Project: Track selection 'vinyl sleeve with picture' style

Idea for an application

The app (let's call TrackSel for now) runs in a small window that you 'dock' at the bottom of your screen (and put your DJ app on top of it)
Easy to visualize the arrangement.

TrackSel will display a list of tracks in your library as a bunch of sleeve pictures and with title underneath (+artist maybe, whatever).
And you got scroll left and right to navigate through your virtual record box and pick a track. Just like going madly through a record box.

The trick here is that:
1) the list of tracks is arranged in the exact same order as the list of tracks in your DJ software browser (maybe a playlist with say 100 tracks you fancy picking from in tonight's set)

2) i'm assuming you can hide the DJ software browser (Traktor 3.2 will allow this I've been told)

3) it's all via MIDI - TrackSel receive MIDI via your controller to navigate the virtual record box and as soon as you press "Select to Deck X",
a) it checks which position is the track you picked and which deck you sending to (ex: 5th track to Deck B)
b) it sends the right MIDI commands to the DJ software to navigate to track at Nth position and another command to load it to Deck X (all done to a virtual MIDI cable that Traktor is getting input from)
c) you're all set, ready to play

I have already found the tools to build this thing and it'll work in both Windows and MacOS X.

For someone like me, pictures make more sense than words. I never even used to read track names - I just knew 'the red sleeve with a funny logo on the right had this dark beat and good bassline'.
I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. Just looking at a vinyl sleeve and knowing exactly what's on it and how it sounds like.

Question is: is this something peeps on this forum would be interested in? Or am I building a toy for my own sake?
Not that I mind doing so, but it's better if there's a bigger audience for it for the sake of bouncing ideas and seeking help etc.

Thanks

Kr.

 

In other words, you'd like to see a layout similar to what iTunes is like with browse-able images of the sleeves? Sounds good to me.

 

yeah, spot on mate!

and the only way it can talk to Traktor is via a virtual midi cable, sending the same messages to control Traktor's browser (and loading decks)

i'll do some initial tests and see what gives

 

I'd like to see what you come up with as well.

 

I'd be interested too as long as this app doesn't make the process too clunky of going back and forth between it and Traktor and the integration quite seemless. I'd think you'd need to be in cahoots with NI programmers to make that happen, but feel free to totally prove me wrong...

I too remember my vinyl often by cover, label art and think.. "oh yea, b-side inside cut, that's the shizzy" and totally not even know the name, but remember the location on the record of the mix you love to drop.

Since I perform Traktor on a Mac laptop.. my vote is certainly for an os x version.

Discogs has been a fantastic site to nick album artwork for the 12" scene that iTunes would never have and saves me from having to scan my own stuff most of the time.

 

due to everything being MIDI controlled, you wont have to click back and forth between apps (Traktor and mine) to give the app 'focus' so that it responds.
MIDI is focus independent.

The idea is to hide the track browser in Traktor, resize Traktor so that it leaves x amount of pixels on the bottom end of your screen then dock my app there.

My only requirement so far is that the Traktor playlist which is open has to be sorted the same way the tracks on my app are (so that the Nth position matches)

All I'm doing is getting MIDI commands to my app then sending the appropriate MIDI commands to Traktor (via a virtual midi cable like the Mac OSX IAC)

Did a quick test last night and it works - I didn't have pictures etc, was just a quick form with a few buttons to remote control Traktor and it worked - i was navigating Traktor's browser.

I need to find time to actually do it - It's tough to mingle my job (i'm a coder as you might have guessed), making music, DJing in parties and now coding on the side for some Traktor extension!

Maybe I should code a clone of myself first! Life would be easier.

Later
Kr.

 

Another interesting thing (maybe discovered in the past, but I'm new to Traktor and I just noticed it):

The playlist files (.nml) are actually XML files. Any XML editor will edit them and show their 'metatags'
The playlist is very readable and all details that Traktor keeps on each MP3 is in there.

I can easily build a playlist importer and it would save someone having to build a duplicate playlist for my app manually. All you'd need to add is a picture.
Maybe offer 'refresh' capability which rescans the Traktor playlist and updates any changes.

Hence automatic synchronisation of playlist on both ends and the only manual bit is the addition of the picture.

 

some of that sounds cool. i'd still like to see NI add the option to display track artwork within the Traktor broswer window, a-la iTunes. should be very simple to do, no?

 

well obviously if NI does their own sh*t, it'll be the best integration ever!

however, i'd rather have an attempt at goal myself (mind you, it doesn't have to work with Traktor only), instead of waiting for an entire forum to agree with me and forward the request to NI.

Kr.

 

for sure - and programming is fun too ;P

 

Great idea Krugger!!! Best of luck with your idea. I hope you manage to get the extension the way you want it and release it to the community. I would love this feature because like you I also am quite visual in terms of recognizing music. A mac version of this extension would make you so many people's best friend.

 

In regards to the picture.. yer not suggesting we need to have a folder full of images per release are you? Your app/extension would be pulling the album artwork from our mp3s, correct?

 

I need ideas how to pull the images. Say I download from Beatport, I dont get any pic.
Due to the fact that they use Flash, you can't even right-click and select "Save Picture"

Are other sites more friendly? Actually, is there a site that ships with images too by default?

When you say "Pulling the album artwork from our mp3s", what did u mean? CDDB? Or some other service?
I'll have a look into it

For now, I do need ideas on the image import or retrieval

 

I'm actually doing it in Mac first

 

something else...you're mentioning 'album' artwork

this thing is rather about singles - 1 tune / 1 artwork

just viewing the same album artwork for 15 different tracks isn't exactly what i'm trying to do here - It wouldn't be of any use to me anyway.

it might be a manual job to begin with (until i can get sites delivering art with mp3 as a zip) and it might need matching a track's name with an artwork, but it's something i'm willing to do - Sh*t, if it's gonna take some of my time to beatgrid the thing anyway, might as well spend some tiny extra time matching the MP3 with an artwork.
Preparing tracks for Traktor is already partly manual - I'm not making it any more difficult

One day maybe we'll get artwork direct with downloads and as filenames will match, you won't have to lift a finger and the artwork will be there in my little app.

Just like I can read Traktor's playlist, eventually I'll just my app export to Traktor.
So you only use 1 app to generate a playlist with pics and Traktor gets an update.

 

I know what you mean by the album artwork tag being more related to singles (1 track/1 artwork) but if you have a look at the way something like iTunes handles this, it combines the same artwork picture to the whole album when you arrange songs by album. This way instead of having 15 artwork pictures to scroll through for 1 album, you have 1 picture for the 15 tracks. Scroll 2 pictures and you scroll 2 albums.

This may not be ideal for something like Traktor where I arrange my playlists by BPM and Key but for me having a artwork browser below the file browser with an image pulled from the Album Artwork tag of each mp3 file for me to scroll through would be great, even if it works 1 picture per track. Perhaps an option so that if the artwork is the same as the previous image, they are merged into one item.

Good luck and keep us posted.

_______________________

Why do cats like fish but are afraid of water?

 

I like using Discogs.com to pull album. .or.. single artwork for my mp3s i convert from vinyl.

I was hoping your app would be able to read the embeded image in our mp3s when we embed the artwork/cover/label graphics into our mp3 which i use iTunes to apply that artwork too.

I'm fine with the 1 track > 1 image ratio as oppposed
to the whole album > 1 image.

Just be able to read in the embedded images in our mp3s and we'll be good to go.

 

if you are into housemusic try Traxsource - imho by far the best online-shop for digital downloads. they have a lot of labels/artwork/covers coming with the actual releases. or check out their forum where some labels offer them to the community for free.

 

I'd like to point out that not everyone uses mp3 that can embed images into the tag. I use wav and aiff so I would like to have the option of manualy matching art to track.

 

Well, as i dont have a team of 10 coders with me, you bet your ass it'll be a manual assignment to begin with!

But thanks all for mentioning the options to make it pull from some source. I'll look into it

Kr.