodtick Mix)" are the same song, but "Leo Leo" and "Leo Leo (Featuring Raagman)" aren't the same song, despite being exactly the same length and indeed binary-identical as WAVs for the first and last 10s.