Calling Playlist/MP3 Player Experts

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DJ1855

New DJ
Nov 26, 2008
13
0
49
Hi Guys,

This is my first official post. Like many of you, I have been an active member of other forums and have now discovered this one :sqwink:

So here's what I am trying to accomplish. I always carry an identical backup computer with me and a mirrored external hard drive. I also have an MP3 player hooked up to the system at all times as a temporary form of backup. Basically, the MP3 player will give me the 2-5 minutes needed to swap out the computer if anything were to go wrong.

As of right now I have some music on the MP3 player but don't have any playlists to categorize the tracks. So if I needed to switch over to the MP3 player, I would have to search for a song by title, artist, etc. Instead I would like to have playlists like "Essential Slow Songs", "Essential Disco", etc.

I already have these "essential" tracks organized as playlists in my DJ software. However, I don't believe that the playlists created in my DJ software are compatible with other software/players. Also, since I only want to export the absolute essential tracks to the MP3 Player, the folder structure is going to be different in my MP3 player than it is in my external DJ drives which I believe would make those playlists useless even if they were able to be read by the MP3. Now, my DJ software does allow me to drag and drop the actual tracks from a playlist into any physical folder in windows. So, I'm thinking the best way to go about this is to go to my "Essential playlists" in my DJ software, using UMS mode drag and drop the tracks of each of the Essential Playlist into a separate folders on the MP3 player, then hopefully find a software that will automatically create and update playlists based upon the folder structure. In other words, software will create a playlist for each one of my folders on the MP3 player.

I'm hoping the experts can help me on which software will create and update those playlists for me or look at my overall process and give me some insight as to whether there is a more efficient way to get tracks and playlists onto the MP3 player.

Note: I do know of the different media programs that exist (Media Monkey, etc). I don't have any hands on experience with any of them. I don't mind using these programs to communicate and organize the MP3 player side of things. However, I am very reluctant to have any of these programs communicate with my DJ hard drives. I like to keep my tracks as native to my DJ software as possible. Once I export the needed tracks to the MP3 Player or any folder on my computer, I don't care what I use for a program since these tracks won't be coming back into my DJ software.
 
If you tell us what type of MP3 player you have it can help folks offer suggestions.
Since I have an iPod this is how I do it:

I use iTunes to do all my music organizing.
One of the criteria I had when choosing a DJ software was that it support iTunes playlists. (I chose Traktor.)

I create all my playlists in iTunes on a desktop PC, and since I use an iPod as my third backup device it is automatically synced.

I use Allway Sync software to keep my external backup drive and internal laptop drives' iTunes folders synced up.

(Notes: I do not buy music from the iTunes store as I do not want to deal with the drm and proprietary format. I use Walmart and Amazon instead. iTunes is not installed on the laptops, I just have a copy of the iTunes folder there. The DJ software reads the playlist file and can find the files without iTunes being present.)
 
Crewl,

We are very similar on certain things:

I use Serato which like Tractor is Itunes compatible.

I also use Allway sync to keep all of my computer files, DJ hard drives in sync. I have pretty much mastered that program.

I too use Amazon instead of Itunes.

The only think is that it seems that Itunes is the heart of your entire approach. It seems like you create and modify all of your playlists in Itunes first, then use them in both Tractor and your MP3 Player. I don't think that would work for me. I really like Serato's crates. They are simple, but powerful. As I mentioned above, I am very reluctant to run of any of my primary audio tracks through I-tunes, Media Monkey, etc. I just think that the more programs we run our tracks through the more susceptible to glitches we become.

You have given me a possible idea however. Perhaps I could buy a third external hard drive, use Allway sync to make it mirror my primary drive (one way sync), and then use ITunes on just this one drive to sync up my MP3 player. Essentially this hard drive would just be an intermediary between my main hard drive and the MP3 player. I do still think I would have a problem however. My playlists are Serato Crates and I think Serato reads Itunes playlists, but not the opposite. If this is the case, then I would have no way of keeping my "Essential Crates" in Serato synced up with ITunes. So essentially I would be back to square one.
 
DJ1855,

it sounds like you will have to do some extra work for the mp3 player.

Maybe you can just create some go-to playlists that you can use as your standby while switching laptops? Otherwise it seems like it will take a lot of effort.

I can only suggest to check the Serato forums and see what they are doing.

One thing I will point out is that the mp3 files don't care what you use to organize them. ITunes creates an xml file which points to the file locations, and adds tags to the headers. It doesn't mess with the audio content of the file, or at least I have never experienced that issue.
 
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