Merging movie files on hard drives

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JamjarsNZ

63 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 12

#126923 24-Jul-2013 01:02

I am about to merge all my movie files on two hard drives onto one. The problem I know I will encounter is that some movie files have the same file names (everything has been renamed through Media Center Master to the conventional naming system) but different extensions so some folders will end up with two movie files with different extensions. What would be the easiest way to find out which folders will have two movie files without opening each one up and checking.

I want to delete the movie files of lesser quality and dont mind doing that manually but would like to automate finding the duplicates. All of the duplicate file finding programs I have tried dont just compare filenames minus the extentions, or they compare the content of the files and dont come up as duplicates.

Any advice?

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kiwijunglist

2983 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 135

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#864988 24-Jul-2013 12:26

I started writing answer then realised it's not quite a complete solution because you have to remove the extensions before comparing the list and there is no easy way to do this without writing a script, so my answer is as follows

anyways

use the following cmds at cmd prompt (or in a .bat)
dir /b /s > c:\movies\*.mp4 >> list.txt
dir /b /s > c:\movies\*.avi >> list.txt
dir /b /s > c:\movies\*.mkv >> list.txt

move first half of collection to c:\movies\
run the commands
now rename c:\movies -> c:\movies1\
move second half of collection to c:\movies\
run the commands again

copy + paste list.txt into

http://www.textfixer.com/tools/alphabetize-text-words.php

It should be easy to scan for duplicates with your eye.

Explanation

/b = bare format (no filesize etc)
/s = include subdirectories
>> = add directory result into an existing text file

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

jtbthatsme

937 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 70

Trusted

#865197 24-Jul-2013 16:29

If you're already willing to accept you may need to delete the duplicates manually, why can't you just copy them all into the same folder do hit the name link to put them alphabetically (as you've said they're already been renamed the same so only difference is the file name), then look at your list you'll have two names the same next to eachother and then can decide which of the two you want to keep.

It may not be that simple and the answers here obvioulsly make me believe that it isn't but that's how I'd do it. If you wanted to run a script from there to pick which ones to delete surely one can be written to say keep the larger file size yadda yadda thing.

I am not super technical and have little experience with using scripts (tend to ask or research and copy what I find) but sometimes I think people especially us geeks (or in my case wanna be geek) we like to over complicate things. If this won't work sorry for wasting your time reading it lol. I will be checking back to see how you did it though so I know for myself as I know I have the same problem over maybe 2 - 4 hard drives worth of video content where a large chunk are exact duplicates as well as different file format types.

Good luck either way.