The challenge was to find a way to take the track information from Serato and get it to appear on a live feed (eg. Facebook Livestream, Twitch.tv or Poplar.tv). I’ve read a few forums and tried to glue stuff together. Masses of thanks to MarkyMMP (User link on serato.com) on the Serato Forum for pointing me towards #RADR.

So I managed to get this little setup working (sort of). It still has its limitations (see below), but maybe the the guys at RADR, X-Split and Twitter(less likely) can do something to improve the VDJ and DJ broadcasters life.

1. Download RADR from radr.dj. Follow the instructions on their site to download and install
2. RADR Config - I changed the Delay to 1 second and the Serato sessions location as I moved all my music to a different folder
3. Make sure RADR works first. Start RADR, then start Serato. Load a track and check that your Twitter feed displays correctly. If not, then it’s back to the RADR install notes
4. Grab the code from this Google drive link (drive.google.com) and use Notepad (or any text editor) to edit the bit that says yourtwittername to your twitter address. The Google drive link only opens the file as a text file for you to view. The Twitter site has more details on the options you can take. See dev.twitter.com
5. Save the file as something like twitter-feed.html anywhere on your machine (eg. Desktop)
6. You can check that the file works by opening it up in any web browser and trying Serato again. Note: it may take a few seconds (up to a minute!) for the round trip from RADR, out to Twitter and then for the widgets.js script to spot the change and display it on the page.
7. X-Split is the final stage. Open your existing broadcast setup. It probably works for OBS as well, just don't have that on my setup.
8. Add a new Source - Media File, selecting the html file that you created above. I kept the resolution settings to original source and then dragged the created pane to the size required. If the html file is too big, try reducing the data-width a little in the html file, otherwise you’ll need to use a larger screen broadcast resolution.
9. You can test before you go live by either using RADR to send a hand-made tweet or by loading another tune in Serato.

Annoying bits
——————

The setup is not without fault. I found the following hiccups which would be great to solve;

1. Remember, a soon as you load the track, RADR will pick it up and send to Twitter. It means the viewer may see your “Playing now” info before you’ve even mixed across to the new track. It means that 1 second Delay in RADR may not be enough for you. It will also tweet a track even if you then eject it from a deck and try something else.
2. The delay between RADR and Twitter is not always 1 second. It’s a variable (random) amount of time
3. The delay between your Twitter feed and the widgets.js script in the html file is also a little random. In my tests I was anywhere between 10 and 45 seconds between loading a track and my broadcast feed showing the change.
4. It is tweeting when you load a track and not when you actually use it. Would be great for Serato to make this info available for RADR to use!!
5. It’s a Twitter limitation, but if you use a track more than once, you’ll get a duplicate track warning and not Tweet will go out
6. If you mix tracks rapidly in succession, the tweets will be quite a bit out of sync from the music that is playing
7. I have had some tracks just not pop up as a tweet even though RADR says it will tweet. Haven’t worked out why yet!

Anyway, it’s still a great step forward and hope you enjoy! Apologies if there are errors, but do let me know how you get on :)

Best,

Simon aka SpinChip

@SpinChip
www.serato.com
www.mixcloud.com