Improvement suggestions

[DJAE]

Hi Damien,

I saw the youtube videos of Rekord Buddy and thought that I would have one software, one sync button and be able to do updates both in Serato and in Rekordbox, sounded fantastic since I use both Softwares with different turntables. Since Rekordbuddy only works for Mac I have spent 14 hours moving both Serato and Rekordbox with their libraries to a MacBook and also bought and installed Rekordbuddy 2.1.34.

After a lot of confusion and reading the forums I realised that the function that triggered me to buy Rekordbuddy doesn’t exist anymore (the Sync function replaced by drag n drop). I have also read your threads about supporting one version so instead of going in to that discussion once more I just want to say that considering adding an automatic sync button would be highly appreciated by me along with many other users as it seems. Getting sync back is my biggest wish!

How ever, with the current situation and version, here is some improvement suggestions:

• I had a tree structure in Serato with a host crate e.g. “Heavy House” that has sub-crates under itself e.g. Mashups, remixes etc. This created a top folder in Rekordbox called “Heavy House” with playlists under, so far so good. But what Rekordbuddy also did was to create a playlist “Heavy house” which contained all the combined tracks from all the playlists (Mashup and remix playlist) with the same name as the top folder in Rekordbox which means that all the top folders are now have an additional “2” in the name e.g. Heavy House 2. This meant a whole lot of renaming which lead me to this improvement suggestions:

• Being able to delete all marked playlists at once. Why? Because when you use the drag n drop workflow and have renamed all playlists in rekordbuddy section in Rekordbuddy software and wants to drag them to the Rekordbox section, you will end up with the renamed folders to be added, but the old ones named 2 will still be there (since rekordbuddy don’t determine that folder has changed name), so now you have three versions of the same playlists. Hence you need to first delete all your playlist for every change and then drag a totally new set down to rekordbox playlist section (in Rekordbuddy) and if you for every time / every change need to delete playlist by playlist its very time consuming.

• Highlight changes. For us who use different hardware turntables with different softwares, we might do changes in both softwares. With the drag n drop workflow you need to keep track on what you have changed in Serato vs Rekordbox in the field and then go back and re-create this in Rekordbox. The risk of inconsistency and missing things is overhanging.

Many thanks!

BR
Andreas

[damien]

First, Welcome to the forums!

I’ve explained this before but I’ll repeat here just in case someone finds this post first. What ‘sync’ used to do is mostly the same as what dragging an entire collection does now in 2.1. Because some collections don’t store modification date/time, sync was impossible to do correctly/reliably and would copy everything most of the time anyway. I don’t want people to have the impression that something was great before and it’s not anymore. That’s not the case. Something was broken before and it’s now working correctly. The goal moving forward is to build on this thing now working correctly to make it easier for everyone. But first, we needed to get where we are now.

But what Rekordbuddy also did was to create a playlist “Heavy house” which contained all the combined tracks from all the playlists (Mashup and remix playlist) with the same name as the top folder in Rekordbox which means that all the top folders are now have an additional “2” in the name

Can you explain a bit more what is going on here? Where are you copying from/to and where are you seeing the playlists with the additional ‘2’? Please explain the steps so I can better understand what you mean.

Being able to delete all marked playlists at once.

Agreed. Multi select like this is coming.

Highlight changes.

There are plans for things like this on collections that will support it. That’s what I mean by ‘now we build on the thing that works’.

[DJAE]

Hi Damien,

Now that was a fast answer

Reg. Sync: Ok! I got the impression from the movies that Rekord Buddy determined changes and did all that. If that was the case, then I understand why you removed it.

Reg. the “extra playlists” the Structure in Serato was:

Heavy House Step 3 (Crate with no tracks just hosting sub crates)

• Remixes (sub crate)
• Mashups (sub crate)
• Original (sub crate)

I dragged and dropped this from (within Rekordbuddy) the Serato area to the Rekordbuddy area and then from the Rekordbuddy area to Rekordbox. The way it showed up in Rekordbox was:

Heavy House Step 3(Playlist containing all sub crates tracks above from remixes, mashups and original)

and

Heavy House Step 3 2 (Folder in Rekordbox)

• Remixes (Rekordbox Playlist)
• Mashups (Rekordbox Playlist)
• Original (Rekordbox Playlist)

And the “2” after “Heavy House Step 3” above I assume was added since both a playlist and a folder had the same name (which was not the case in Serato from the beginning, hence it occurred during the sync). This in turn was the case for maybe 10 folders, that then needed renaming, copying back and forth in Rekordbuddy to get rid of that name and thats when I discovered that the renamed folders (without the "2) did not replace the other ones, but rather ended up as yet another folder hosting the same playlists. Hence my wish to be able to delete all selected playlist and emptying all rekordbox playlists before dragging the fixed named structure from Rekordbuddy to avoid duplicates. I hope that made sense

Reg. Multi select delete - Great! Also would be great to see a counter on how many tracks, folders or playlist you have selected. That way you could compare e.g. Serato and Rekordbox libraries to see that you aren’t missing any tracks in any of the softwares.

Reg. Highlight changes - Great! I assume that even if Rekordbox and Serato doesn’t support exporting this information, you could do an index on all the data in Rekordbuddy (under your control) and upon any import you could compare the data that the user wants to import versus the version in rekordbuddy. The changes applied from e.g. Rekordbox to the Rekordbuddy library could then be put in a Que to update e.g. Serato, don’t know if I am right here but it sounds doable since you have control over the data in rekordbuddy

BR
Andreas

[damien]

The way it showed up in Rekordbox was:
Heavy House Step 3(Playlist containing all sub crates tracks above from remixes, mashups and original)

This sounds like a bug. It should do that only if the top crate contains tracks as well as other crates. I may not be able to look at this right away because I’m finishing the Windows beta but I’ll put it on my list.

you could do an index on all the data in Rekordbuddy (under your control)

The problem here is that this can be very slow for people with huge collections. rekordbox doesn’t provide any modification information for example so I’d have to go thru every track and playlists and compare. I’ve got ideas on things that can be done but I haven’t experimented yet.

[DJAE]

Ok! Thanks for fast replies and good answers!

BR
Andreas