Media Views for showing your broken/missing tracks (ghosts) and duplicate tracks (clones).
(I renamed it since I merged in the Attack of the Clones functionality into this add-on)
This add-on packages two Media Views:
Both views let you delete/clean up tracks one by one (using the normal menu options), as well as showing you the full path of the file, and a button to indiscriminately clean-up all ghosts or clones.
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There’s only XUL!
Locks up my macbook pro when i try to use this add-on. Using 0.5 , takes CPU to 60% and idles. really excited to see this working
Doh. How big is your library?
Is there a way you could get it do delete playable files that are the same? Going back to the ‘clones’ idea.
I’ve ended up with 2 playable versions of every song in my library…
Otherwise, works great!
Let me try to explain this. And i realize my situation is probably why i cant use your awesome utility. My library thinks it has over 12K songs in it. really it only has a couple hundred. i have an external HDD that i put a good chunk of songs on one time and i linked my itunes library to them at one point. I was able to sweep my itunes library of the dead links but when i imported the Itunes library into songbird all of the dead links came with it. When i listen to music using songbird i cant just leave it on shuffle because every time it hits a song with a dead link it just stops and does not skip to the next. Its not that big of a deal maybe ill just re-install songbird w/o using the itunes thing and have it find its own.
Have you tested this on Linux?
I get the following under Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 (Songbird 0.5):
OK. The back button takes me back to the standard library view. But:
1) Why isn’t there an option to restore this (default) view in the Media Pages menu?
2) Why doesn’t clicking “Library” in the Service Pane restore the standard library view?
And more importantly, why does my Ghostbusters pane a) not display anything and b) do nothing?
@chocolateboy, do you actually have ghosts in your library? That behaviour sounds like a bug in my code failing to deal with the fact that you don’t actually have any ghosts. :-P
whoops. meant to post that from my account, not Songbird. sorry :)
Deleting one Ghost (manually) in the ghost view needs about 40 seconds. Deleting two needs about 80 seconds. With 100% CPU, of course.
Is it possible that this extension re-builds the list of ghost after each deleted entry?
And – what’s gonna happen as I click on “Remove all” and it starts deleting my 1492 ghost entries?
I’ll try. Maybe in 16 hours, I can listen to my music again.
@stevel: I had some ghosts at the time (I think :-). I’ve reinstalled Ghostbusters, so I’ll check it again next time I’m sure I have something for it to zap.
@stevel: just tried. It works! So, yes, I was probably being an idiot :-) Many thanks!
What kind a system requirement do one need? I have a old machine with centos 5 and a big library ~7600 titles and trying the ghostbuster view just freeze everything, had to kill songbird.
Just uploaded a new version that should (hopefully) fix a bunch of issues people have found.
Very good!
It works!
good job
"This one is a media view" - This is the surprisingly subtle clue to how to use this add-in. Took me a couple cycles to realize you must use the View->Media Views->Ghostbusters menu to start busting ghosts. Hope this saves someone else some time ><
I was so hopeful, but it was installed, I restarted songbird, but I got no Ghostbuster. Does not show up as a Media View. What can I do to trouble shoot so that this can be fixed?
me registre para agradecerte justo tenia ese problema habia borrado varios tracks y songbird no los eliminaba me puse a buscar como y encontre esto,funciona muy bien de nuevo gracias...
Any 0.7.0 update? :)
I'm working on one :)
Updated and uploaded :)
Installed the add-on on 0.6 running on OpenSolaris, moved one album directory in the library elsewhere and selected Ghostbusters in Media View but nothing happened. How do I tell a track is a ghost ? (any screenshots ?)
@vladak Yay OpenSolaris! :) You should have seen a list of the tracks that were missing, I'll post a screenshot here. If you had no tracks missing, it should have popped up a dialog saying there were no ghosts, and that it was switching you back to the List View. If you open up your Error Console (Tools > Error Console), do you see any error messages? If you do, can you email them to me? (stevel at opensolaris dot org)
@stevel actually, it displayed almost all of the tracks in the library except just a couple of tracks. Maybe it reversed the lists somehow ?
error console contained the following:
Yikes. Is this on a network share? Or are all the tracks on a local filesystem? Did you see any error messages in the error console?
No, it's local filesystem. The above error message actually comes from Fedora running 0.7rc3 but it has the same problem as OpenSolaris with 0.6.
Does that message reported before or after you switch to the Ghostbusters view?
Right after the switch.
Hrm - is there anything special about the couple of tracks it didn't display?
Actually, I checked once more and: there are 287 tracks in my library. Switching to Ghostbusters view displays 287 entries. However, after I switch back and forth multiple times, Ghostbusters view displays more than 287 entries. The additional entries are weird tracks which do not have any tags but their file path says something like: 'songbird-medialist://LONG_HEX'. Not every switch adds new medialist entries. I have just forced :) my colleague to try Ghostbusters in his Songbird 0.6 (OpenSolaris again) and it has the same error, albeit his library is much larger.
Darn. Okay - I'll try to reproduce it and let you know what I find; I'll update here when I have something :) Sorry about that!
vladak: Can you try installing http://whacked.net/ghostbusters-0.0.6.xpi
If you open up your Error Console and switch to "Messages", and hit Clear, and then switch to the Ghostbusters media view you should see some logging. Mind emailing me the output?
0.0.6 displays the ghosts as expected (I intentionally moved some files around to produce some ghosts), error console displays info messages about the ghosts it found but the exception error message is still there, at the end of the output.
Interesting; oh well... hey if it works, then it works :)
I'll keep digging into the playlist.xml error, that should be innocuous though.
When I switch to the Ghostbusters media view, I get the bar at the top that has a file path and the the Kill the Ghosts button nothing happens. In the Error Console I get a message that says "Error: Ghostbusters is not defined." That's it. No dialogs, no change in the view. Just not defined.
Songbird 0.7.0, Ubuntu 8.04, Library has 8712 items (though I'm not sure Songbird is accurate on that one, seems too high)
@mythmon: I just uploaded 0.0.6; can you see if you still have this problem? I fixed a typo that was including Ghostbusters.js when it's actually ghostbusters.js; it appears to not make a difference on Mac/Windows, but it might on Linux.
In stalled Ghostbuster and worked as I thought it would.. removed the ghosts :). 2 were found and removed. Really like the idea, thanks.
Problem:
In a library now of 781 songs, after it runs.. even if it finds no ghosts, when I return to any other view, it shows my library list as795. I have to restart Songbird to get the number to show accurately as 781. However, on each subsequent run of Ghostbuster, the same thing happens and I have to do the same restart to resolve it.
I am on Windows VISTA 32bit and all of my tracks are in MP3 format.
@deomega: Can you try the 0.0.7 version I just uploaded and see if that fixes it for you?
Done.
Ok, after the scan and it finds no Ghost, I then 'ok' for it to switch to the prompted list view, which seems to be a Ghostbuster's List view of sorts. When it goes to that list view, the count is fine at 781.
However, on switching to any other view after that, it again goes to 795, and I again have to restart Songbird to adjust it.
@deomega: Okay, this time I think I have it tracked down. :) Can you try 0.0.8?
@Stevel
It worked!!!
You know what? After a few attempts, I started responding to tell you it is the exact result as my last report, but thought.... since you feel that you tracked it down, maybe I should reinstall ghostbuster. So, I reinstalled, and problem went away. Thank you very much.
Now, i am second-guessing myself wondering... did i really install 0.0.8? I am pretty sure I did, but you know how that goes :)... So, maybe if all else fails, reinstall could be the solution?
Either way, I tried to duplicate the problem in many ways but it is not coming back, so ....PROBLEM SOLVED! Thank you VERY much!!!
Awesome, glad it works for ya! Thanks for the detailed bug report... that made it much easier to track it down!
Would it be possible to display progress of scanning for ghosts ? In my home library with 6669 tracks (the number is real, no kidding) it takes couple of secs to switch from 3-pane view to Ghostbusters.
Yeah that should be possible, I'll look into it for the next rev.
@Stevel
I just downloaded the newest version today (0.0.8) and it works just fine.
Thanks.
The progress page in 0.0.9 is nice addition but somehow it displays too late in the process of scanning.
I am getting the same problem as Vladak, the progress bar and background show up after it is done scanning not during. I am using 0.7 on Linux.
I just installed this plugin but the "media views" menu option is grayed out and I can't click it. Does that mean I can't scan for ghosts? What is wrong? I'm on OS X 10.5 on a Macbook Pro, with Version: Songbird/0.7.0 (20080819113227) XPCOMViewer/0.9a (2008072921) Build 716
Thanks for the update, but this still isn't showing up as a media view for me :(
skyfaller: Do other Media Views such as Media Flow, or Tag Cloud work for you?
Ahhh scary icon!
hey stevel.
nice job on this add on man. very useful. this is definitely one of the reasons i prefer songbird over itunes. because of your theme! one thing that would really make it awesome (not sure how difficult to implement though) is for the attack of the clones part of the add on to eliminate the clone that is of the lowest quality (the song with the lowest bitrate). this would be extremely useful. sometimes i would download a single song and then buy the album and when i import the album i've got the bad quality single and the high quality album version of the song and after running attack of the clones sometimes i'm left with the bad quality version which is sometimes a bit of a pain in the neck. other than that this is easily one of the most useful addons out there! thanks again!
@Brendy That's a great idea; I'll look into that. Thanks for the feedback.
Hi stevel,
The Exorcist is a real good add-on, very useful. I've got a wish for an further version.
I would like to correct the path of ghost tracks with The Exorcist.
I recently moved an album into my music folder after i imported into songbird. After that my songs where ghost tracks in songbird. I can exorcise them and reimport, but it would be cool if i just mark these songs and tell them a new path.
regards
I'm running Mac OS 10.5.5 with Songbird/0.7.0 (20080819113227). I have The Exorcist installed and it shows the list of duplicate files, which i can delete one by one. When i click "Exorcise the clones" nothing happens. i brought up the Error Console and it showed "Error: list is not defined" in Source File "chrome://exorcist/content/clones.js". Upon examining the source file it looks like the list variable is not passed to the function being called(killClones). I would try to debug the code but i don't want to destroy my library by accident. Is this happening for anyone else?
@gentoo4life: Thanks, I think I've found the bug and fixed it. I just uploaded a new version 0.1.1 that hopefully addresses this.
BTW, there's something ironic about someone named 'gentoo4life' using OS X ;-)
works great here!
i run windows vista and every time i run the exorcist songbird crashes