Metadata

In Image mode, Audio mode and Video mode, the What to find tab has a Metadata section. Here you choose which metadata (tags) Duplicate Cleaner reads from your files, and what it does with each one.

The fields available depend on the mode. For example:

• Audio - Title, Album, Album Artist, Artist, Track #, Year, Genre, Bit rate, Sample rate…
• Image - Date/Time taken, Make, Model, Lens, ISO, Aperture, Lat/Long, Keywords, Rating…
• Video - Title, Recorded Date, Director, Video codec, Frame rate, Aspect ratio, Audio codec…

Using a field

Tick a field to use it. Every ticked field is read during the scan and shown as a column in the results, so you can sort by it, filter by it, and use it in the Selection Assistant - even if you don’t match on it.

Each ticked field then has two settings:

Matching

• Don’t match - The field is shown in the results, but is not used to match files.
• Exact match - Duplicates must have exactly the same value for this field. Files where the field is missing are not matched.
• Exact match (including missing) - As Exact match, but files where the field is missing also match each other.
• Similar - Duplicates must have similar text for this field. Small differences, such as a typo or a few changed characters, are allowed.

When several fields are matched, files must match on all of them. For instance, if Artist and Title are both set to Exact match, then two or more tracks with the same Artist AND the same Title will be grouped as duplicates.

File filter

A filter limits the scan to files whose field has (or doesn’t have) a certain value. Type the value in the box next to it.

• No filter - The field is not used to filter files.
• Included - Only files whose field contains the text are scanned.
• Excluded - Files whose field contains the text are left out of the scan.
• Included (RegEx) / Excluded (RegEx) - As above, using a regular expression.
• Protected - Files whose field contains the text are protected: they appear in the results but can’t be marked or removed.
• Protected (RegEx) - As above, using a regular expression.

Leave the box blank to match files where the field is empty or missing.

For number and date fields you can also compare: >2000, <=128, <>0, or a range such as 1990..1999. A plain value means “equal to”.

Examples:

• Image mode, Make - Included - Canon: only scan photos taken with a Canon camera.
• Audio mode, Bit rate - Protected - >=320: never mark high quality copies.
• Audio mode, Genre - Excluded - leave blank: skip tracks that have no genre.