Feature Request: allow solving inspection issues faster with fixed list of solutions, or with direct manipulation
I just ran a Duplicate Inspection, and it shows a long list of instances of "multiple tracks acoustically identical to ...".
When I click on any of those instances, it shows me the duplicates and a list of "Possible Solutions".
The problem is that, if I want to choose one song and delete the rest, I need every time to stop to carefully read the Possible Solutions, and choose the one that says what I want. If I choose wrongly I risk deleting songs or somehow mess with the library. This forces me to stay very focused while doing something very repetitive for a long list of songs.
It would be great if I could just choose the songs from the list and delete them by pressing the Delete key, without having to stop to think if I want THIS one because it's an MP3 or because it's older or whatever else, and which Possible Solution is the good one THIS time.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by hendrik on 25 Nov, 2020 05:34 PM
There should always be the option to "Delete the selected songs". So you could just go to the bottom panel select what you want to delete and then hit "Apply".
2 Posted by hmijail on 26 Nov, 2020 12:31 AM
That helps, thank you. But only helps a bit.
First, as a side note: the Possible Solutions sections appears (to me?) neatly trimmed so that only 3 solutions are visible, and only now I realized that there are more than that and that I need to scroll. I guess the color accents in the window made me miss the scroller. See screenshot.
This particular issue reappears when I restart beaTunes.
Once past that, the problem keeps being that in my case there's >500 duplicate issues. The existing flow seems to be:
1. click on issue
2. look at affected songs, identify problem and how to solve it
3. check the changing list of Possible Solutions, consider which one matches my wished solution (exact match isn't assured)
4. if not exact match, make sure that the Possible Solution is still acceptable
5. click on the Possible Solution
6. click on Apply
Your answer helps me with step 3, but doesn't eliminate it. I'm still having to do: click issue, reconsider current songs, click songs, click solution, click apply - for each entry. More than 2000 clicks for my case, plus related mouse traveling and focus.
So my Feature Request is something like: show me at once all the duplicated songs (grouped somehow), let me directly click on the good ones, delete the others. In my case, it'd be ~500 clicks on the songs that I'm already looking at - much less clicking, reconsidering, mouse traveling.
It'd be even better if there was an option to merge the information from the different songs, so the result would be a single song with any missing data pulled from the others (rating, plays, skips, etc)
Support Staff 3 Posted by hendrik on 26 Nov, 2020 08:35 AM
That is indeed an unfortunate layout and needs to be changed.
Are you aware that you can select multiple issues at once?
Does that perhaps help?
4 Posted by hmijail on 26 Nov, 2020 01:46 PM
I realized I could do that, and it would help lots if I could check and tune the songs that have been chosen to be deleted, or if I knew that no information I care about will be lost (the "merge" option I suggested).
But since the songs aren't eveb shown when I select multiple issues, it's tantamount to blind deletion. It's a no-go.
5 Posted by RobG on 21 Jan, 2021 02:07 PM
+1 for this, please.
I've finally collated my digital collection onto a dedicated external drive, managed with iTunes. Having recently done a test based on maybe 10% of the collection, I'm now dreading the inspection stage of the whole volume.
EDIT: Yup, it's a gargantuan task. Seconding the idea for grouping issues. So much time could be saved if it were possible to choose higher bitrate tracks in one hit, then deal with other more time consuming issues.
6 Posted by RobG on 21 Jan, 2021 05:46 PM
I forget if this is mentioned above, but...
Condition:
* If one of the possible duplicate tracks is selected or playing
User action:
* Presses the number key (1, 2, ..., 5) or Backspace, for the respective solution they want to apply
Expected behaviour:
* Solution is applied -> User presses [Enter] key to Apply solution
Actual behaviour:
*Nothing happens
Current UX: Poor
* User must either (depends on selection, player state and possibly file extension)
- 1. (At best) Click with mouse pointer to select their chosen solution -> Apply
- 2. Select next Issue in queue, then click back to previous Issue THEN do action 1.
- 3. (At worst) STOP player completely, THEN do 2, THEN action 1
- 4. (At absolute worst) Cannot select next issue, as user has reached the last issue, but cannot apply a solution as UI not allowing selection
* When application is maximised to current window, user must manually move split downward (Y axis value increase), as Solution 5 is often hidden.
* When application window X axis is compressed:
- Solutions pane compresses (expected); but
- Does not expand in Y axis to maintain visibility of Solutions (desired behaviour)
Impacts:
* Increases time spent administering library, rather than playing music.
* Decreases value of app due to unseen options being missed.
Suggestion:
* Enable Solutions to be applied regardless of selection or player state (app stops and releases track for deletion if necessary)
* Prioritise Solutions pane to override dimensions of Track List pane, as it already does with Issues
Nice to have:
* Tool tip over each Solution option stating "Use [key] key then ↵ to Apply"
7 Posted by RobG on 21 Jan, 2021 05:49 PM
Related: http://help.beatunes.com/discussions/questions/15385-is-mouseless-n...
8 Posted by RobG on 21 Jan, 2021 06:37 PM
I've never seen 6 options before. Yeah, this is painful. I'm trying to process almost 20,000 tracks. I hoped to be spinning a few tunes this evening. No hope of that at this rate :(
EDIT: 10pm and I finally finished. At one point I double-tapped an Apply... thankful for the opportunity to check solutions before committing, as I nearly assigned a ton of tracks to Artist = Various :( Still, grateful for all beaTunes is. Certainly has been a huge help in reducing bloat and ensuring consistency my collection :)
Support Staff 9 Posted by hendrik on 25 Jan, 2021 05:32 PM
Great!
And yes, there is still quite some room for improvement here...
10 Posted by hmijail on 05 Jul, 2021 09:21 AM
While waiting for GUI/batch improvements, would it be possible to export the list of issues and their affected songs to CSV?
Support Staff 11 Posted by hendrik on 06 Jul, 2021 07:56 PM
I'm sorry, but no.
12 Posted by hmijail on 07 Jul, 2021 09:04 PM
That is unfortunate.
If improving the GUI turns out to be too difficult, please keep in mind CSV output as an alternative. That way we could deal with thousands of conflicts through a spreadsheet + a few lines of script, which would be much better than having the information locked in Beatunes and requiring hours of careful mousing around.
13 Posted by hmijail on 07 Jul, 2021 09:30 PM
Another alternative, arguably even better: create a playlist with all the duplicate songs together.