How to prepare music for use in Traktor

@Kaaos
Yes I have some that i have gotten over the years i sent you an pm email about it a few days ago never heard back from you.
at leased i think it was you anyway send me an email

 

back @ pixeltrance

Hey pxl.
Thanks for the congratulations in knowing when somethings rotten. And Traktor is touted as being so Itunes friendly. Well I mainly dot all my i's and cross all my t's in Itunes before importing the tracks. But over time I've changed genres and certain tag fields and so now when I go for that certain tune there's the old !. Usually I just run a search and find it eventually.

So you wouldn't consider trashing your .nml file and reimporting everything just once as a reset to the world?

And are the stripes saved in the tags too?

Maybe all this compatibility will disolve with that next upgrade.... obrigado, highgloss

 

Ah I see what you mean now Pixeltrance! This method seemed to work really well and keep drifting to a minimum - like you say, even with phono-ripped tracks.

Heres how I tried it and got surprising results - this is for complex 175ish BPM dnb bear in mind:-

1) Analyse track

2) Click Edit BPM. Click Reset button to let Traktor detect the beats and recalculate a BPM.

3) Press the Round button - as pixeltrance says, most electronic music is made at non decimal bpm values. This is a key step in drift prevention!

4) Close the edit BPM window making sure the BPM is Locked. The beats now are there highlighted but so is a load of other stuff we dont want - i.e the beat lines are unevenly spaced. We need a nice even beat grid because if we want to press SYNC later we dont want it to have to skip more than one beat to realign.

Make sure you create the beat marker on a snapped cue point - dont place it manually. In general Traktor does a very good job of detecting the very start of a beat.

4) Do the same to the track in the other deck and then press SYNC. Now when you start the tracks you might need to do a minor bend to align the grids but there is far less drifting. As mentioned earlier you almost leave it alone and it will stay in sync... amazing!

Big up Pixeltrance and the NI team!!

 

Rocdollar
You made it sound alot easier the way you explained it.


Maybe some of you could explain this for me, Im seeing that you are editing on track at a time.

I ripp music about every night at this point, If I go a few days "good days" or even a week or longer I could have hundreds of songs to edit bpm.

My problem isnt editing the bpms because just about every song I play I check with the manual tap method. I basicly bo this on the fly because I have had many songs with incorect bpm value. Sometime double or even cut in half.

CAN I MAKE A BEAT GRID ON THE FLY? This would make all the differance in the world. I spend so much as it now do things.

Example Say I have music from the last few years and have converted or ripped most to mps now. I have a couple hundred gigs of MP3's , I havent even spent the time to do cue points and if I wanted to start fresh from this point on it, it would be a big help. When I load a song to play next it would save time than going back and doing it. I wouldnt even know where to start, every set is differant

 

A lot of the beatgrid users on the forum say they can... Personally, when I lay down a grid I want it to be perfect and I simply can't do that on the fly, but there's people here who say they need max 20 secs to do it. I guess it's experience....

 

Thats not a problem with time because Im useually a ahead of my self any ways and the time I would save with the right beat grid I would make up not having to do it manually. I probably spend a minute or two getting the next song ready, even then I still have some train wrecks

 

Re: Beat grids on the fly

Yes you can add beat markers. grids. load markers and cue markers totally on the fly. Just remember to save it to the file as described in the first post by right clicking the file in the browser.

This is how i'm operating now as i do gigs. I have over 15,000 tracks with more added daily. (from over 18 years of DJ'ing) on my Hard drive and I dont intend to go through them one by one.

 

@ djhighgloss

Thrashing the collection.nml file and doing a re-import of all tracks would work for sure but it seems a bit extreme to do so just to correct a few tracks.
I think it's easier to just delete the tracks with the ! symbol from the collection and then re-import them.

The stripes are not saved in the tags. Instead they are saved in your stripes folder.

@ DJ Finalee

Of course you can beatgrid a track on the fly. If you have time before the next mix that is
For me personally it would be no problem at all since I set a grid pretty fast and also because the tracks I play are rather long so I do have a lot of time between each mix.
On the other hand I prefer to already have the grids in place since I do not want to have to focus on technical details when I play. Instead I want to focus on reading the crowd, selecting tracks and mixing them.

For me knowing my music is everything when it comes to DJ'ing. How can I select a track if I don't know how it sounds, how well it will work with the track currectly being played, how it fits into the progression of my set and so on? If I don't know my music I turn into somekind of jukebox who just mixes each track and hope for the best.
I have a hard time understanding how anyone can add hundreds of tracks on a weekly basis and still maintain an intimate knowledge about each track.
Maybe it's just me who have a hard time remembering so many tracks in such a short period of time. Getting old I guess.

 

I've been writing my stripes to the MP3 files, and so far it's been pretty reliable. I just don't trust the stripes links in the long run, and putting them in the files makes the MP3s completely portable.

 

@ kimhill

How do you do that? I had no idea that it was possible since even if you have the preference set to write "Extended Tags & Stripe" Traktor still write the stripes seperately from the actual tracks.
I can see how it is possible to keep your stripes folder inside you music folder and then all you need to do to move tracks is to move the entire music folder but not how it is possible to moving single tracks and still maintain the stripes. Maybe I have missed something...?

 

yes do tell please!

 

If you select the "Write Extended Tags & Stripe" option, Traktor writes the stripes into the MP3 file. It's then portable w/o worrying about the Stripes folder. I have had some cases where I wrote to the file, and then the stripe was lost anyway, but in most cases it seems to work fine.

I think Traktor is way over-engineered here. I wish there were a simple option to store all info in the MP3 file; without having to remember to write the tag info manually. A downside of writing to the file is that Traktor doesn't seem to be well-behaved about preserving existing tags. Writing to the file nukes any iTunes album graphic. I have read here that this is related to Traktor's problems with ID3 v2.4 tags.

Also, Traktor is very dumb about long file names (at least on the Mac). Writing to file renames MP3s with long file names, breaking the link in iTunes. So don't go and write several thousand stripes to file, or you'll have hours of work re-linking iTunes...

 

Pixel
I totally agree about knowing your music!!! I am unfortunitly still working a full time job and in the transition of converting all my music to mp3's
Djing has become a fulltime job also at this point. Gigs, research, practice, etc.... I do not have a residency yet and might be a little hesitant to take one due to the money I make. I also am at the mercy of the crowd at the locations where I have been playing, no set styles.

 

@ Kimhill

I just spent some time reading the manual addendum and it seems like you are right indeed. Traktor does write the stripe to the track. Well at least in theory since I have never seen it working.
Also I wonder why I have a large stripe folder since I have always have Traktor set to write "Extended Tags & Stripe"? Hmmmm... time do some tests...

 

Traktor also writes stripes to the stripes folder regardless of your settings. I wonder if writing stripes to file has been improved in recent versions, because it's been pretty reliable (but not perfect) for me.

I did read here about a bug workaround for failed batch stripes writing- someone suggested that when you're in the Edit dialog, you click the left or right arrow a couple times, and then click the "All" button, and write tags a second time. I don't know if this is still an issue, but I do it to be sure. I also tend to write tags a couple times in general to be sure. Maybe this has something to do with my success.

The most disturbing tag-writing bug for me is the long file name bug. It makes the whole process so much more difficult. I don't see why NI can't do basic things like handle long file names or accented characters. And while I'm talking about problems, why are the browser scroll bars so tiny- with no arrows? That's willfully bad design!

 

I remember there was a discussion on the board some time ago about the long file name bug you are talking about. Unfortunately I can't remember what the outcome of the discussion was...
All I know is that I do not have any problems with long filenames.

I totally agree with the scrollbars issue though and their behaviour isn't even consistent. Some you can click above and below to move and others you have to drag. Also some work with the mouse scroll wheel and some doesn't.

 

Hey just wanted to say thanks for everything. I guess I am on the right track it's just the software needs to start catching up. I first bought this software at vr.2.0 and wouldn't even touch it for a year after it garbled a bunch of my tags. I used Megaseg. Now I'm pretty happy.

Soon come I will share with you my portable stand alone Traktor system as I see you can attatch pics. here.
cheers, highgloss

 

HELLO! from a new member!

Hi all, new to the board but not traktor!
Just wanted to verify my beatgrid steps are correct,
since I feel there is something wrong somewhere and
I was hoping someone here can correct me.

I got my beatgrid skillz from the classic NI tutorial way back and have been doing them succesfully for some time, yet sometimes I discover weird artifacts..here we go:

1. Analize/add to collection all good.
2. tap the tempo with the tap button, and lock the tempo in the edit page,
3. set a beatmarker on the first real beat. (I tend to do the first kick in a bar) (techno/house music).
4. move on towards the middle or a break and detect a drift.
5. open the edit/bpm and go +/- depending...
6.(this is where I have a doubt)after correcting and aligning the grid,I stamp it with a marker. and move on in the song until I detect another drift. and correct it and put another marker. and so on....
7. end up with one beat marker and about 2-4 markers.....
8. write the id tag the same way as above...

thats it!
the issue is that sometimes it works and other times I notice that the front doesnt align anymore... as I start my beat grid is fine until I add the second stamp marker.
It moves all before it back or forward.

Plese Anybody out there has an answer for me
I would sure apreciate it!


thanks!

 

friction - check my post earlier in this thread.

It works best for me to set the beat marker on a SNAPPED cue point. Dont do it manually because this will introduce error.

Also, make sure you ROUND the BPM before LOCKING and saving.

Another good tip is to use the CHECK button on the edit BPM dialog. This allows you to check the BPM value you have set by playing the same track overlayed without tempo change. Stick your headphones on and edit the ROUNDED BPM value until when you press check the beats sound aligned and there is no clanging.

Hope this helps!

 

No, do NOT round the BPM. This will make your beat grid gradually inaccurate across the length of the track. Depending on the coincidence of the real beat and the calculated, rounded beat, this may result in anything from a minor mismatch to a total trainwreck.

Why?

Let's assume a track of five minutes length, at 130bpm, having 650 beats.

If the BPM is accurately detected at 130.2bpm, the correct position of the 600th. beat is at (approx) 276.5 seconds into the track.

Round the BPM to 130, and the 600th. beat position will be calculated by Traktor at (approx) 276.9 seconds - an error of almost half a second.

Even at the start of the track, a perceptible error will result by about the eighth measure. I'll leave that calculation for your own amusement.