ITunes: Deleting Dead Tracks From ITunes

I just got a new iPhone and I'm converting my music from Media Player to iTunes.

There are some key differences between these apps.

1. Media Player gets properties off of the actual file or folder. iTunes saves some information in its database and some of it is in the file.

2. Media Player puts an album art file for album art, where iTunes puts the album art in a Album Art folder, then under some convoluted database that doesn't match back to the album. Neither of the players will look for the other, so converting is not fun.

3. iTunes copies files when organizing its library, iTunes copies creating duplicate files. Media Center Moves the files underneath my consolidated library.

4. iTunes doesn't know if the file system deleted a file or a new file exists in the library. Media Player continually looks for new music, pictures and movies.

This is why I found the following code, in the Apple SDK, that will delete dead tracks from you iTunes library.

dim ITTrackKindFile

ITTrackKindFile = 1

dim iTunesApp

set iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application")

dim deletedTracks

deletedTracks = 0

dim mainLibrary

set mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist

dim tracks

set tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks

dim numTracks

numTracks = tracks.Count

dim i

while (numTracks <> 0)

dim currTrack

set currTrack = tracks(numTracks)

if ( currTrack.Kind = ITTrackKindFile) then

' yes, does it have an empty location?

if (currTrack.Location = "") then

' yes, delete it

currTrack.Delete()

deletedTracks = deletedTracks + 1

end if

end if

numTracks = numTracks - 1

wend

if (deletedTracks > 0) then

if (deletedTracks = 1) then

WScript.Echo("Removed 1 dead track.")

else

WScript.Echo("Removed " & deletedTracks & " dead tracks." )

end if

else

WScript.Echo("No dead tracks were found.")

end if