Wheres the whole track graphic waveform display?

It doesnt appear? the current track position waveform works fine, but the bit below it thats supposed to show the whole track waveform only has the current position marker..?

Its version 2.5.3..

 

In the future, please Read the manual or search this forum before you ask a basic, basic question.

I'll give you a hint though, there's a reason for the analyse button...

 

You'll need to first Analyze the track(s) before you'll be able to see the Stripes (the little waveform below the big waveform.)

 

i have about 10000 tracks on my collection. some of the tracks keep bringing up a mistake: "Not all tracks have been analysed. -Please make sure the tracks are accesible and valid audio files." however, those tracks are fine, winamp plays them fine. anyone else with this problem?

some other tracks, although tagged as "striped", don't show up a stripe when loaded into the decks. this happens just in a couple of tracks in the collection.


i also wonder if there's a way to use just one deck for time stretch, in version 2.5.3 on winxp. i think i read it can be done, somewhere in this forum, maybe is a mac only or finalscratch only function?

cheers

BiCho
Native Instruments representative in Colombia, SA
www.musicaenbits.tk

 

This issue is usually due to bad or corrupt ID3 tags. Winamp will still play these files because of the fact that winamp isn't programmed for real time audio processing. Try rewriting the tags in Wiamp, and then load them into Traktor.

Hobbes

 

I've also experienced this when i had a couple of corrupt MP3s in my collection. It wasn't just the tags, the entire file was corrupt.

 

it's a strange behaviour some tracks have. i changed the tags in winamp and reloaded them in traktor with no success.

this time i tried playing them for the first time. reaktor couldn't load any of them!

it's just an album in a 10k track library.

other than those tracks, your tip has worked, i just fixed a bunch of files ;-)

any answer to the stretch question? how do i use it in just one deck?

regards

BiCho
NI representative Colombia
www.musicaenbits.tk

 

Enabling time stretching in the setup window does nothing more than allow you to activate it from the deck controls. To actually turn the time stretching on, you must un-light the join button. That will allow you to adjust tempo independently from the pitch or key.

Hobbes

 

oh yeah i understood that already. i thought there was some way to hard wire the feature, it could be more stable that way

cheers

BiCho

 

WHOAA!!!! Just because winamp plays them does not mean that they are fine. Winamp has the most supreme file stream decoding engine on earth tuned for steady playback. You can practically feed it a text file with mp3 data in it here and there, and it will figure out what to play and what not to play. Just because something plays in winamp does not mean that it is a valid mp3 file no more than html code spit out by frontpage is valid html, even if it may work in most browsers. Programs like traktor are designed for efficiency and performance. They don't check every bit of the file as it comes through for valid mp3 frames deciding which to play and which to chunk... that would screw up realtime performance. The files are either 100% valid mp3 frames and legal tags at the end, or they are not valid files adhering to the mp3 structure. You can't put a "mostly good" file in a program like traktor. They are either 100% right or they are bad. Fyi, no other professional dj software handles screwed up files either... a bad frame will cause pcdj to crash completeley, not just screw up your waveform or tempo data as in traktor. I even had one file on my old system that could bluescreen the computer in pcdj.

That's why its best to encode your own songs from cds you own, or get the files with accompanying .sfv files from reputable pirates who adhere to ripping standards so they can be authenticated and validated as proper. In 10,000 files, there's a pretty good chance that unless you encoded them on your own or got them with companion crc/sfv data that somewhere in there, one got cooked, resumed wrong, was incomplete and then had an id3 slapped on the truncated end, or was just plain scrambled in downloading. Traktor is an open ended system... garbage in = garbage out.

When i find files that traktor will not analyze properly or will not save the analyzation of... i toss them out and find new copies of them. Unless your database is corrupted, then the file is the problem. Another intermediate indicator of a file gone wrong is the windows xp explorer. If you have it set to extract bitrates & the like, and it cant get either the bitrate or the time of the file... delete it and find another copy of that song. You can sort by time, and just delete all the ones at the top, because chances are that they contain crap data in the file.

I have close to 47,000 mp3's on my desktop computer, however I wouldn't dare import half of them into my traktor system or assume that just because they play in winamp that they're okay for traktor. My traktor system has only about 2,600 files on it all validated or encoded by me (granted, the stuff on my pc is albums and the stuff on the traktor laptop are singles). I still have ~400 more to work through, so i'm dealing with about a 1:15.6 ratio of files posessed to files I have on the traktor box. Most of the things that plagued me early on in running traktor had to do with trying to feed it crap files. I even discovered a few bugs by feeding it bad files.

As general advice, and not directed at your or assuming the source of your collection, i have to say for the public good, that sooner or later, all beginning digital jocks need to learn that you can't just take your personal listening collection and slap it in your dj software. Either that, or the cpu's will just become fast enough someday that it will no longer be an issue. But until then, I think its just a fact of digital dj'ing life.

An alternative to all of this, if its a particularly rare file... You can render the file down to disk in winamp using the diskwriter plugin that comes with it, and then re-encode the wav file it spits out as a new mp3 file, which will contain all valid data, but will possibly create some micro flanging around the cymbals depending on what bitrate you choose to use. Its not an advisable course of action though, as it would be lossy compression x2 resulting in a sub-standard sounding file. If you rescue a bad file that way, be sure to encode in a higher bitrate than the original. This is one of the coolest things to keep winamp on your system for. I download a lot of streaming media of hour + long radio shows and i frequently use this technique to fix files that will not play on my portable or my car stereo in the broken mp3 format.

 

I'm thrilled. I don't know what exactly are sfv files.

most of my collection has been ripped by me, and i am very careful when downloading mp3 files (i use soulseek and check the bitrates, i only download entire albums or singles). most of the files in my collection are healthy.

i will be using your advice in order to keep my traktor as stable as it can.

thanks!

regards
BiCho