Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

FLAC's & Serato

Technicssl1200 4:49 PM - 23 December, 2014
Why such a simple thing like showing the IMAGES / COVER ARTS in Serato dj is not an option?!?!
I moved from TRAKTOR to Serato after 5 years,and get used to look at the images when i searching for music,Traktor can display mp3 & flac files cover arts and Serato support only on mp3's.
This thing is REALLY ANNOYING !!!
blackavenger 6:37 PM - 23 December, 2014
A couple of us have been wondering when they are going to fix this as well. Anyone from Serato want to address this well overdue flaw?
Riko Roos 9:50 PM - 23 December, 2014
As long as it is this way, convert to alac...
blackavenger 10:58 PM - 23 December, 2014
I'm over ALAC. I finally (after nearly a decade) got the FLAC support that I had been begging for. I'm not about to backtrack yet again. It's simple.....just fix it!
The Return of Dj Sparky 11:18 PM - 23 December, 2014
well it only took years for them to even support flac so expect them to fix this in another few years
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 1:33 AM - 24 December, 2014
Hi Technicssl1200,

Are you able to upload one of the files that you are having this issue with so we can investigate? To do this, please click this link -> serato.com

When the file is uploaded, can you please paste the link here.

Cheers,
Michael.
Riko Roos 7:49 PM - 24 December, 2014
Sorry to chime in here again. There are several threads about the missing artwork and initial key tag readout. I used Traktor and have my library in Flac to, none works.
So why bother around demanding a file? Just download a free one from bandcamp... To see the key issue process it with MIK.

Happy holidays and fluffy Christmas
blackavenger 8:21 PM - 24 December, 2014
^ have to agree with all of that ^
Technicssl1200 11:25 PM - 27 December, 2014
My flac's are not "special" and doesn't different from any other flac files. so i really don't understand why i should upload one of them for example...Don't you have any flac over there?...LOL
Technicssl1200 11:31 PM - 27 December, 2014
Enjoy..

/downloads/files/139509/Ashford & Simpson--Over And Over (Joey Negro Find A Friend Mix).flac.
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 11:02 PM - 28 December, 2014
Hey Technicssl1200,

Thanks for the file, I can reproduce the issue as you have described. I've logged this bug with our development team.

Cheers,
Michael.
blackavenger 11:39 PM - 28 December, 2014
Were Y'all SERIOUSLY unaware of this before Technicssl1200 created this thread?
I mean, several of us have been bringin' this to Y'allz attention for over a year now.
The Return of Dj Sparky 11:47 PM - 28 December, 2014
No doubt they were fully aware of it but serato's policy now seems to be not to address anything till enough people complain about it,

like the info reporting they base their research off, well I use my dj laptop offline like many people to pevent any issues with the comp so how can you judge how i use serato, this was also stated as one of the reasons to not include the bridge in sdj and also the reason they dropped the live feed feature,
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 1:44 AM - 29 December, 2014
Hi blackavenger,

Quote:
Were Y'all SERIOUSLY unaware of this before Technicssl1200 created this thread?
I mean, several of us have been bringin' this to Y'allz attention for over a year now.

I personally wasn't, and I couldn't find it in our bug tracker so I reproduced and logged it. If there's another thread about this would you mind linking me to it please?

Cheers,
Michael.
blackavenger 2:23 AM - 29 December, 2014
It's not as though I bookmarked the threads. But doing a simple search within the site using the keywords, "FLAC" & "Artwork", I came up with these....

serato.com

serato.com

serato.com

I know there are loads more, but as with a lot of things regarding the actual website, the search function is on the fritz again.

You know I love the layout of the newer site (post ScratchLIVE forum) but the navigation, search, etc.. sucks so bad, and has ever since Y'all implemented it. But that's a totally different complaint. I would rather you focus on FLAC artwork for now ;-)
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 2:49 AM - 29 December, 2014
Thanks for that. Yes, I've also noticed that the forum search isn't the best, hence why I asked if you had particular threads you were following ;)

Back to the FLAC issue, I tried this in Scratch Live 2.4.3 (the first version to offer FLAC support) and the artwork is not displayed in that version either. Looks like it might not have ever worked? :-S
blackavenger 3:22 AM - 29 December, 2014
Quote:
Looks like it might not have ever worked?


Yeah, I can't recall it ever working.
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 4:47 AM - 29 December, 2014
Yeah that's not very cool :(
Technicssl1200 5:03 PM - 29 December, 2014
No more digging..just make this super duper important feature to work as soon as possible!!!
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 3:41 AM - 30 December, 2014
The bug has been logged now, but I can't provide a timeframe for a fix sorry.
Technicssl1200 8:43 AM - 30 December, 2014
This is too bad for SERATO, there is too many satisfied TRAKTOR users out there :(
blackavenger 2:10 PM - 30 December, 2014
There are a lot of unsatisfied Traktor users out there too. Don't just assume that the grass is greener on the other side. Go ahead and join the Native Instruments forum....I've been on there for years. They have the same grievances as we do. Peeps over there are always comparing Traktor to SeratoDJ/ScratchLIVE just the same as we do the opposite.

Point being......there is no perfect software right now. ScratchLIVE is about as close as it gets to a complete product w' relative stability. But, it's being discontinued, haha. Traktor is indeed VERY powerful though....that cannot be denied! I use it, but mainly for the Remix Decks. If Serato ever get around to significantly upgrading the SP-6, I may not have to anymore.

With all of that said, get on the Devs with regard to FLAC Artwork, Michael. We'd really appreciate it.
tgreenan 10:38 PM - 4 January, 2015
Hi,

Just wanted to add my voice to this - I just transferred over from Traktor, and while I like Serato more in most respects this is a really big defect for me. I know some tracks by cover or even the image of the side of the record it was ripped on and I don't always know tracks or records well by name (might seem weird but it's true!), so this makes it hard to make decisions quickly when necessary.

Michael, would you possibly be able to report back with a rough timeline when one gets arranged? Thanks for your help so far.
The Return of Dj Sparky 11:15 PM - 4 January, 2015
eta 6 months at the earliest, or never fixed like some other issues
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 11:18 PM - 4 January, 2015
Hey tgreenan,

I understand, unfortunately I can't provide a date now but I will post back when I know that the issue is being addressed.

Cheers,
Michael.
Walston_Tempest 7:36 PM - 19 February, 2015
If I was a miserable old cynic, which I am, one might propose that the reason Serato are dragging their heels on this issue is simple. Flac is not a mac/itunes propietry codec, thus supporting it properly would incur crushing financial penalties (all above board business practice and completely secret of course). Such a shame corporate bullshit harms their customers the most!
Technicssl1200 7:50 PM - 19 February, 2015
Have to agree with Walston.
Unfortunately I went back to the traktor.
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 8:02 PM - 19 February, 2015
Hi Walston_Tempest,

Quote:
If I was a miserable old cynic, which I am, one might propose that the reason Serato are dragging their heels on this issue is simple. Flac is not a mac/itunes propietry codec, thus supporting it properly would incur crushing financial penalties (all above board business practice and completely secret of course). Such a shame corporate bullshit harms their customers the most!

I hate to break it to you but this is entirely false. We have no business deal with any company that stops us supporting file formats. Not sure where you got this information from?

Cheers,
Michael.
blackavenger 8:26 PM - 19 February, 2015
I listen to FLAC files on my Mac. I absolutely despise iTunes, and have deleted it from my computer. There are players that support FLAC for OSX.
Serato
Geoff.B 9:01 PM - 19 February, 2015
Quote:
Have to agree with Walston.
Unfortunately I went back to the traktor.


That's a shame, cos I actually fixed this for you guys back in January after coming across this thread. It's in the upcoming release of SDJ.

There were a couple of people in this discussion who were calm and objective about it, which is very much appreciated. Hats off to you -- you know who you are. =)
Technicssl1200 9:07 PM - 19 February, 2015
Serato, Moderator
Michael R 5:41 AM - 30 December, 2014
The bug has been logged now, but I can't provide a timeframe for a fix sorry.
Quote· Report· Permalink
wadup 9:21 PM - 19 February, 2015
Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

Serato, Moderator
Michael R 5:41 AM - 30 December, 2014
The bug has been logged now, but I can't provide a timeframe for a fix sorry.
Quote· Report· Permalink




Quote:

That's a shame, cos I actually fixed this for you guys back in January after coming across this thread. It's in the upcoming release of SDJ.






Read between the line bro.... A serato Developer is telling you that he/she fix the issue
Serato
Geoff.B 9:43 PM - 19 February, 2015
Hey Technicssl1200, I saw this thread a week after Michael left that comment. Because I sympathised with some of you, I undertook the work in my personal time instead of hanging out with my kids, then made the effort to bring it into our formal testing process so it could be part of the next release.
Walston_Tempest 12:42 AM - 20 February, 2015
I am not trying to start a flame war on this. My intent is not to single out Serato or mac/itunes. This kind of shenannigans is fairly common across many industries these days. Without me sounding like a fruit bat that thinks the 'man' is out to get me:
Quote:

I hate to break it to you but this is entirely false. We have no business deal with any company that stops us supporting file formats. Not sure where you got this information from?

They all say that till 10 years down the line it all comes out in court costing trucks loads of cash.

I realise companies have priorities and they do not always match the customers own. It does seem that this should not be the most massive fix, and it would clearly please a good number of people! Or has it been sorted but not made it downstream yet, as a few have mentioned?
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 12:55 AM - 20 February, 2015
Quote:
They all say that till 10 years down the line it all comes out in court costing trucks loads of cash.

I can confidently tell you that we are not being forced by Apple to not support FLAC files. You don't have to believe me, but I have no fear of any court case ;)

Quote:
I realise companies have priorities and they do not always match the customers own. It does seem that this should not be the most massive fix, and it would clearly please a good number of people! Or has it been sorted but not made it downstream yet, as a few have mentioned?

It appears to have been an oversight in spec from when we first implemented it and as Geoff has announced (a little prematurely but I understand his enthusiasm ;) is that this bug is indeed fixed in the next release. A lot of us here are working DJ's too so we understand the importance of features like this to users.

Quote:
Without me sounding like a fruit bat that thinks the 'man' is out to get me:

Also if it helps Serato is still quite a small company, we're not quite the "man" yet ;)
Mr. Goodkat 2:29 AM - 20 February, 2015
im not sure if this is what you are arguing, but flac is a free codec as indicated in the name.
Riko Roos 9:57 AM - 20 February, 2015
Quote:
I actually fixed this for you guys back in January after coming across this thread. It's in the upcoming release of SDJ


Thats greate to read! Thank you very much and good luck spending more time with family...
blackavenger 11:14 AM - 20 February, 2015
Exactly which FLAC issue did you fix?

A. Intro not supporting it?
B. FLAC Artwork?
C. All of the above?

Regardless, it's nice to see that Y'all are giving attention to a feature that only a small number of us seem to care about. So, THANK YOU for that!!
blackavenger 11:25 AM - 20 February, 2015
^ Disregard my post above, haha! ^

LOL, sorry, getting my threads mixed up. Hehe, because the FLAC issues are the ones I primarily petition for, and being that I have commented on so many of them, I tend to get confused sometimes.

Thank you so much for repairing FLAC artwork!!!
Technicssl1200 3:08 PM - 20 February, 2015
When do you plan to launch the new version SDJ? (1.7.4?)
DJ Remix Detroit 6:20 PM - 20 February, 2015
Quote:
I undertook the work in my personal time instead of hanging out with my kids, then made the effort to bring it into our formal testing process so it could be part of the next release.


this issue doesn't currently affect me.... but much thanks and respect Geoff.B for working on a bug during your own personal time.

I don't wish anyone to lose spending time with their own family...that is definitely a paradigm shift.

A lot of us get antsy and frustrated at times... but we do appreciate the work you guys put in.
Walston_Tempest 7:50 PM - 20 February, 2015
Quote:
It appears to have been an oversight in spec from when we first implemented it and as Geoff has announced (a little prematurely but I understand his enthusiasm ;) is that this bug is indeed fixed in the next release. A lot of us here are working DJ's too so we understand the importance of features like this to users.

That is great news Michael R, and thank you to those that made it happen!

So how does one get to try your beta builds then?
Serato, Support
Matt P 5:38 AM - 21 February, 2015
Walston_Tempest,

We will be doing a public beta prior to the release of 1.7.4.
You should try and take part in that. Stay tuned as it will be happening pretty soon.

Matt P
ninjagaijin 9:58 PM - 21 February, 2015
I know this might seem odd or archaic to people - but I used SSL since at least 1.5 or 1.6 and got used to converting flacs to wavs. I can add tags to wavs with Serato and Foobar2K. I also pedantically worry about any possible stress on hardware/software cpu usage when using SSL/SDJ. So for me wav is a natural thing to do, flac requiring decoding on the fly while wav, being uncompressed lossless does not have this issue. It does take up more space on your drives and there is no error/crc checking that comes with flacs, but you can generally spot bitrot or other issues with Serato's 'bad file' icon.

Just a possible advice, if it drives you crazy that you can't see album artwork (again, I don't actually use this.. with three deck view mode, there's little enough space as it is for the library list haha), wav works and sounds the same as flac. If you have a lot of flac lying around though.. you might be loathe to convert, scan and fix tags for all those again on wav lossless transcodes.. xD
Walston_Tempest 8:35 PM - 22 February, 2015
It does seem really odd. Wav only supports the most basic of tags doesn't it? The overhead to decode an uncompressed flac has got to be pretty minimal and wav takes up double the space. I used to have my music in wav but swapped to flac for all those reasons.
Serato, Forum Moderator
Michael R 9:29 PM - 22 February, 2015
I'm not sure how other programs handle WAV files, but we write our own custom ID3 tags to the file.
Daniel Ventura 8:57 AM - 23 February, 2015
@big big thx to Michael r for having a look at the flac coverart issue!!!
really looking Forward to use it in next Version!
deejdave 11:11 PM - 2 March, 2015
Flac Fixed serato.com
DjBliZz 11:59 PM - 2 March, 2015
Quote:
Quote:
I undertook the work in my personal time instead of hanging out with my kids, then made the effort to bring it into our formal testing process so it could be part of the next release.


this issue doesn't currently affect me.... but much thanks and respect Geoff.B for working on a bug during your own personal time.

I don't wish anyone to lose spending time with their own family...that is definitely a paradigm shift.

A lot of us get antsy and frustrated at times... but we do appreciate the work you guys put in.


It doesn't effect me either and I also appreciate the effort and personal time you put in. Thank you for caring about the product you help build and all of us who use it. Your hard work and sacrifice don't go unnoticed. Now go spend some extra time with your family!
tgreenan 12:36 AM - 8 March, 2015
Hi Geoff.B and Michael R. Thanks very much for all your efforts on this, looking forward to the release! My job is in software testing, so I appreciate that things aren't always as simple as they seem and that it can be frustrating to get it in the neck when you're trying your hardest. I also second everyone on the thread who's said go and spend some extra time with your kids Geoff, you deserve it.

Thanks also ninjagaijin for the wav suggestion, but it's a bit too much hassle for the number of files I have, especially with the fix coming.

Matt P, is there a way of signing up to be notified about public betas?
tgreenan 12:54 AM - 8 March, 2015
Reading back, "spend some extra time with your kids Geoff, you deserve it" sounds a bit weird and presumptuous, but hopefully you know what I mean!
Serato
Geoff.B 11:08 PM - 8 March, 2015
Hehehe cheers. Apologies for my reaction to this thread -- just shows that software developers are human too. =)
deejdave 11:12 PM - 8 March, 2015
You don't have anything to apologize for.
tgreenan 2:15 AM - 31 August, 2015
Hi all. I seem to be having this problem again, is anyone else seeing it?
tgreenan 2:21 AM - 31 August, 2015
Ignore me, it's working fine.
ninjagaijin 8:50 PM - 6 October, 2016
Quote:
I'm not sure how other programs handle WAV files, but we write our own custom ID3 tags to the file.


Foobar can also handle wav tags - I love wav tags :)

But yeah I get not wanting to convert your entire flac library!!

Someone pulled me up recently stating that the difference in CPU usage to decode flac vs playing a wav was so tiny that I was pretty much wasting my time. I still keep to it though lol, I probably should stick to flac more from now on though, seeing as how it has error checking and that.
popnwave 9:39 PM - 6 October, 2016
Quote:
Quote:
I'm not sure how other programs handle WAV files, but we write our own custom ID3 tags to the file.


Foobar can also handle wav tags - I love wav tags :)

But yeah I get not wanting to convert your entire flac library!!

Someone pulled me up recently stating that the difference in CPU usage to decode flac vs playing a wav was so tiny that I was pretty much wasting my time. I still keep to it though lol, I probably should stick to flac more from now on though, seeing as how it has error checking and that.


Just because you can doesn't mean all platforms will support WAV tags. You wade out in to the 1% and you can't really complain.

AIFF if you need to tag uncompressed - FLAC if you don't mind the occasional hiccups one person is reporting on that tagging.
ninjagaijin 5:20 PM - 7 October, 2016
Ah nice, I didn't realise aiff had native tagging - one good thing about it
Name already taken 6:38 PM - 15 November, 2018
Hi, I started another thread related to issues with Flac files. Please check it out. Any constructive input you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

(hopefully someday serato Flac will work properly, but until then maybe we can combine our knowledge to best work around these issues)

Link to thread - serato.com