[stereocilia]

A couple weeks ago I noticed that I have a number of artists (but not all of them) with every song on the album listed twice in Logitech Media Center. So, every song on the album plays twice.

 Looking in Windows explorer I see that a duplicate folder [Album name] with a copy of all the songs on the album in that folder has been created. There are a few weird things, too:
--Missing from the duplicate folder is the album art (usually folder.jpg)
--names with semicolons have the semicolons replaced with underscores
--all of the duplicates appear to have been made on 11/2/2014

I didn't have any success Googling this issue, but I can't be the only one. Can I? What ridiculous invasive software did this? Was it iTunes, jRiver, Windows, LMS? Who did this and how can I make them undo it? 

[steve in jersey]

There was an available Logitech update recently did you by chance download it ?

It sounds like a file extension setting was somehow changed. If this was the case maybe you can download the previous version of the software

(Unfortunately, I don't use this software, so there's a very strong possibility I'm completely "out in left field" on this, so I would wait
to see if anyone else thinks this is "feasible")  (As far as cleaning up those duplicate files I think you'll have to tackle that yourself)

Good Luck !

[stereocilia]

I did do the update, but I didn't read the fine print about what was actually updated. The thing is, jRiver, iTunes, and Windows all had updates around the same time.  My guess is that iTunes did it.

I can search for the duplicated files by date modified, and then list the duplicates an erase them manually. Which is annoying.  But I wonder: what was the point of making them in the first place?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[Vincent Kars]

Maybe iTunes.
It has an option "consolidate files" http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201979

[stereocilia]

Interesting. From that it looks like I would have been prompted, but I don't remember any such prompt.

It disturbs me that hundreds of FLAC files were copied and added. It's not like I have an infinite hard drive.

Here are a few of the albums that got copied:

Pixies -- Wave of Mutiliation: The Best of Pixies
Nick Drake -- Way to Blue: an introduction to Nick Drake
Pavement -- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins
Stevie Ray Vaughn -- The Real Deal: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
The Dandy Warhols -- Dandys Rule OK?
The Kinks -- Come Dancing with the Kinks: The Best of the Kinks 1877-1986
Yo La Tengo -- President Yo La Tengo/New Wave Hot Dogs

There are others, but they all seem to have either ; or : or ? or / in the album title.

I would be interested to hear if anybody else with those albums or albums with those characters has had the same thing happen.

[charmerci]

When I downloaded a recent update of JRiver, I deleted the old one beforehand and the new copy started accessing my music from all my locations (Main drive, E: and F: - my attached backups) so when I open JRiver, it shows all the copies. Whereas before JR was accessing the music files from the one drive that I had set before.

[stereocilia]

Weird. Did it make copies and put them in the same folder, or did it just add the other locations into the library?

Here is the directory stucture I have:

Music
  FLAC
      Artist
        Album
           Song name.flac
           Song name.flac
           ...



Now, for album names with those special characters I have a copy of [album] and all its songs within [artist], except it was renamed with underscores instead of those characters. So, each song is of course listed twice in the library.
         

[stereocilia]

I almost forgot, folder.jpg is missing from the duplicated directory.

[Vincent Kars]

When I downloaded a recent update of JRiver, I deleted the old one beforehand and the new copy started accessing my music from all my locations (Main drive, E: and F: - my attached backups) so when I open JRiver, it shows all the copies. Whereas before JR was accessing the music files from the one drive that I had set before.

That's typical JRiver. If you don't watch out when installing a new version, it reads all drives.
JRiver thinks this is user friendly but UI design is obvious not their stronghold.
Sort all your files by file name and delete from the library all what shouldn't be there is the only solution I know

[JerryM]

This is a well known iTunes issue. Google "itunes making duplicates". You'll find the reason and the solution repeatedly.

Moral of the story? Ditch iTunes and never look back.

Have fun,

Jerry

[stereocilia]

Thanks Jerry!

Sometimes I suck at Googling. I have an ipod that integrates with my car audio system, otherwise I wouldn't use it. This motivates me to figure something else out for the car. Thanks again.

[JEaton]

You must have additional types of files beside FLAC if you're able to use iTunes. If I needed to use iTunes, I'd keep a completely separate library dedicated for the iPod and not let iTunes get anywhere near the master library. For the portable/car library, I would transcode anything lossless like FLAC and ALAC to Mp3 or AAC. Any AAC or Mp3 in the master library, I would duplicate in the iTunes library. If most of your master library is lossless, the iTunes 'copy' of it in Mp3 and/or AAC should require only a fraction of the disk space.

[*Scotty*]

Vincent, this can be dealt with during the install phase of jRiver, first by choosing custom install instead of Express and dis-allowing file associations. This way jRiver is not the default player of a particular file type. At this time you also need to disable Auto-Import by choosing import a single File at a time.
 If you choose the Express or Typical install, Jriver will do all sorts of things on its own that you may find PITA to deal with after they have happened. I first got caught this way when installing jRiver 14.
Scotty

[stereocilia]

You must have additional types of files beside FLAC if you're able to use iTunes. If I needed to use iTunes, I'd keep a completely separate library dedicated for the iPod and not let iTunes get anywhere near the master library. For the portable/car library, I would transcode anything lossless like FLAC and ALAC to Mp3 or AAC. Any AAC or Mp3 in the master library, I would duplicate in the iTunes library. If most of your master library is lossless, the iTunes 'copy' of it in Mp3 and/or AAC should require only a fraction of the disk space.

That's how I have it set up, or so I thought. I have a drive with all my media and documents, and I have a separate directory for the iTunes files. I tried not to let iTunes look for files anywhere but where I specified, but maybe I missed something.

I have found plenty of information about how to get rid of the problem of the iTunes library pointing to the same file twice, but nothing yet about new copies being made and how to prevent it.

EDIT: to be clear, the duplicates appeared in the FLAC folder alongside the existing album, and this is not the folder from which iTunes collects the library.

[aldcoll]

And don't forget to check if it is a squeeze box file issue as that was my experience with the update.  On the web settings it has what files you want access to including art.  It also has a iTunes settings.

[stereocilia]

It looks like the update for Logitech Media Server was done on 11/5/2014, but the files appear to have been created on 11/2, so it couldn't have been that.  I also have the "use iTunes" box unchecked. I'll keep trying to figure this out, but in the meantime I don't know if something will go wonky if I delete the files. I mean, there must be some reason that some software can't use those characters anymore.

[aldcoll]

That sounds like itunes.  Backup the files on a usb hard disk @$70 for 1 T and delete.  And do some research as there is a way to make a mirrored copy rather then the drag and drop.  I have to call my grand child to walk me through it.  And just to be clear the file settings in S Q B are set for the correct file. 

Since the dates don't match it must be IT.

I am re-ripping all my files as I allowed itunes to update and now I have issues as I didnt by ANY from them.  And I also hadn't done well in keeping all the different storage devices sinked.

We often forget the first three words in computing.

BACKUP  BACKUP  BACKUP.  A couple disks are less then the time involved.  I will actually be doing a of site copy.  Why  let them all burn toghter??

[JEaton]

Those characters are among the characters that Windows doesn't permit in file or directory names. This is due to their use for other purposes in the console environment. The "illegal" characters are:

\ / : * ? " < > |

(A semi-colon, which you showed above, is permitted.) So if you have an ARTIST, ALBUM or track TITLE tag that contains one of these characters, when you use the artist, album or title name to create a folder or file name, you (or some software) has to either remove or do a substitution for those characters.

Why those new directories were created, however, is still a bit of a mystery. You couldn't possibly have had those characters in a previous folder name if they're stored on a Windows computer.

You can be nearly certain it wasn't Logitech Media Server that created those files. It will never modify or create music files.

[stereocilia]

Thanks for all the help. I still haven't found anybody else with this exact issue. There are just so many variables, and I'm not enough of a computer sleuth the figure this out. I don't think an iTunes update happened on that day because based on searching for all the files modified 11/2, I don't see any iTunes-related files having been modified. Plenty of Windows files were updated which makes me suspect a Windows update happened.

[steve in jersey]

I strongly suspect that it was your "Windows Updates" that may the reason that these duplicates were generated.

I use a Digital File Player so I have all my music sitting on external drives that I don't leave sitting in my Laptops "System Path" any longer
then however long it takes me to add or delete music. I had been running Windows XP & upgraded to Win7. For some reason all my".jpg"
file extensions were'nt being displayed at the end of the "Folder" files in my music files.

I ended up going into several hundred  music files & manually renaming the "Folder" file to "Folder.jpg"(which is what "MPad" needs to see to display the "Cover Art". I made the mistake of believing that Win7 had "dropped" the ext when in fact it just did'nt display it. While
I could'nt see the additional ".jpg" I changed all these files to "Folder.jpg.jpg".

Long story,short, while it was kind of a PITA to straighten out this mess it made me aware to be on the lookout for unusual behavior
after Windows Updates (or Vice/Versa)