Serato Software Feature Suggestions

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 Serato Software Feature Suggestions
TOP 6 MOST WANTED & USEFUL FEATURES!! PLEEEEASE.... :) :)
What features would you like to see in Serato software?

TOP 6 MOST WANTED & USEFUL FEATURES!! PLEEEEASE.... :) :)

henryb 1:45 AM - 15 July, 2013
WE ALL PRETTY MUCH WANT THE SAME FEATURES (from what I've been reading and discussing), BUT HERE'S THE TOP LIST:


1. PLEASE BRING BACK BRIGHT COLOR (green or blue or orange) for the PLAYED TRACKS!! (this is the way most of us "mark" our favorite tracks in each crate). The grey is AWFUL and makes our life very difficult!!! PLEASE HURRY - already 3 updates in SDJ and it's still not there even though EVERYONE is complaining about this!!

2. Give us the option to SELECTIVELY "mark as played" (or as unplayed) so we can have full control over the way we "mark" (HIGHLIGHT) our played tracks!! [They are usually our favorites] :) This software is designed to help us do our job better/easier, and this option really would! :)

3. Bring back the renaming of our cue points!! Please - it really helps us!!

4. Since you took the very useful braking knob away from the DDJ-SX (that existed in the S1), let us at least midi-map another knob on the SX to the braking stop-speed!! :) :) Another very useful feature!!

5. Except for the "Location" column on our tracks' list (that shows the main crate/folder that the track is located in), a GREAT idea would be to show us (either in an extra column, or maybe in a pop-up bubble after pressing cmd+shift+f or something like that) ALL the OTHER subcates that contain this same track!! As you know we may have a specific track in many subrcrates, and if this feature was possible, while we're playing a given track, we could get "fresh" ideas of what to mix in next if we see other tracks we have also "grouped" the current one with! :) :)

6. NOW THIS ONE IS A LONG-SHOT... BUT A REAL WINNER FOR YOU GUYS (AND US!!) IF YOU DO THIS - SO HERE GOES:

Since beat grids are indeed very useful for looping, mixing, adding synced effects, there is a problem, of course, when the track/s are not "recent" ones (ie. made with software) where the beats & tempo are exactly spot-on! Disco music for example, oldies, and even just live recordings, don't have a "steady" beat since the drums are played by a human hand and can never be spot-on.. They are APPROXIMATELY, say, 128bpm - as close as the drummer can follow the metronome in his ear... That of course renders sync mode useless with old or live tracks, since you can't mix correctly unless you keep on "correcting" the unsynchronization with the jog wheel during the mixing itself (even while both tracks are playing out live together). The same goes for auto-loops etc etc..

So... how about a post editing feature??? If a track is found to be at an AVERAGE (that's what is found), say, 128.19bpm after the "Analyze files" function is used on it, then the 128.19bpm-beatgrid markers will appear throughout its waveform in Serato DJ. Of course they will be INCORRECT (and not at their correct positions obviously) since a reading of 128.19 bpm does NOT mean that the track is steady at exactly 128.19 bpm throughout the track!! It means that 128.19 is the AVERAGE tempo reading!

SO... IF you guys could give us an "EDIT MODE BUTTON" (while Serato DJ is not connected to a controller, of course, since you can do this on the fly...) and we could MANUALLY "pull" the "correct" beats (every 4 beats) to the corresponding beatgrid marker that it would have been at if the tempo was "correct" and steady, and therefore time-stretching each 4-beat loop to a PERFECT time-mark!!! Then at the end of the process throughout the track, you could give us the option to export this edited ("bpm-fixed") track in the tempo we want it to be at (say, at 130 bpm) EXACTLY for our DJing library! :) :) :) :)

You can, of course, already do this editing in most softwares such as Cubase, Nuendo etc, BUT it's VEEEEERRRRYYY time-consuming , and a MAJOR pain in the ... to do so for every track you want to "fix". BUT, you guys (already) have a major advantage! Your software already detects the main beats within each track when analyzing them and places the beatgrid markers correctly at the start of each beat (most of the time, that is - otherwise we fix it ourselves for ONE beat - and your software does it for the rest of the beats!). So, if you could use this auto-detection of beats you already have, and let us "correct" the bpm in our library tracks, quickly & efficiently to the (EXACT) tempo we choose, we would all be able to sync, loop & sample EVERY track genre FLAWLESSLY AND REALLY FAST!!!

Now IF you could POSSIBLY do this, you would not only be PIONEERS & GODS in the DJ-software market, but all remixers around the world would want your program even just to quickly fix the oldie they want to start remixing and/or sampling!! :) :) :)
phatbob 3:06 AM - 15 July, 2013
You should investigate how to actually do correct beat gridding a little more, because that can already be done. In both online and offline modes.
henryb 2:48 PM - 15 July, 2013
Quote:
You should investigate how to actually do correct beat gridding a little more, because that can already be done. In both online and offline modes.

Uhh... Was that a reply to my post, or was that a post to Serato? If to mine, then uh, no it can't...
phatbob 3:18 PM - 15 July, 2013
Yes it can. You can set a new downbeat manually on every single bar if you so wished.
Bozo 3:41 PM - 15 July, 2013
Quote:
4. Since you took the very useful braking knob away from the DDJ-SX (that existed in the S1), let us at least midi-map another knob on the SX to the braking stop-speed!! :) :) Another very useful feature!!

You can assign the start/stop adjust to a Knob via midi mapping, but not te the main controller.
henryb 2:21 AM - 16 July, 2013
Quote:
Yes it can. You can set a new downbeat manually on every single bar if you so wished.

...and, if you do this to all the beats which are "wrong", this will time-stretch the entire track and you will end up with a new, edited, track with a perfectly steady bpm (just as if it were produced with software)??... (if you read what I wrote, that's what I suggested that Serato adds as a feature...)
henryb 2:24 AM - 16 July, 2013
Quote:
Quote:
4. Since you took the very useful braking knob away from the DDJ-SX (that existed in the S1), let us at least midi-map another knob on the SX to the braking stop-speed!! :) :) Another very useful feature!!

You can assign the start/stop adjust to a Knob via midi mapping, but not te the main controller.

Thanks for your reply - but what I meant is to map it to the SX itself (just like it was possible in the S1) - so you don't have to carry even more devices (the SX is big enough on its own..) ;)
And all in the name of simplicity! :)
DJ XL _ tEXAs 12:28 PM - 16 July, 2013
i agree a mark as played indicator or function would help allot. maybe after 90 sec of consecutive play the track in the library would turn to a alternate color
henryb 12:04 AM - 24 July, 2013
In plain words, what I meant by the post-bpm-editing suggestion is for the SDJ software to help us time-stretch all our oldies' tracks (disco, rocknroll etc) as well as live tracks and tracks that were simply not produced with software (that don't have a steady beat that fits correctly into a beatgrid), every, say, 4 beats - to make the tracks fit the beatgrid accurately. Your software's ability to detect downbeats could help speed this process up by "locating" the most "obvious" main beats and placing a beatgrid marker correctly at the start of each one. Whichever marker is wrongly placed by the software will be then corrected to it's right position by us when we check the automatic marker-placements. Then, when that's all done perfectly (and quickly - as is the whole point), we will be able select a desired bpm tempo we want to export the (newly-edited) track as, and export it to our hard disk!

After this, we will be able to import this (say, disco, track)'s new edit, analyze the file again, and the perfectly steady-bpm track will "welcome" all the automatic beatgrids SDJ will place into the perfect positions! :) Just like if it was a modern production!

Now imagine how useful to djs a collection of ("slightly" edited) oldies, live versions, rock tracks etc etc would be, if all this can be mixed, looped, filtered and generally meddled with PERFECTLY as if it was house music!! :) :) A VIRTUAL UTOPIA FOR SOFTWARE DJS! :P

Also imagine how useful to remixers these "SDJ tempo-fix" edits (which will undoubtedly circulate and be in demand) will be since all they will need to do is just import any of these edits into a sequencer (such as Cubase) and all the beats will fall RIGHT into "place" and save them a huge hassle cutting and stretching each tiny segment of the whole track in order to mix it with other beats & stuff!

The demand for this feature IS there. All you need to do is OFFER it :) and help us make it a QUICK process! For example by, initially, using your auto downbeat detector throughout the track; BUT in the cases that we need to manually correct the beatgrid marker, dragging it to another beat (which will be the correct one), give us a kind of "magnet" function with which the beatgrid marker automatically "sticks" to the CORRECT position of the beat's start (of the downbeat WE drag it to!). After that, we will just have the option to export the mixdown we just edited, as a wave file, in the tempo WE choose! (Say, EXACTLY 128 bpm).
phatbob 12:21 AM - 24 July, 2013
Again... Serato DJ allows you to manually place as many downbeats throughout the track exactly as you describe. They even snap to the transients, again, as you describe, and can be adjusted if it doesn't get the placement quite right automatically.

Sync can then be perfectly achieved throughout the track with no loss of quality through re-encoding, or using up extra drive space.

If you aren't just looking for perfect sync in Serato DJ, and instead want to create warped tracks to use in other applications, then you should use the proper tool for the job, a DAW like Ableton Live, not DJ mixing software.
Pete Input 5:41 AM - 24 July, 2013
Henryb:
Phatbob is right. You can do that in serato.
Also, if you just want a perfect mix without beatgrigging the whole song, you can just beatgrid the intro's and outro's.

You need to research the beatgridding more...
scott mccarter 11:29 AM - 24 July, 2013
User Should be able to change Colours
DJ Ball em All 4:16 PM - 7 August, 2013
Saving loops on the actual track is great but if after a number of times played a loop automatically was saved. You could create a crate and save specific loops all by themselves. This would make using the sampler easier too.
Kalus 7:59 PM - 22 August, 2013
midi-map another knob on the SX to the braking stop-speed +1
DJ Ball em All 8:19 PM - 22 August, 2013
What about saving the loops in other than the track
kobra101 10:24 PM - 27 August, 2013
The bright green and blue colors is NEEDED.. I feel dead and dry playing music with those grey background and sounds. Also before when you would close the program it would automatically de-highlight the songs that was played for you. So if your done with 1 gig u can go to another gig and not get confused on what you played already. I agree on the colors and the highlighting factor should be on an auto reset when the program is exited.
DJ Boom Bap 10:44 PM - 27 August, 2013
Quote:
Also before when you would close the program it would automatically de-highlight the songs that was played for you.


When was this? I've been using Serato software ( SSL, Itch, DJ) for 7 years and don't ever recall this feature.
kobra101 10:47 PM - 27 August, 2013
I used to use dj intro. And that was only last year I started and it used to do it every time I exited the program. So it was great on my side because I was doing beach parties for friends almost every Sunday and Saturday. But now it's harder since its always highlited.
Panotaker 2:39 PM - 28 August, 2013
Although you can beatgrid your live drummer tracks in Serato DJ and Itch, I warp them in Ableton because once you warp them in Ableton and resave as a wave file, you can use the track in Serato and Traktor and it will beat grid correctly in both, or any future software. So editing the track in Serato is a big waste of time, unless you never plan on switching from Serato. Plus with Abelton, you can move every beat if you have to, instead of every 4th beat.
henryb 12:35 AM - 23 November, 2016
SUGGESTIONS TO ADD & FIX IN NEXT RELEASE OF SDJ:

1. Please give us more characters' space to label the flip names. There's not enough enough space now!

2. Fix the # column auto-resizing problem! In large crates, when the track # exceeds 2 digits, the digit/s after the 2nd get hidden. For example, in track #123, you can only se "12" (the "3" gets covered by the column separator line. If you resize it manually in order to be able to see the entire number, the column will go back to its 2-digit width when you restart SDJ again... ANNOYING! :(

3. Fix the problem with the columns' width having a maximum size that you can expand them to! Example, in the "locations" column (where the file's location path in the macbook can be very long) the column cannot be opened far enough in width to see the final location of the file! (You have to use CMD+R in order to open the file location folder, instead of being able to simply see the path - and final location - in the locations folder!

4. Apart from the CMD+R command, it would be GREAT if you could give us an command with which we could see which CRATE/S each track is in, WITHIN the sdj window, and then "jump" to (open) the crate/s to find similarly placed tracks! Example, if you think of a track, on the fly, while djing, and you find it using CMD+F, it would be EXTREMELY helpful if you could directly "jump" to the crate/s it is in (even though it may be only one mp3) in order to be able to see/remember other similar tracks that you had "grouped" this track with (since you had put them in the same crate)!

5. Give us the option to SELECTIVELY mark a track (or more) as unplayed (back to white color) - as opposed to marking them ALL as unplayed! This would be very helpful to MANY of us on the fly! When opening a crate it is very easy to to quickly choose the blue track titles (our "favorites"/"musts") than to scan through all the tracks in the crate. Especially in BIG crates...

6 Like in Suggestion #5 above, maybe you can give us a more "obvious" marking option - e.g. a light background grey shading of the cells in the row of the track/s we want to mark?

7. Last, ANY news of this automatic "bpm-fixing/quantizing" function for unsteady-beat tracks (such as live tracks, older productions etc)? Something like the beatgrid function, I guess, but instead, SDJ would analyze the file, create "hitpoint" markers on every beat. Then you could manually check that the grids/markers are at the correct points (and change them f needed), and then SDJ could process the file and set each beat (or 4 or 8 or 16 beats - according to your quantize settings) to is CORRECT position at the tempo you have selected!

This would be a truly amazing feature that would do wonders for perfectly mixing/looping/sampling tracks that you could otherwise not play around with so much. Essentially fixing all your library of oldies and lives etc, and creating new, "perfect", versions of them all!!!

Imagine the TIME your customers would save, instead of using a program like cubase where they would have to MANUALLY mark the beat hitpoints , and then MANUALLY time-stretch EACH 4 or 8 beat loop to the arrangement's beatgrids... I'm sure you could sell this sdj add-on extension of more than $ 50 per username. But you would get SO many purchases!! :) :)
Cwite 10:40 AM - 23 November, 2016
Henryb has good points. I would ask for fixes for glitches mostly, but here are my big gripes at the moment. I would gladly take a fix on any of these in an upcoming version.

If I loop jump on a deck, if the opposite deck is playong a track and has a loop still active that was jumped out of, it resets itself back to this loop point at the same time that i loop jump on the other deck. It's done this for several versions now and I continue to get caught out. Fix please!

Audio glitches. When first starting serato dj I have to trigger every fx pot very early in the evening because it causes audio artifacts when each is used for the first time in that session. Very annoying if you forget and you are recording. Flip can sometimes cause this too when used for the first time.

Pitch Play. Why can't I have pitch play? I paid for pitch n time, so why can't I unleash it's full potential.

The option to add a "blank" pad mode. So I can midi map it to what ever the hell I want.

Day mode. Honestly this is such a basic request. Yes I can invert my screen, but it also changes the wave form colours and the cue tab colours. I mainly use day mode when I'm on a lunch break and want to prep my tracks on a sunny afternoon somewhere. I don't have my hardware plugged in, so suddenly if I colour code a cue point (which I do do) I can't tell if it's right or not, simple but annoying.

Generally a library overhaul would be good. More smart crate rules, star rating, track is in "which crates?" search, multi genre tagging, scrolling header text, preview track, pop up art work on highlighted track, better screen usage of virtual deck area (I have so much wasted space it's hilarious), longer flip names (I have to use codes atm), midi mapping for screen cue modes, better touch screen interaction, like the ability to rapid scroll a playlist by swiping the screen (although this has got better on recent versions - the screen doesn't freeze like it used to). Better general browsing (being able to select multiple years, bpm, genres etc) dynamic beat grid analysis, anything pre 90s is generally off grid.

Gapless auto/ relay play (not auto mix), so I don't have to stand over 300 guests while they are eating at an afternoon reception. It looks far more unprofessional that you can't leave the software to run on its own and you have to baby sit it just to press play, especially when a fade out marker could be used. (The way it uses crates to play back to invividual decks is amazing though).

The ability to load pulselocker tracks in to the sampler. What the hell is that about? You can't loop then drop it in to the sampler??? I understand if you are streaming. But when you have downloaded the track so you can use it offline, I don't understand the issue.

These are all small things on their own. But if serato wants to cater to the turntablists, the EDM DJs, the club DJs and the mobile DJ sector too, then there is a lot to work on still.
henryb 9:42 PM - 6 November, 2017
Quote:
Henryb:
Phatbob is right. You can do that in serato.
Also, if you just want a perfect mix without beatgrigging the whole song, you can just beatgrid the intro's and outro's.

You need to research the beatgridding more...


nope - still can't see any video, or manual, that shows how you can do what I've saying.. Care to point me to research findings you have made? (No sarcasm there - honestly can't find this feature showed/explained anywhere)
henryb 9:43 PM - 6 November, 2017
DEAR SERATO ARE YOU READING ANY OF THIS?...
Pete Input 7:58 AM - 8 November, 2017
Henryb:

Manual, page 44.
There are instructions how to edit beatgrids.


In a short, you need to press "x" and create as many red downbeats as you need.
And when you are finished, just fix the ending.

But i would just fix the beginning and the ending...
Check the white grid to the point where it still keeps tracking the beat and where it start to slip, press "x" and create a new downbeat. Fix that if needed.
(You can put a cue point to mark it.)
That should now lock the beginning of the track.
After that, go to the ending and create a new red downbeat marker. (Put a cue point to that also.)
After that red marker, just fix the ending as usual.
Obviously, that area between the red downbeat markers (cue points), is not "gridded".
henryb 12:08 AM - 12 November, 2017
Hi! Thanx for your reply, but what manual??..
Quote:
Henryb:

Manual, page 44.
There are instructions how to edit beatgrids.


In a short, you need to press "x" and create as many red downbeats as you need.
And when you are finished, just fix the ending.

But i would just fix the beginning and the ending...
Check the white grid to the point where it still keeps tracking the beat and where it start to slip, press "x" and create a new downbeat. Fix that if needed.
(You can put a cue point to mark it.)
That should now lock the beginning of the track.
After that, go to the ending and create a new red downbeat marker. (Put a cue point to that also.)
After that red marker, just fix the ending as usual.
Obviously, that area between the red downbeat markers (cue points), is not "gridded".
henryb 12:11 AM - 12 November, 2017
found it - will have a look!
Quote:
Hi! Thanx for your reply, but what manual??..