creating playlists in external apps

I'd like to create playlists in an external app and import the playlists into Traktor. I prefer to create playlists in winamp, but I don't see how I can import these directly.

Traktor does a lot of things well, but IMO previewing tracks and creating a playlist requires way too many mouse clicks.

I ran across this app: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs....cratch Record Box Editor/readme.html?rev=HEAD
and it seems to solve the problem for Final Scratch 1.0 users... but is there something out there that is more modern per se?

 

I use iTunes to manage my playlists.

iTunes Playlists are seen in Traktor.

Alternatively, you could use aliases with
Windows Explorer or Finder(Mac).

Kris..

 

sorry, but

creating a playlist:
once right-click to create it and one on ok to confirm the name.

previewing a track:
one click on the headphone symbol

putting a track in a playlist: just drag it.


where do you have the *too many mouse clicks*??!

 

i guess i loathe the ease of use of winamp, i can load of 200-300 tracks, and rapidly sort thru them removing teh unwantedness easily.

with traktor, you have to load each trak onto a deck and then play it, or alternatively - load it into the preview player and play. definatley more mouse clicks involved in the process of sorting your junx!

 

I use a lot of different audio apps. Sharing the Lists is very key for consistancy. I use .m3u files for transfer of lists from one program to another. This worked very well when using mixmeister, winamp, and TFS 2.6. But now I noticed that Traktor 3 doesn't even have the load, save buttons in the browser anymore. WTF!!!! You mean to tell me they only alow import of Itunes and thats it?!! Talk about going backwards. They gotta have a fix for this. We arent the only people who do this kind of import. I thought Traktor 3 was all about features, not losing them!

 

Playlists is a crucial feature because of the character of a sort of "categories" for audio tracks you can achieve using them.
"Genres" is NOT enough because you can give only 1 genre to a track.

There must be a strategical reason if they try to compel you to use iTunes in this very important area.

A workaround is to drag your "m3u" lists to iTunes one by one first and import them to traktor afterwards which is a pain in the arse if you update your playlists often.

 

especially for me the "just drag it" is annoying! Is there a keyboard shortcut to to that?

 

I use a dual boot system and I won't install iTunes on my Traktor boot. I tried to hook up with the iTunes playlist import last night but it seems it looks for a default install directory of iTunes.

Is there an ini or cfg to modify anywhere that can change this?

 

I can't believe T3 can't import m3u playlists.

Absolute insanity.

I've been studying the file formats: both the iTunes library and Traktor nml collections are xml files in reality, but the specs are different. In theory all we need is a script to build an xml file out of an m3u. There appears to have once been such a script using XSPF but it's gone for some reason.

However, iTunes basically does this same task.

Dammit, Traktor needs to be able to import m3u lists.

 

OK, on closer inspection, it appears that Traktor has to enumerate every song that is imported to it with an "AUDIO_ID" parameter, so I don't think any external script would work.

I tried making a test.nml file (once again, it's actually xml) with an entry like so:

<ENTRY ARTIST="zoh" TITLE="duh" TYPE="1">
<LOCATION DIR="/test/" FILE="test.mp3" VOLUME="D:"/>
</ENTRY>

m3u entries only contain a display name and a path, so even this is a stretch.
The playlist showed up in traktor, but with no song, which led me to assume it has to read the AUDIO_ID parameter to work.

This is almost as irritating as not supporting routing among multiple soundcards.

 

OK, sorry to keep posting like this.

It turns out the AUDIO_ID parameter is not, in fact, necessary. It appears that a bare-bones song entry consists of:

<ENTRY ARTIST="zuh" TITLE="test 2" TYPE="1">
<LOCATION DIR="/test/" FILE="test2.mp3" VOLUME="D:"/>
<EXTDATA/>
</ENTRY>

And that's it!!!! I started writing a script in php to convert m3u playlists to nml playlists, but it will have to wait until tomorrow, since I should have gone to sleep 4 hours ago. It should be pretty basic. Obviously the big drawback is that it won't contain any metadata, but I'm just glad it's possible at all.

Somebody could probably write a somewhat more complex utility that reads in each file's metadata ... anyone?

 

yep. something called like *add to playlist as next or so. (dont have my traktor in front of me right now)

 

Dude, you rock!

 

^ 2nd'd

hell yah!

i wont be able to get back to my traktor box for another week (out of teh country) but id love to try out this script when i return!

 

I've written scripts to get the ID3 tag info for other things. If I have some free time this weekend I'll see if I can get something working.

TempestII

 

I'm about 90% done, I can read in the m3u extract the filename read in the ID3 tag info & I've just started working on the XML output. This gives me a good reason to finally learn about XML.

 

your efforts are very much appreciated

 

I love you guys and all effort your putting into this. Keep up the good work. I just cant believe NI would forget to have this feature in TFS 3! WTF!

 

I've got a beta version, if someone would like to test it email me (TempestII @ Yahoo.com, Subject: Traktor M3U Import) It's written in vb.net so you'll have to install the .net framework if you don't have it already.

One thing I have to fix, it will only read ID3v1.1 tags. I haven't figured out how to read ID3v2.x yet.

Chris