How to load up an external HDD with tunes that work in TSP & Serato Oracle

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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How to load up an external HDD with tunes that work in TSP & Serato Oracle

Oh Mighty DJTT Oracle.

I’ve recently been finding myself playing on other peoples kit at gigs and parties, as sometimes the space contraints and hassle of unplugging/replugging halfway through a night mean it’s not possible/desirable to rock up with decks/controllers/mixers and get everything set up the way you want. I’m also all for flexibility and the ability to use either of the Traktor or Serato when I play, rather than being a pain in the arse.

Fortunately at the moment I’ve only had to use Traktor based programs (i.e. TP/TSP/S4) so I’ve come up with a playlist on my laptop, exported the .nml and tracks, shoved them on a USB key and then played off that. Issue is, I inevitably want to play a track I don’t have one the stick, which irritates the hell out of me.

I’ve recently bought a 2.5" external USB powered HDD with the express intent of having my full music collection with the metadata for both TSP and Serato on it, so that I can take it anywhere and just plug in and play. To this end I’ve downloaded a copy of the Serato Scratch Live software, imported my iTunes playlists and analysed all the files.

I have a few questions as to how to set the drive up:

a) is it possible to have one copy of my music library and two sets of metadata (one for TSP, and one for Serato) or do I have to have two copies of the library, one for each piece of software?

b) does the exported Traktor Library collection.nml keep a copy of the subplaylists?

c) how the hell do I do the equivalent of the export job in Serato?

d) do I need to keep the the relative paths between the metadata and music files the same (currently they’re all under my music, with the Serato stuff under a directory called Serato, Traktor under Traktor and the actually music nested somewhere under iTunes) or can I use a flat directory structure?

e) if I plug the HDD in mid set, with a large amount of data on it - am I likely to knacker the laptop as the software chews on the largef data files to understand my collection?

It’s a little difficult for me to test as I don’t have a spare machine to play with Traktor on, and my Serato using friend are south of the river …

Ta!

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Great questions man, I hope someone be able to help you.
I’m sure you are not alone here, but I use only traktor, never touched a serato software before…

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???

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Hello Mr. Ohms,

There is the SSL Database Importer, a tool created by NI to import Serato’s database in Traktor Pro. That might be handy for you. Get it here: http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101674

Now, to your questions.

a) One copy of your music library is enough for both to handle

a) both have different library formats so you have to keep seperate ones for each program.

b) yes, it does

c) AFAIK there is no export-function. You can only copy the whole Serato-folder containing the library-data.It is an invisible folder in the root of the correspondong HDD.

d) I think both libraries use absolute paths so moving the libraries should be easy. Moving the music itself though won’t work.

e) It shouldn’t. I did this a lot (swapped in/out hdd during set) and never experienced knackers. If you do you should increase the latency-setting.

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Ah, hadn’t thought of that … though I suppose that’d mean doing the cue point work in Serato, exporting to Traktor so they’re consistent and then taking both lirary files and the tunes onto the drive so they’re consistent - it’d be annoying to have different cue points in different tunes dependant upon program …

Thought as much, good to have it confirmed though.

I’m assuming all the playlists have to be ‘in’ Traktor, as in have been imported in to the library, as opposed to using the ones associated with iTunes which are picked up on loading?

So it’s just a ‘copy a file’ job? I thought you could move specific crates?

So I’d need to recreate the path to the file folders on the external drive?

Good to know

Ta!

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[quote]Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeHog
Hello Mr. Ohms,

There is the SSL Database Importer, a tool created by NI to import Serato’s database in Traktor Pro. That might be handy for you. Get it here: http://www.native-instruments.com/fo...d.php?t=101674

Ah, hadn’t thought of that … though I suppose that’d mean doing the cue point work in Serato, exporting to Traktor so they’re consistent and then taking both lirary files and the tunes onto the drive so they’re consistent - it’d be annoying to have different cue points in different tunes dependant upon program …[/quote]

Its not cool but that might be the way to go. I have very bad experiences with different cue-points.
Syncing libraries might be something worth considering to develop.

[quote]Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeHog
d) I think both libraries use absolute paths so moving the libraries should be easy. Moving the music itself though won’t work.
So I’d need to recreate the path to the file folders on the external drive?[/quote]

Yup, thats why you should think about one file-structure and stick to it.

[quote]Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeHog
b) yes, it does

I’m assuming all the playlists have to be ‘in’ Traktor, as in have been imported in to the library, as opposed to using the ones associated with iTunes which are picked up on loading?[/quote]

Sorry, I never used iTunes. I guess Traktor doesn’t save iTunes playlist. It gets them fresh every time you start Traktor. That makes iTunes for you important to plan your sets.

[quote]Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeHog
c) AFAIK there is no export-function. You can only copy the whole Serato-folder containing the library-data.It is an invisible folder in the root of the correspondong HDD.
So it’s just a ‘copy a file’ job? I thought you could move specific crates?[/quote]

Not that I’m aware off. Maybe someone else knows a way.