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[Cedric D]

I'm using Rekordbox a lot, which is a Dj library from Pioneer (largest Dj company in the world) and they use a very clever tagging system called "mytags". It's a system where you can write your own tags, like mood, venue, daytime and assign those tags to your tracks by selecting multiple tracks and enabling a checkbox.
Those tags can be filtered/searched and written into the comment for exporting. So creating precise playlists become very easy and fast.

Play doctor can use something like that.

An example:

Lana del Ray - summertime comment: sad, vocal, slow
Michael Jackson - smooth criminal comment: good bass line, 80s, dinnertime
Elvis Presley comment: vocal, dinnertime

When you want to create a new playlist for your dinner, just enter dinnertime and you are finished.



I hope my English is good enough to make the idea clear

Cheers

[JimH]

Your English is fine.  But I don't understand what you think MC should do.

You can add custom tags in MC.

You could add a "mytag" field if you wanted to.  If your DJ system writes tags, you might be able to use the same tag.  The tag name must match exactly, including letter case.

In an audio view, you could search for "dinnertime" by using [mytag]=dinnertime.  Or you could make the mytag a default search tag.

The wiki has information on tags.

[Cedric D]

I use JRiver as my main library on mac and PC.

I would love to see something like a list of attributes I can select by mouse. I attached a screenshot of "Beatport Desktop" software which shows what I mean

When I import new tracks to Media Center I could simply click on these attributes and I'm done.

When I want to create a playlist I select those attributes from a dropdown menu and all tracks containing these tags will show up.



Right now I have to use 4+ apps to achieve custom-tags-in-the-comment-field (attachment) or I have to type every single attribute myself.

I'm a MC user for more than 8 years and i think a lot of users can benefit from it, not only Djs

Cheers

[JimH]

Would this help?
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Tag_on_Import

[Mike Foran]

I think I had a similar request a while back relating to the 'Genre' field. I got some good advice on creating a new field that used an expression to populate the Genre field that I think could relate: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=93835.0

Once I had set this up, I created a new Look that used 'Panes' as the view, then set my new Sub-Genre field in the pane. I could then select files and check box to add new data entries to the field and those options would automatically populate the main 'Genre' field as well. I think you could adapt this to work for 'Comments' as well.

Hope this helps.

[blgentry]

It sounds to me like you want a list type field in MC that you can then export to the Pioneer program via the Comments tag.

If you make a new field in the database and call it something like Moods, you can edit it in a pop up list with check boxes.  So you can easily check off "Late Night", "Slow Groove", or whatever you have in your Moods fields.  You can add new ones by typing and then they will be part of the list too.

To export them to the comments field, it looks like you want them to look like this:

/*Mood1/Mood2/Mood3*/

Here's an expression that will do that conversion:

Code: [Select]

//*Replace([Moods],;,//) *//
I just tested it with the [Keywords] field because it's the exact same type of List field that you would need.  It worked as expected.

You could also develop an expression that would go backwards from this; converting from the [Comments] field back to the [Moods] field.  Knowing the exact formatting is important, but I'm pretty confident it can be done.

Brian.

[Cedric D]

Wow,

cool suggestion guys!

I'm not into "scripting" yet but I'll try my best. I'll post a the solution when I found a way to achieve this.

Very good stuff here 

Thanks a lot !!

[Cedric D]

Hey Brian,

Today, I did exactly what you described

And its amazing!!!

You are a GENIUS!  

It does everything I need. Thanks a lot!

cheers

[Arindelle]

Instead of comments you might want to just use/create Mood as a field?? setting it up as a list field. That way you would have checkboxes and could use it in your Views for filtering, creating playlists etc. Using a variant of Brian's very cool expression should work for that too.

PS: BTW [Mood] is already a standard field in Vorbis, APE, itunes and is TMOO in ID3. Tempo is another used by a lot of "DJ" programs as BPM is often wrong (or rather it is divided or multiplied by 2 eg an EDM track could be interpreted at 80BPM but is really 160BPM or vice versa) so the additional field Tempo is important; back in the day there was even a field called "Intensity" if memory serves. Not sure how the Pioneer program works and what it is actually writing to the file container.  Check to see what the "Tag Dump" says (what the external program has actually written to the file). You might be able to recover a lot of good metadata very easily.

[Cedric D]

I created a custom field called "DJ Mood" and populate / sync it with the tag field "Lyrics". Then I set the library view to pane. Now I can check or filter entries by this field.

However I don't find a way to make it work in "Playing now".
Is there a way to get a checklist in "Playing now" referring to Lyrics?
Something like a combination of acceptable values & calculated data in the data base? So the check list gets a preset list with empty check boxes which syncs with lyrics?

[Arindelle]

I created a custom field called "DJ Mood" and populate / sync it with the tag field "Lyrics". Then I set the library view to pane. Now I can check or filter entries by this field.

What do you mean by "syncing" it to the Lyrics field? Could you explain this and what the relationship to Lyrics and DJ Mood is?

Not sure I get this, but leaving Lyrics out of it for a minute, it looks like you have set up the pane view to the right ... you have only one parameter for filtering this way, might want to use Top as the choice. If so,  then in the settings box advanced you could filter in both directions - hard to do vertically.  Like you could have a genre like Electronic, a style like Ambient and your DJ MOODS could indicate the choice the comes up or vice versa or you could choose in your moods IDM and Ambient Techno and get the artists if that field was added to category etc.

The little boxes you see are usually used to do "pane tagging" for multiple selections. They appear only if at least one track is selected in the main area. I would normally filter off the category(ies) you decide to set up before selecting the tracks -- in your example DJ MOODS if you choose one or more (use CTRL+Click. The Tracks would then be filtered and sorted as per the rules of the View.

However I don't find a way to make it work in "Playing now".
Is there a way to get a checklist in "Playing now" referring to Lyrics?
Something like a combination of acceptable values & calculated data in the data base? So the check list gets a preset list with empty check boxes which syncs with lyrics?

again I don't get what you mean by syncing or what the Lyrics to a track have to do with your new mood field, but if you follow what I suggest and choose first from your custom field or other criteria if you add more categories. You can just select all tracks (CTRL+A) and hit play or right click and send to a playback zone/device, or using the other playback commands like ADD, ADD NEXT, depending on what you want to do.

The Playing now area of the UI is a little special as it is not a view per se (you can set up presets for the columns you want to see, you can reorder the songs, or remove them however, but you can't filter them as a View can). 

Now, if you are actually using JRiver to DJ, there are a couple of things you can do. One is toggle off the tree (you don't need the tree and it takes up space -- you can set an icon to do this so its part of the top menu). Another is to split the view so that you can see Playing now at the same time as your "View" with DJMOODS. View=>Split View=>Show 2 Views. Choose playing now in one of the 2 areas.

Toggling off the tree at the same time gives you more room for this. With both the filtered tracks and the Playing now pane open at the same time you can also drag and drop the track (or selection of tracks into playing now) Very handy if you have some clown with a request that you want to ft in somewhere.

You can also use the Overview under playing now and set up different "zones" for playback. This might be handy, sort of like a second turntable -- you can right click on selected files and choose send to and zones you have set up will appear. Its not the best for queuing individual tracks IMO, but it can be nice if you have a dance zone and a more ambient , background music zone. There will be "dead air" when switching zones -- no transitions from the two. There is better adapted software emulating "double turntables", but hey you have choices here.

Get back with what you mean by syncing lyrics, and if you need screenshots I can provide them later today or tomorrow .. Brian will probably be around later and he'll know what I'm talking about if any of this interests you, he or someone else can get back faster.  Got to run now. 

[Cedric D]

Thanks for your help!

Here is my story haha:
I use MC as my core music library since years. First I get new music from dj pools and download them to my hard drive. After that I play those files using 'MC Playing now', but I don't add the tracks to the library yet, because I'm rating and evaluating if the track is worth keeping. All the tracks which fulfill my needs get into my music folder which will be imported to MC automatically.
Since MC write every modification into the mp3 tag I can open any other dj software and have all file changes right there. My main Dj software is Traktor Pro 2. My Song preparation chain was like this on Osx: Dj Pool -> Media Center -> Metadatics ( batch resize cover art) -> mp3tag ( set coverart to front) -> Mixedinkey -> Pioneer Rekordbox (set dj moods) -> Rekordbuddy (sync RB with Traktor)-> Traktor Pro 2   It took hours to get some new tracks into the library.
Since yesterday I'm on Windows 10 and I changed the workflow to "just": Dj Pool ->Media Center -> Probably Tagscanner to batch resize coverart -> Mixedinkey -> MCiS -> Itunes Music Library xml -> Traktor Pro 2 itunes browser

What I did yesterday was, creating a custom tag called Dj Mood. Dj Mood writes all check box values into the lyrics field (Traktor can read Lyrics tags) and visa versa.
In the Audio view I can select tracks and hit the check boxes to set new tags for the file. Also I can click on the DJ Mood list and all tracks gets filtered by that value.

However, in order to edit DJ Moods I need to be in audio view and all tracks needs to be imported into the MC library (even tracks i'm not sure keeping).
So the ultimate goal would be to create static check box lists which write directly into the lyrics field and are accessible from playing now too

For example I get two panes, one for the venue (beach club, underground, mainstream) and one for music style

Right now my dilemma is,
- if I use Dj Moods with acceptable values: All the values stay inside Dj Moods tag and can't get read by Traktor
- If I use calculated data [Lyrics]&datatype=

: I need to import every song I want to tag


cheers
Cedric

[ferday]

If you're listening to the tracks to tag and decide if you'll keep them, why don't you use ratings...give the bad ones a 1 star then use a smartlist to see all of the 1 stars and mass delete using MC

[Arindelle]

wow you have one complicated work flow ... now I'm not saying you don't need all of this, but I bet you could trim it a bit. Like why all the fuss with coverart before getting into MC (smells like iTunes  ). anyway, you probably have your reasons.  I just don't know enough about each software package to make an educated guess  ... but it is still a mystery why you chose Lyrics as a dump field (you needed a comment type field that works on all platforms maybe?) Anyway I get what you mean by sync now.

Right now my dilemma is,
- if I use DJ Moods with acceptable values: All the values stay inside DJ Moods tag and can't get read by Traktor

hmm so you have to determine the field name that Traktor can read and use. Reverse mapping ...

So if 'I'm understanding Tractor is your front-end. Most people ask questions about how to import tags into JRiver, and then how to remap field names that might not be the same or exists in JRiver.  However, using Tractor's limitations I would probably want to make sure that Traktor can import a JRiver custom tag. Couple of things I could think of experimenting with. Tag with Traktor only to see the name of the fields.

I'd do a tag dump and see the exact name of the field(s) it can read/interpret. Create that field and populate that from within JRiver.  Try importing a few new music files from JRiver to Traktor and see if they are read correctly. As Traktor can read Flac files, this should work (using JRiver fields remapped to Traktor fields instead of an external programs fields remapped to JRiver fields.)

However if you only use MP3 files (so limited with ID3v2 tags, you might stumble across tags that cannot be read necessarily. Might want to jump on their forum and ask to see their tag chart .. I read a couple of posts and they use a field called PRIV which is going to cause some headaches. But I think its worth exploring. If you can determine the exact name of the tag field, and if the file type's container can support it, you ought to be able to get JRiver to populate it for you (it might require a secondary field or a manual "=[DJ Moods]" to do, but these can be done pretty quickly.

Right now my dilemma is,
- If I use calculated data [Lyrics]&datatype=

: I need to import every song I want to tag

I split this as I think this is more of a workflow decision than a problem. My workflow is either my ripper will automatically write a tag that I can filter out, then I can isolate, verify and retag new music. When satisfied I remove the tag, and another view will pick it up. Then I use JRiver to transfer the music into the main media area I use for my collection. Call it sandboxing ... In other words I have a temp directory or drive that holds new music. Both are being imported, so I can listen, retag, analyze, change cover art etc. Now for you it is slightly different as you might only be keeping 10% of this music.. However so what? As long as you have it tagged in someway as temporary or work in progress, on your main views you can exclude them.

But I know DJs are portable beasts, maybe you are talking about terabytes of data per week who knows ... So maybe my  sandboxing technique is too unwieldy. Maybe the DJ pool stuff is on portable hard drives or whatever that you are swapping around.  What you could do then is still immediately import into JRiver but use a separate library on a completely different path. Manual importing is fast on JRiver, much faster than any other software I've come across. When satisfied, you can just use the Rename, Move Copy tool to move the files you want to keep to your main library area and autoimport can take over from there.

Mostly I rip CD's but I also buy/obtain a lot of stuff from downloads ... you mention tagscanner ... I use this too at the start of my workflow for downloaded music. I set my "WIP" tag  and it is written to the file, renames the files and directory et al. Then it gets sandboxed automatically on import. When ripping CD's same story, my external ripper will write the tag for me, on import my special tagging and admin views are populated automatically.

BTW - another benefit of doing the majority of tagging on a large collection from within JRiver is that you can use a combo of views and the magic arrows on certain fields (like artist) - under Features=>Linkable columns. You might need to clean this up a bit as in one of your screenshots you have x artist and the horrible "feat." Q-Tip or something similar. Using library tools and replacing things like featuring with the semicolon, will allow you to find/group together other titles with the same artist even if there are multiple artist per track.  This is another reason why sandboxing in one library is good as you can easily choose from existing values, and have consistency amongst artists when applicable and avoif having thousands of styles or variants of the same sub-genre etc.

[Cedric D]

The problem is that the core of Traktor Pro 2 was programmed 2000 or earlier. Its old. Its bad. But the rest like player control and effects is the best out there.
Base line is, I got two tag fields to use only: Comments and lyrics. This is why I need to transfer all my custom entries to one of these tag fields.

Btw I hate iTunes. And don't want to touch it at all . Even on Mac the first thing i wanted to do was uninstalling. Its just a tool for bridging MC with Traktor haha. I abandoned it even when it comes to iPhone.

I like my tracks with cover arts. sometimes they help me to find them quickly, sometimes they just look nice and make the library colorful. Since Djs are the first folks who get new releases or special mixes no one else uses, they often come without any arts and its hard to get good pictures. That's why it takes time. Additionally Traktor can't handle cover art sizes larger 500px.

The idea of sand boxing by tag is also helpful! I need to think about this and if it suits my workflow and how I can implement it. Your way sound promising. You guessed quite right, I keep something less than 10% ... and of those 10% I'm going to play 30% of it only => 3 Tracks out of 100. Kind of frustrating leaving so much music unlistened.

Wow the trick to separate artist by semicolon is brilliant! One of those things which drove me nuts sometimes. My mixed artist list is so long...