Check for existing files / Invoke convert's convert_item

[RollingStar]

Convert.convert_item has destination file checking. Then it invokes encode. This plugin goes straight to convert.encode, skipping the dupe check, meaning existing files are overwritten by a new encode. I found this because I had to kill the convert process to shut my PC off. Resuming it today began from the beginning.

beets-alternatives/beetsplug/alternatives.py

Line 286 in c0010c0

if self.should_transcode(item):

https://github.com/beetbox/beets/blob/1b187fbf5345727e0dfdaea958a714f19e917a4e/beetsplug/convert.py#L295

convert_item has different arguments, so it won't be a drop-in replacement. Or this plugin could implement dupe checking on its own.

[wisp3rwind]

Are you sure that it actually restarted transcoding from scratch? What will happen after killing beets and running alt update again is the plugin scanning all files again (typically just an mtime comparison).

If I understand correctly what you suggest, then beets-alternatives already does that. A file will only be newly encoded if the ADD action is triggered. That in turn only happens if the file either didn't exist in the alternative collection before, or if the formats configuration changed. In all other cases, only tags and embedded art are updated. The line you quote is not reached in those cases.

[wisp3rwind]

Closing this, since I suspect there's no bug. In case you feel like beets-alternatives' behavior is indeed violating your expectations, feel free to re-open the issue.