Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

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 Serato DJ Pro General Discussion
Serato Pro & Meta Tags
Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

Serato Pro & Meta Tags

James Falk 3:22 AM - 5 July, 2019
I likely have the largest & most meticulously organized music library in Canada, having served a decade as the music director for central Canada's largest background music provider.

Setato's meta-tags have long been an issue as the number of fields is limited to the following viewable ID3 tags

These were the original ID3 tags in version 1

1) Song / Title / TT2 / TIT2 / Tit2
2) Artist / Artist / TP1 / TPE1
3) Album / Album / TAL / TALB
4) Year / Year / TYE / TYER
5) Comment / Comment / COM / COMM

An update to ID3 tag eventually allowed one to choose from preset genres

6) Genre / Genre ID

ID3 version2 added the ability to customize naming ones genre, added scores of tags, yet Serato only takes advantage of a handful including

6) BPM / BPM / TBP / TBPM
7) Key / Initital Key / TKE / TKEY
8) Composer / Composer / TCM / TCOM
9) Label / Publisher / TPB / TPUB

And then rather than continue using the ID standard they then invented their own tagging system which they embed within the Serato file infrastructure.

This causes two problems, the first is no one can see the remaining ID3 tags. Common tags like "Version" most often placed in the "subtitle" field (TT3 / TIT3) can't be seen. This has resulted in every audio supplier placing this information in brackets within the "song / title" field so versions can be properly identified.

The lack of additional fields causes a problem for libraries that have grown as complex as my own. The entire chart histories of every track released in the Billboard era is proper displayed in my comments field, but as I'm in Canada, our chart histories are significantly different.

As such I use one of the scores of unused ID3 v. 2.3.0 / 2.4.0 fields to store chart information for Canadian chart sources.

Since this can't be viewed in Serato, I have taken a considerable amount of time pasting this information into Serato's custom "Remixer" field. This is NOT an ID3 tag. Rather this information is placed in the file directory of "_serato_" and then further in the submenu "metadata." There appears to be even more to this as a number of log files help make this information appear within the track information of Serato DJ Pro.

It's long been a concern that relying on Serato to back this information could be a mistake.

Today that occurred. I likely have things backed up on one of several drives, but figured I'd compose this before I became utterly furious should this data no longe exist.

I back up all my data once a week, so am hoping that me noticing this error was timely & not several weeks old as I will have erased likely 2 years of work. I spend 40 hours a week embedding meta data for myself & my client base.

Initial question would be precisely where is this information stored, how is it recalled & what process must be adhered to place it back.

In addition, perhaps it's about time to add a few more fields to your tagging menu so that this information can be properly stored within the ID3 tags themselves, displayed to users of Serato, rather than relying on a file folder to dubiously archive data.

I'd asked for this feature 6 years ago. If Serato is truly trying to release its' own Studio software, it would be prudent to allow artists to properly tag their creations so that royalties can be properly paid out.

There are at least 4 licensing agencies in each country. Publishers, Distributers & Labels are not the same thing. Artists & Songwriters are not the same thing. Public Performance Rights, Re-recording Licences & Broadcast Licenses are not the same thing. There are a significant number of fields that would have to be created to allow this all to be done on Serato without having to purchase ID Tagging software, much of which can be extremely complicated for ones not proficient with computers. This could easily be streamlined by your design team. I'm far from proficient with computers but within days had this optimized for the background music company I once worked for.

Now perhaps Serato has no intention of getting this heavily involved with it's new studio software...but at least add a handful more ID3 tags!

Thousands of Serato DJ would immediately be far happier with this insignificant little addition over perhaps any of the other updates that have occurred over the past two years.
James Falk 3:34 AM - 5 July, 2019
So I've open up the second most recent copy of my drive and can confirm that the information present in "remixer" still exists.

With that said I'm made significant updates to my prime drive and am hoping to figure out a manner with with to merge the two.

I've yet to pay any attention to the file structure of "_serato_" but after comparing I may be able to piece together a method with which to get the older info onto my primary drive.

With that said, speaking with someone on the design team may streamline this process and prevent 4000+hours and the loss of $100,000+ worth of work from being lost.
James Falk 3:35 AM - 5 July, 2019
Being able to edit ones post within a minute of creation might also be a good feature.
James Falk 9:33 PM - 8 July, 2019
So I opened up a ticket with Serato, but It’s been 5 days without a reply to my support question.

If the forums are to be believed, many have opened up tickets on this issue in the past with no help or response from Serato.

Anyways I have an update on my situation.

As initially noted, Serato is not storing particular meta tag fields properly, rather it is doing so with the root directory of “_serato_”…my question had simply been “where?” and I’ve yet to hear back.

I spent the last two days running my own tests on the matter. I also had to purchase a tag editor so I could confirm my suspicions.

It appears both the “label” & “remixer” field are definitely NOT stored within a files meta data, rather they are stored to the following sub directory:

_serato_ / database V2

I purchased a new drive, place the contents of my prime drive onto it & then one by one replaced:

1) _serato_ / subcrates
2) _serato_ / neworder.pref
3) _serato_ / collapsed.pref
4) _serato_ / database V2

Until I found which of the above was acting as a storage container for this information.

Once identified I replaced the last working copy of "_serato_ / database V2” from a secondary drive onto my primary drive. All the contents of “remixer” repopulated itself.

Following this I used Serato to rescan all the ID3 tags of the entire drives contents. Changes made to my primary drive read and rewrote over any old information in any of the working ID3 tags. Since I haven’t recently made changes to the work in either “remixer” or “label”, none of this was affected.

So the good news is I am back to where I was before the hiccup of last week, the downside is I’ve lost faith in the support team.

I am the furthest thing from a “computer expert”, yet somehow I was able to solve my issue with no help from either the forums or from Serato staff. How an absolute rookie with regards to computers was able to identify, troubleshoot and solve a problem within 4 hours when it has been an issue since 2015 on the forums is most worrisome.

I begun testing a single file with a tag editor between 3pm-5pm yesterday then today after I mirrored my primary drive overnight, took it upon myself to identify where within the Serato file structure this information was stored. This was done in a hour between 1pm-2pm. Testing to 30 minutes & then running an ID3 scan another 30 minutes.

I have literally spent half my lifetime organizing meta data. To have a field almost lost was bad enough, to have no response from Serato was disturbing and be left to troubleshoot & solve the issue myself infuriating.