Playing tracks directly from the explorer vs. track collection

Yep there is definately some confusion in what this whole collection thang is....

Thanx Count for the heads up.
Maybe it should be renamed to "Important file arrangement for proper use of Traktor"




But hey. Any word on faster loading of tracks from the external Hd. Mine takes a while vs. The laptop hd loads instantly?

 

That question should have its own thread if it doesn't already.

 

Sorry thought maybe that the tracks may load faster if in the collection but I see no difference.
I'll do some searching thanx.

 

Continuing from what Count said above.... the only disadvantage I see with playlists is that every time I buy new music, I have to MANUALLY distribute them into the playlists, after having done so in Windows Explorer. I don't mind it too much, but mistakes can be made, and fresh must-play tracks can go forgotten deep into the Collection and never make it into a playlist.

On the other hand, this doesn't happen with using Folders in the Explorer.

Traktor allows automation for the importing of my music folders to the Collection, so there is perfect consistency (which I love). So my tracks can be Analyzed & Grided and never lost or need more organizing, or checking for duplicates, etc.

IMO, the best feature that could be added to the Traktor Browser is Playlists that automatically shadow and import new tracks from the defined Music Folders (no disadvantage anymore). It can be called a "Hard Playlist", where they cannot be modified unless a track is deleted from that folder. Of course, the regular Playlists will co-exist with these Hard Playlists.

 

i was thinking more on the lines of a filtered play list, where you define what gets added in the folder...example a certain tag like from the comment, key words etc and also say you don't want files that contain "madonna" in your play list, you can filter out certain words from tags or filenames, and also where you could modify the filter at any time.

 

So has anybody experienced playback issues when operating from Explorer? 'My music' folders on the PC are arranged by decades containing various sub folders such as rock, funk, pop etc. If i do an eighties event i click on the 80's folder in explorer and can access sub folders from there to keep things simple. I don't really want to rebuild the explorer folders in the track collection section of Traktor if i don't need to.

 

They called smart playlists and there is a number of requests for this feature. Hopefully NI considers putting them in soon.

 

Why does it have to be so complicated..every other program I have ever used for nearly a decade has had about every feature mentioned above on the wish list for Traktor...every standard media player and dj program I have ever used with the exception of itunes and has been able to efficiently store infos in the original track location, keep my original collection intact, organize my original collection, and has had adequate browsing. And if you lose a file most programs will run a search and locate it for you. Never had a single problem in this realm with any of my various audio/dj programs, media players, or software samplers until 6 months ago when I switched to NI. Don't get me wrong lots of cool new features I never had with other software but the double work load maintaining your personal library and the Track Collection "database" is many many steps backwards for me. Not to mention an all too common loss of infos, cue points, grids, etc. Can anyone tell me how I can transfer my personal library to a new hard drive or computer and not have to re-build my track collection or lose infos..? I backup my Track Collection regularly but what happens when the location of my mp3 library changes? This has got me really worried. With most programs this is never a problem because you just tell the program the new location of your library in the explorer..

 

to transfer, backup or copy both your music and collection at the same time.. as the most critical (time consuming to recreate) information is stored in the music itself (cues & grids) .. i use a portable hard drive to *sync* my studio desktop with my laptop for playing gigs in this way.

 

So the grids and cue points get stored with my music in the original locations..?That makes me very happy..So if even if my Track Collection gets corrupt my cue points and grids are saved to the files...? How about BPM's..? So I actually have several hard drive backups for my collection and all of Traktor's collections and backups..but there is a vital portion of new track updates that Traktor has been referencing from my current laptops internal that I now need to move to an external drive but I don't want to lose the locations in the folders. Since I was advised to organize my folders by import date instead of my own genre playlists I would have no way of re-locating those files without basically re-doing all of my organizing of six months..can i move this folder to another drive ( I would keep the same folder name and everything only drive location would change) and still keep my Traktor Playlists intact without having to manually re-locate files?

 

vdj calls them filtered folders and trainspotter calls them dynamic play lists.

Does it really matter what the feature is called if the desired results are the same ?

 

a) performance, since traktor doesnt have to "update file tags" when using the collection
b) search, traktors search doesnt work in the explorer.

 

from the postings in this thread i cant even see someone read the respective chapters of the manual... otherwise much of this basic stuff would've not come up in this thread.

the collection does this already automatically for you.

if your tracks have the "genre" tag filled out, a double-click on the collection node opens (the few) smart list options: artist, genre, label.

btw, whenever you import a new track with this genre, these list gets auto-updated.

 

right-click on a folder and choose "import folder as playlist". then you have all the new tracks in it already.

or, you sort the collection by import date and make a playlist with all fresh added tracks and name that playlist with the date.

 

traktor stores infos in the original tracks.

traktor doesnt alter the file structure on your hdd

use the collection and you'll be able to relocate tracks.

there's no loss, as long as you use the collection.

backup and profiles chapter in the manual explains it pretty well. please read and if there still persist questions, feel free to ask.

like... nothing? just relocate? point traktor to the new music folder? what bad should happen?

 

? ? ?

i dont understand why you should re-organize anything?

you dont have to relocate the files one-by-one, you can select all and then relocate them all, pointing to the highest folder where the tracks are stored.

 

Thank you for your response, its been very hard getting help...so I can just pick the highest folder and it will search out my tracks and reference them from their new folder..? I swore I tried this. This is good because with a deal of my newer tracks only Traktor knows where they are stored. I need to move the files so I can also find them easily in the explorer and so I can work around hard drive constraints, and I sometimes need to do sets on Serato at some events so I need to have a handle on my files in a way that is universal. Also very happy infos are stored with tracks! This is how I expected it to work..I guess I will go try it out. Thanks so much for help!

 

well..i always import to collection new stuff straight away partly because i can use the bpm filter when playing and partly because it loads up quicker than the favorites tabs which i use for new playlists that i work on but which seem to update every time i open one whether it has been opened in that session or not? i just find that if i use tracks from the collection everything is cool and if it aint broke why change

 

I always drag the new songs from explorer to a "new" playlist for gridding and cueing before I disperse the tracks to their appropriate playlist based on genre or whatever.

I've never had problems doing it like this; I never deal with the collection but if I load a track from there, it's the exact same as loading it from a playlist.

The explorer has to update each time you open a folder in it, so that's the worst way to browse tracks.

As for backing up, I just created a new partition solely for traktor use on OSX 10.6, and all I have to do is copy the native instruments folder from Documents and paste it to the same directory on the other partition, and then point traktor to my "DJ" folder where I keep all my tracks, and boom. Everything is the same, no problems; traktor is even perfectly seamless between both partitions.

 

So I am relocating my moved files and it is working as expected mostly..but does anyone know why Traktor finds the tracks easily from the root folder when I select multiple tracks but when I select a singular track it makes me follow the folders down to manually locate the individual file?