trw wrote on 01/28/11 at 07:09:48:
I have just started using SCID because I am sick of all the disgusting errors in Chessbase. However, I am in great need of two things if some regular scid users would mind answering these two questions for me.
(1) Is there a way to combine many .pgns quickly in SCID and (2) a way to then make it search the combined database for doubles.
Also any other useful tidbits about scid would be much appreciated

I'm sure tricks of the trade will be useful later.
Thanks!
found the older thread...
http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1251126318/15 maybe I was better to have bumped this.
Markovich did you ever write that script to download all of TWIC into scid?
To answer your last question first, no, I just pay $40.00 a year, or so, to the Opening Master folks in Bratislava. That way I get not only the latest FIDE games but also those played under the aegis of other authorities, most importantly the major CC bodies. If I'm not mistaken, you can pay less if you're satisfied with lower levels of access to some of their particular data sets. Lately they've started to support scid format, though they also offer the data in pgn.
However doing what I suggested would be fairly easy to code up with any scripting language, such as Python, that supports web interractions.
Scid's eminently capable of taking in a large set of pgn games. In fact my latest update from Opening Master was via several of massive pgn files. To import a file of multiple pgn games, open scid, then go "tools," "import file of pgn games." Once you have the games in a data base, you can get rid of duplicates by going "file," "maintenance." The clicks are fairly self-explanatory, but it'd probably help to rtfm.
I think you'll find that scid is quite easy to use.