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Beatgrid

There should be a complete, rock-solid section on beatgridding.

Beatgrids are fundamental to the operation of TSP. There should be no need to refer to 3rd-party documentation like the Traktor Bible to find out how to use something so basic.

 

the manual contains a step by step explanation of how to beatgrid, including some pictures - at what point do you get problems to understand that?

 

I'd like a detailed section showing every single midi device that is compatible with Traktor.

And I want you to send me playlists so girls can thow their thongs at me.

 

imho the manual is alright .. whats really needed though is video's. if necessary as a separate product as was provided for traktor 3. or just put up more video's on youtube.

 

Here are some of the problems with the current documentation:

First, information about beatgridding/syncing is scattered across different parts of the manual. We have "Beat Synchronization" on page 47, but then we also have "Beat Matching" on page 189. Then there's another section on "Working with Beatgrids" on page 55. "Beatgrid" is one word in the first section, but then it's two; "beat grid" in the later section, so if someone searches the PDF file for "beatgrid" as I did, the last section could be missed completely until some later time.

I see nothing that documents the three states of the sync button (un-highlighted, half-highlighted, and fully-highlighted), or the relation of these states to the beatgrid and syncing.

"Bars per phrase," which appears in the preferences, is described in the manual as "Beats per phrase," and there's no explanation of what the functionality is.

The Traktor Bible provides a good example of how to document beatgrids. For example, the fact that the Traktor Bible walks the user through a couple of very common scenarios, instead of a terse conceptual overview.

Basically, beatgrids/syncing are not covered from a overall, functional standpoint in the manual- instead, pieces of the topic are covered as they appear in the interface. It would be much better to have an integrated chapter on beat matching, which is probably the most common/important technical task faced by DJs.

 

ok,

i'll have a deeper look at it. please note that the manual got written while the software was in developement process, while the traktor bible could rely on a released version.

the beats or bars per phrase is a good example for sth that changed during the betatest.

the different stati of the sync button came in a later update of traktor, therefore they are not in the original manual. they *should* have been in the respective addendum, though. anyways, that's already on my list!

 

Thank you, native girl. I have designed complex retail software and written lengthy documentation and "Getting Started" guides myself, so I can feel your pain.

The most important suggestion I can think of is to include a chapter dedicated to beat matching. It is a *critical* functionality for DJs- one of the few things that unites us across almost all the different genres. It would be much easier to grasp if it were covered in one place instead of being scattered throughout the manual (of course there will be mentions of it elsewhere, too).

When I've written documentation, I've always relied on descriptions of typical scenarios, much like the Traktor Bible tutorial does. There's still plenty left for the Traktor Bible to cover if you round out the documentation with real-world beat-matching examples... ;-)

 

i agree with u.

unfortunately, NI made a decision at the beginning of TSP to rewrite the T3 task-oriented manual more into a one-by-one describing manual. i'd love to change that again but it's definitely out of scope for the upcoming manual.

 

That's disappointing. As you can see from my join date, I've been involved with Traktor longer than most, and unfortunately, that has involved watching NI lose most of the NYC market to Serato. Much of that has been due to usability questions, so it's too bad that NI isn't doing everything it can to help DJs get up to speed on Traktor.