VA / compilation tracks being duplicated on each import

Help
1

Hello,

I need some help finalizing my config. It can be found here - https://pastebin.com/Ta9XPPXd

Problem Overview:
Tracks in VA / comps are being duplicated on each import. It’s also not labeling/naming various artist and comp releases properly + lumping multiple comps together in odd ways.

This has left me with a VA folder full of mislabeled releases with up to 30+ duplicates of each song (1 per import).

All single artist non VA / Comp releases are being categorized and named correctly.

I’m categorizing everything alphabetically, then naming each album by
Artist - Year - album {LABEL - RELEASE Number - release year - Format} [Quality]

i.e. EELS - 1996 - Beautiful Freak {DreamWorks Records - DRD 50012 - 1997 - DE - CD} [FLAC]

There are some other oddities but that’s the big one I need to resolve right now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I’m lost at this point.

2

Add the following lines to your config:

    albumartist:various\ artists: VA/%bucket{%asciify{%left{%the{$album},2}}}/$album - %if{$original_year,$original_year,$year} %if{$u_version,{$u_version$} }[$u_format]/$disc_and_track - $artist - $title 
    albumartist:various: VA/%bucket{%asciify{%left{%the{$album},2}}}/$album - %if{$original_year,$original_year,$year} %if{$u_version,{$u_version$} }[$u_format]/$disc_and_track - $artist - $title

I found not all VA albums are marked as comp

3

Ok, I’ll add that now. Thank you

Will that also resolve how it’s duplicating tracks every time I run an import? I have it scanning the same folder, it’s only supposed to import stuff that’s not in the database already, but it reimports any va / comp and adds duplicate files naming them as 1,2,3,4 on each pass i.e. track1.flac, track2.flac etc

Also what’s the best way to clean up the VA / comp folder in my existing library to remove all the duplicates and name releases appropriately?

4

Also, do I add this under Paths: ?

5

Do you have beets configured to copy music in to the library rather than move?
I believe ‘copy’ is the default action

Refs:
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/guides/main.html#configuring
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/config.html#importer-options

6

It’s set to copy. I need to leave the original folders intact.

7

Add those lines under the paths.

Add the lines to your path config the try

beet move -p

This will tell you if the changes actually brings those albums back together in the VA folder.

I am not sure why it duplicates at each import, I use move as my default.

Does beets ask you to:

[S]kip new, Keep both, Remove old, Merge all?

when it detects a duplicate?

Try the following to see in verbose mode, as well as pretending why it does not detect the file already existing.

beet -vv imp -p <music directory>
8

Ok, thanks! I’ll try that this evening.

It doesn’t prompt me at all during imports because I have it set to quiet and fallback asis. i.e.
quiet: yes
quiet_fallback: asis

Could that be why?

It doesn’t duplicate anything except what it puts in the VA folder.

9

The quiet option should skip the file if it is unknown. In my config I have

    quiet_fallback: skip

I do not have the quiet option set, I use the -q flag if I have a lot of music to import.

Looking at the code in commands.py, I think those two options will always import the item.