Collection Health

Collection Health, the cross under Collection in the rail, checks the whole collection for what needs fixing. Overview shows how much of your collection is clean, with Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready on their own bars, and the checks grouped into five areas in the order they're best fixed: Files, Out of place, Duplicates, Info and Prep. The first area with work is marked Start here.

An area lists its tracks with a Problem and a Fix column and a progress bar. Its bar has:

• Auto-fix, for the fixes with one clear answer: relinking a missing file to the only file that matches it, merging easy duplicates, and taking the junk the clean-up rules know out of names. Undo takes the whole run back. On Prep the button reads Analyze and queues every track not analysed yet.
• Review, which goes through the area one track at a time on a card. Return applies the fix shown, → skips, I ignores the track for that check, E opens its Info tab, Space plays it in the headphones, ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) undoes and Esc goes back to the list. When the area is done, Next carries on in the next one with work.

To fix only some tracks from the list, pick them (shift-click for a range, ⌘-click or Ctrl-click for single tracks) and right-click. Tracks a check was told to leave alone are under Ignored, below the areas; Bring back lets every check see them again.

Lists at the bottom of the page shows up when crates are empty or lists still hold tracks you removed from your collection. Tidy up deletes the empty crates and takes those tracks out of the lists. Playlists are left alone, since a new one starts empty.

Ignore for in the right-click menu tells a check to leave a track alone. A track that isn't music is left out of the other checks, so an audiobook doesn't also show up as missing its cover.

Remove from collection keeps the file where it is. The track no longer shows, and a rescan or a VirtualDJ import doesn't bring it back; adding the file again does, and so does Bring back at the bottom of the page.

Each check is also a search: is:notmusic, is:stray, is:outside, is:unanalyzed, is:noinfo, is:lowbitrate, is:junk, is:nocover, is:unrated, is:missing, is:long and is:duplicate.

Covers are looked for in the background, and a file is looked at again only when it changes. On a Mac, files that iCloud has taken off the disk are skipped, so the check doesn't download your whole collection.

Find covers looks online (Cover Art Archive, iTunes, and Discogs with a Discogs token in Settings › Collection) for each track, one at a time in the background, and embeds the largest cover found, scaled down to 1024 pixels when it is bigger. Tracks it finds nothing for stay in the list: search those from the track's info panel.

Clean-up

Clean up… on Junk in names (or a right-click on some of its tracks) shows every change before anything happens: the track, the field, what it says now and what it becomes. Untick a change to leave it, then Apply. The changes go to your collection and to the files' tags. Undo in the bar or the track menu takes the whole batch back.

Each rule can be turned off in Settings › Collection › Health, under Clean-up. Titles that start with a number, such as 99 Luftballons, stay as they are.

Genres… at the bottom of the Collection Health page lists every genre with how many tracks have it. Genres spelled like another but for capitals, spaces or punctuation (Electronica and electronica) are lilac. Tick the ones that mean the same, type the name to keep (the most used one is filled in), and Merge. Undo takes a merge back too.

Online lookup

Look up online on Missing or poor metadata or Junk in names works on every track listed (or a right-click on some of them). It looks each track up on MusicBrainz in the background, paced as MusicBrainz asks, and opens the same review table as Clean-up with what it found: artist, title, album, year (of the recording's first release) and genre, and with a Discogs token also the label and style (as the genre). Next to each track is where the match came from and how sure it is.

To match more of a DJ collection, openDJ searches for the title as tagged first, then without bracketed parts and guests ("Kerala (Original Mix) [Ninja Tune]" by "Bonobo feat. X" is also searched as "Kerala" by "Bonobo"), then by the words in any order. "Unknown Artist", "Track 01" and the like count as empty: they aren't searched by, and a file called Artist - Title.mp3 stands in for them. When the match gives no name, or nothing is found, the file name's artist and title are offered as "File name".

Only changes that fill an empty field (or one that says nothing) from a match at least 80% sure are ticked, and file-name suggestions for an empty artist or title. A genre that is the artist's rather than the track's is shown unticked. A change to something the track already has is shown unticked, so nothing you named yourself is overwritten unless you tick it. Fields you typed in the track's info panel are never proposed. Apply writes the ticked changes to your collection and the files, and Undo takes them back.

When it's done, the status line says how many were found (and how many by their sound), how many aren't on MusicBrainz (often DJ edits, promos and bootlegs), how many couldn't be looked up because there was no connection or MusicBrainz was busy (try those again later), and how many are in iCloud only, so they were looked up by name and not by their sound.

With an AcoustID key (free on acoustid.org; paste it in Settings › Collection › Health under Online lookup) openDJ recognises tracks by their sound, so files called track01.mp3 are found too. Without one, tracks are looked up by artist and title (from the tags or the file name), and those with neither are skipped.

Fill from file name… opens the review table with the artist and title each file's name gives, for those that have none. Check them before Apply: a file called Title - Artist.mp3 gives them the wrong way round.

Duplicates

Copies are tracks with the same artist, title and remix, ignoring case, punctuation and "Original Mix". Under Duplicates in the tree, openDJ sorts them into groups by what tells them apart:

In each group the copy kept comes first and the others are dimmed. openDJ keeps the copy in your Play Ready folder, then a lossless file over a lossy one, then the higher bitrate, then the one with cues or a checked grid, then the most played. To keep another one, right-click it and choose Keep this copy. The Location column (right-click a heading) shows which folder each copy is in.

Auto-fix on Duplicates merges every group but Different lengths at once. Merging loses nothing: the kept copy takes the others' lists and history, cues and grid (when it has none), links, the highest rating, all their plays, the earliest date added, and any tags it lacks. The other copies leave your collection and their files go to _Quarantine/<date>/, next to your Play Ready folder. With Move files off in Settings › Collection, the moves wait until you turn it on. openDJ never deletes anything there: the bottom of the Collection Health page shows how many files are waiting, and Show folder opens it, so you can empty it once you're sure.

Undo in the bar (or the track menu) brings the copies back and moves their files back. The merged plays and tags stay on the kept copy.

Link as versions keeps copies of different lengths and links them, so each shows the others on its Related tab, and they leave the Duplicates list.

Quarantine

To put away a track you don't want, without deleting it, right-click it and choose Move to Quarantine. It leaves your collection and its file goes to the same _Quarantine/<date>/ folder as duplicates, and Undo brings it back.