New features in GS-Base 20:
GS-Base 20.0.2 extends the fileStats() function. You can now read and search/sort EXIF tags from photos and images and multimedia tags from music/sound/video files. This enables you, for example, to search all your disks for photo duplicates, music/video duplicates, similar photos or photos taken in similar locations etc.
For the detailed description of this function, please see the online help page: Using fileStats() functions
Some missing topics have been added to the Help file:
- Using objectStats() functions to obtain file/image data
- Using textStats() functions to obtain LongText and Code fields statistics
- Using fileStats() functions to obtain EXIF tags and metadata from multimedia files
- Scanning and Verifying File (Path) Lists in Tables
- Searching for file duplicates in folders and on disks
Searching for photo/image/media file duplicates in folders and on disks
- Use the Verify File command and choose a folder or disk to scan and load the file listing to selected table fields.
- As the above command by default loads all file paths, for clarity you can filter out from the displayed listing any paths for file types that you don’t need:
- Scroll to the path field, press Ctrl+Enter to enter filter for file extensions, for example, enter:
jpg\z
mp3\z
mp4\z
You can combine multiple extension patters by “or”, for example:
jpg\z|mp3\z|mp4\z
-
- Additionally, to permanently remove the unwanted file paths from the table,
(a) use the Tools > Show Complement command to display the filtered out ones first, (b) click any column to select all these records (or enter something like 1:10000 in the record number field at the bottom) and press Ctrl+D to delete them. Double press ESC (the Tools > Show All) to go back to the found recordset.
- Additionally, to permanently remove the unwanted file paths from the table,
- Choose which EXIF tags or multimedia tags you want to compare to find duplicates (or, in general some specific sets of files), like the GPS location where the photo was taken, author or artist, dates, camera type, track name or length, file size etc. There are about 60 EXIF tags and 70 multimedia sound/video tags, please see: Using fileStats() function.
For each one you choose to check add a calculated text field with this formula and the tag code:
https://citadel5.com/help/gsbase/fileStats_exif.png (click to enlarge)
- The specified values will be automatically extracted/calculated. You can search/sort them any way. You can use various methods to find duplicates.
The direct one is to use the Tools > Find Duplicates command.
- Alternatively, you can use the Tools > Find Unique command, then the Tools > Show Complement command to delete all which will result in retaining one occurrence of each path.
- You can perform various other searches, like for photos taken between some dates, sound files with specific bitrates, videos using specific encoding, songs or videos by a given artists and many more, see: Using fileStats() function.
- In one scan you can create a list of 256 million file paths - at the moment this is the maximum number of records per table. If you need to compare files between multiple disks/folders, repeat this procedure and use one the table merging options (or, if you don’t use binary fields in your tables simple select the entire 2nd table, copy it to the clipboard, place the cursor below the 1st field of the last record in the 1st table and paste the data).