Best method for finding duplicate images/movies

[ericthibeault]

Hi,

I would like to know if total commander's Find duplicate (by size and content, not name) is the best way to find carbon copy images without taking into account the filename?

I heard about pixel by pixel comparaison but Total Commander doesn't seem to offer that. What pixel by pixel comparaison could do better/worst than by content (binary?)?

I'm currently scanning all my drives for *.mts (movies) and find duplicate by content and size and I would like to make sure that it will give me the ability to find exact copies in order to delete all but one copie.

Thanks a lot

[Dalai]

You can find duplicates that have exactly the same "binary" contents (and size, of course) by using the search > Advanced > Search duplicate files > [X] same contents.

You can NOT find images and videos in TC that may have the same visual contents but differ in size and binary contents. You have to use some specialized tool for such a task. There are several out there - both free and paid - for comparing images that can ignore differences in height, width, saturation, brightness and so on. I guess, there are some tools for comparing videos as well. A couple of years ago, a tool named Visual Search Pony was given away by GiveAwayOfTheDay.com, but it was absolutely not stable in my tests.

So, in the end, it depends on what you want to achieve.

Regards
Dalai

[ericthibeault]

Thanks Dalai,

So if I find duplicates by checking "by content" and "by size" (not name) I can be 100% that all in the list (in subgroups) will be carbon-copies?

Those are, for my first "cleanup" pass, the ones I want to delete.

I'll check later on for "slightly different" copies and I understand that Total Commander will not be the one tool to use for this other task.

Thanks,

[Dalai]

So if I find duplicates by checking "by content" and "by size" (not name) I can be 100% that all in the list (in subgroups) will be carbon-copies?

Yes. Note that one byte is enough to make a difference, literally. So, if some copy became corrupted, TC won't find it using the above search settings, obviously.

Also note that TC reads both duplicates at the same time when comparing by contents which will cause very high disk activity due to the random access pattern that is most likely to slow down the whole comparison process (and really stress the drive). So, it might be better to use checksums instead after searching for files with the same size only.

Regards
Dalai