Is it possible to remove duplicate entries? (1 Viewer)

[Domenic]

I'm working on a MediaPortal setup for our college dorm, and there's significant duplication across the PCs I'm indexing (servers for different dorms, personal PCs, etc.). Since I can't tell the people who run those PCs to delete duplicate episodes, is there any way to make the TVSeries plugin just choose a single one of them, and remove the duplicates? Preferably the one with the biggest file size!

I'm open to database hacks or whatnot, although of course a single setting would be by far best.

Previously I tried deleting the duplicates, but from what I remember that removed _all_ copies of that episode from the database. I might've done it wrong though...

Thanks! Hope there's some way to prevent 4 copies of the same Heroes episode from showing up in the GUI .

 

[gamejester]

This is a similar request to one made here

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/my-tvseries-162/feature-request-ignore-duplicate-files-45233/

Think it is a good idea, I will add it to the feature request over at the TVseries plugin tracking site.
I too could make use of this feature as I often travel between houses with a portable drive on which some TV is duplicated on different systems so appears twice in the list. Although they both can play I would rather not add duplicate episodes.

Needs some thought about which episode wins out, or perhaps make this configurable by the user some how.
Assume something like local episode wins out over network location, etc....
Easiest way would be just to add first one found and then do not add a duplicate.
You can then order your search paths top down with your prefered location first.

Not 100% without the code or db in front of me but form memory the file scan bit runs first then it does the patern match thetvdb lookup next. So I would expect all files to still be added to the db, but just an additional check added to the lookup section to first check for a matching episode. Should be doable!

 

[gamejester]

The issue is removing duplicate entires from the db, not the physical files, we still need those

 

[frying_fish]

Is it not possible to it by removing the entry in the config screen rather than from within MP itself, although it could be how it links the online episode information, I haven't dealt with multiple listing myself, but could see why it might get confused (as files will end up with the same composite ID), so it may require a recode to handle that, or just delete them, then re-add one of the files?

 

[gamejester]

Is it not possible to it by removing the entry in the config screen rather than from within MP itself, although it could be how it links the online episode information, I haven't dealt with multiple listing myself, but could see why it might get confused (as files will end up with the same composite ID), so it may require a recode to handle that, or just delete them, then re-add one of the files?

We need to re-code the plugin to cope with this and have it configurable to a degree by the user.
We want it automatic, don't want users to have to go into the config app and hack around with entries.
The issue is a re-curring one; think of a laptop that has its own content and moves between 2 houses that also have content; some of this will overlap; either through exactly the same file being it 2 or more locations or the same episode but in different files in different locations. For example on my home server I have the 720P of an epsiode but on my laptop I only have the low res version......

 

[frying_fish]

Fair enough, and yes I can see from the usability stand point you would want to make it as automatic and painless as possible. I think the problem lies in the fact that the unique identifier is the composite ID, which will come up as the same for both versions of the file at the moment, interestingly I have other issues that mean I need to look at altering the composite ID in a different manner, for absolute ordering of files.

 

[Raytestrak]

Duplicate files? Or duplicate entries? I sometimes have to different versions of one episode (say: one is out of sync so I dl another) and then when I have to entries. When I delete one entry from the plugin config overview, the both disappear from within mp, with no possibility to get it back except a manual add (which doesn't load the thumb).

 

[Clean]

Duplicate files? Or duplicate entries? I sometimes have to different versions of one episode (say: one is out of sync so I dl another) and then when I have to entries. When I delete one entry from the plugin config overview, the both disappear from within mp, with no possibility to get it back except a manual add (which doesn't load the thumb).

If you are going to manually delete a duplicate you must delete all entries of the duplicate the first time. When a duplicate is deleted then the reference to the other instances are deleted as well but the entries remain in the DB. This is why you wind up manually adding them. If you look in the raw DB with SQLite Database Browser after you delete a duplicate you will find the other entries still remain but will not display in the plugin.

 

[Raytestrak]

Duplicate files? Or duplicate entries? I sometimes have to different versions of one episode (say: one is out of sync so I dl another) and then when I have to entries. When I delete one entry from the plugin config overview, the both disappear from within mp, with no possibility to get it back except a manual add (which doesn't load the thumb).

If you are going to manually delete a duplicate you must delete all entries of the duplicate the first time. When a duplicate is deleted then the reference to the other instances are deleted as well but the entries remain in the DB. This is why you wind up manually adding them. If you look in the raw DB with SQLite Database Browser after you delete a duplicate you will find the other entries still remain but will not display in the plugin.

I'm sorry, but I don't get it. Why, if I have an out-of-sync file called a.avi and a correct one called b.mkv (both the same episode of a series), and I delete a.avi from withing the plugin config ... b.mkv remains, but when I look in MP, both entries are gone. If I then check the plugin config again, both are gone and I have to manually add b.mkv again.

(I hope I'm making some sense)

 

[Clean]

Duplicate files? Or duplicate entries? I sometimes have to different versions of one episode (say: one is out of sync so I dl another) and then when I have to entries. When I delete one entry from the plugin config overview, the both disappear from within mp, with no possibility to get it back except a manual add (which doesn't load the thumb).

If you are going to manually delete a duplicate you must delete all entries of the duplicate the first time. When a duplicate is deleted then the reference to the other instances are deleted as well but the entries remain in the DB. This is why you wind up manually adding them. If you look in the raw DB with SQLite Database Browser after you delete a duplicate you will find the other entries still remain but will not display in the plugin.

I'm sorry, but I don't get it. Why, if I have an out-of-sync file called a.avi and a correct one called b.mkv (both the same episode of a series), and I delete a.avi from withing the plugin config ... b.mkv remains, but when I look in MP, both entries are gone. If I then check the plugin config again, both are gone and I have to manually add b.mkv again.

(I hope I'm making some sense)

You are making sense. It is just a quirk of deleting episodes trough the config screen (the only way currently).