Steve vRS

iTunes is duplicating my songs. It seams to be if the song title has some punctuation in it then when I import the songs from my computer into iTunes, it is making a second copy of the song. It even makes a second copy of an entire album if the album title has a punctuation mark in it.

So from having 19Gb of music on my hard drive with Windows Media Player, I have gone to 24Gb with iTunes!

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions to stop it doing this?

Thanks in advance.

Steve

Markus

I've not heard of this issue before. My first thought is to check the Advanced prefs and make sure "Copy songs to iTunes Library" option isn't enabled, but if that were the case I'd expect all the music to be duplicated.

What OS and iTunes version are you running? How are you adding the songs to iTunes, what command are you using?

If you look at the actual file on disk before you import it, does the filename have the punctuation intact? What punctuation marks seem to be effected, colons, semi-colons, apostrophes?

Steve vRS

I'm using Windows XP. Not sure on the iTunes - it's the latest version from the Apple website.

I'm adding the songs from my external hard disc that were in the main ripped by windows media player - with no problems! In fact I'm tempted to go back to Media Player.

From memory, the command I'm using is file>add folder to library where I am choosing the MY Music folder.

Thanks

Steve

Markus

Try this. On a good song that has imported properly into iTunes, use the command to show the actual file on disk, see where it's located. Do the same for both of the items that it duplicates, see if the file is being added to the same place or not, also see what file extension the files have.

Steve vRS

The files are being created next to the original and extra album folders are being created next to original folders. I'll give a you some example file names when I'm home to show how it's changing the punctuation to create the extra files.

Thanks Markus

Steve

Steve vRS

OK, it's changing - to _ and losing ? all together!

Steve

Markus

Have a look in prefs, see if the option about "Keep my Library organised" is enabled, if so, disable it and see if that makes a difference.

Very odd problem indeed and not one I've heard of before. Only thing I can think of is that iTunes does not like the name of the file and is changing it for some reason. The odd bit is that it happily adds the "bad" song to the list, rather than ignoring it and using it's copy.

millersoviet

Just an idea, is Itunes making a duplicate or is it doing a conversion of the file. If your music is in WMA format Itunes will convert it to AAC or Mp3 or Mp4. So it may be worth checking the formats of the two files.

Markus

It could be that, though I would have thought in the case of the problem happening with one track on a album that all the tracks would have been ripped at the same time, thus they'd be in the same format.