Scratch Live Release Notes

Scratch Live version 1.4

We recommend this upgrade for all users. Scratch Live version 1.4 has a vastly improved Internal mode, modeled on a DJ style CD player. This version of Scratch Live supports the new MP 4 USB mixer from Rane. Note that the MP 4 does not support external control via vinyl.
Mixing with the SL 1 in Internal mode
Internal mode now has two pitch sliders, a large slider for making coarse pitch changes, and a small slider for making fine pitch adjustments. You can start and pause playback both forwards and backwards. The new pitch bend function makes temporary adjustments to the pitch, allowing you to align to two tracks that are playing at the same speed but are out of time.

The new controls above the Virtual Deck are, from left to right;
Rewind
Bend down
Play / pause backwards
Play / pause forwards
Bend up
Fast forward

You can make small pitch adjustments by clicking above or below the large pitch slider, and bend by clicking on either side of the small pitch slider. You can set the playback speed using the buttons under the cue points – half speed, 33/45 (45 rpm record playing at 33), normal speed, 45/33 (33rpm record playing at 45), or double speed. The internal mode now uses a finer resolution for the pitch display - 2 decimal places instead of 1.

There is a new temporary cue point that behaves like the "Cue" button on a CD player. Press alt-I to set this temporary cue point for the left virtual deck, and alt-K to set it for the right Virtual Deck. You can jump to the temporary cue point by pressing I for the left Virtual Deck and K for the right Virtual Deck. The temporary cue point is not saved with the file, and defaults to the beginning of the track if it has not been set elsewhere – so this can also be used to jump to the beginning of the track. For MP 4 users, pressing the fader button sets this cue point to the current location. Moving the MP 4's fader to full cut for that deck will pause the track at the trigger point. Moving the fader away from full cut will start playback.

You can adjust the braking speed of the pause feature in the setup screen. This will set the pause from an instant stop to a gradual slow down, like a turntable power-down.

There are new keyboard shortcuts (cue keys) to go with the new playback controls. These keyboard shortcuts use the first two rows of letter keys on your keyboard, irrespective of the letters printed on them. For example, on a US keyboard the cue keys are QWERTYUI and ASDFGHJK, but on a French keyboard the cue keys are AZERTYUI and QSDFGHJK. The keyboard shortcuts on a US keyboard are:
Left Virtual Deck
Q – play / pause backwards
W- play / pause forwards
E – decrease pitch
R – increase pitch
T – pitch bend down
Y – pitch bend up
U – censor
I – jump to temp. cue point (alt I to set)
alt Q – Previous track
alt W – Next track
alt E – rewind
alt R – fast forward
Right Virtual Deck
A – play / pause backwards
S - play / pause forwards
D – decrease pitch
F – increase pitch
G – pitch bend down
H – pitch bend up
J – censor
K – jump to temp. cue point (alt K to set)
alt A – Previous track
alt S – Next track
alt D – rewind
alt F – fast forward

Since many of these functions could accidentally disrupt a mix, you have the option of requiring the shift key to be held down or caps lock enabled. See cue keys use shift in the setup screen.
Other improvements
The new censor function can be used in Internal and Relative modes. The censor button will temporarily reverse the playback direction – when you release the censor button, play will resume from the position you would have been in if you had not pressed the button. Use the censor button to ‘mask’ parts of the track, for example to remove bad language, or for effect.

Markers are now called cue points, and are visible in the main waveform display. There is now a single button to set a new cue point, and x buttons to remove each cue point. The layout of the virtual deck has changed: The icon on the top left is the label color (click to change the color of the label of the loaded track), on the top right is the repeat button, bottom left is the censor button, and bottom right is the eject button.

The tracking display is now a horizontal line just above the mode buttons. The total length of the line represents the speed of the record. The red portion indicates when parts of the record could not be identified, due to dust, scratches, record burn etc. A lot of red means bad tracking. Note that it is normal for the light to be red when cuing or scratching. If you are getting a lot of red when you are just playing the control record (not scratching), make sure that your needles are clean, and check the calibration in the setup screen.

There is a new autoplay feature, which is available in Relative and Absolute modes. When autoplay is enabled, the next track will start automatically when the current track finishes. You can skip through your library using the next and previous buttons. When you load a track, the Virtual Deck remembers which crate or library it came from. If autoplay is on, the next track from that crate or library will be loaded. To change which crate is being used as a playlist without affecting the currently playing song, drag the crate icon on to the Virtual Deck.
Ogg Vorbis file format is now supported on both Mac and PC

There is now a full list of all the keyboard shortcuts available via the tool tips. Click on the ? button to enable tool tips. Move you mouse over any other item to see information about that item.

The track start offset can now be set to anywhere in the first 11 minutes. Use the knob on the left to set the minute, and the knob on the right to set the number of individual rotations. The resulting start offset is printed next to the knobs.

The overviews are now brighter. You can rebuild all the overviews your library by holding the ctrl key and clicking the build overviews button that appears when no USB interface is connected. You can now select a group of tracks and drag them onto the build overviews button to build overviews for just those tracks. Note: Because version 1.4 uses a new overview format, when you click on the build overviews button, it will start rebuilding all your overviews. However, you do not need to rebuild every overview before you start using this version, the old overviews are still there. When you load a track in version 1.4, the new overview will replace the old overview as you play.

Version 1.4 does not attempt to modify read only files. Any changes (for example building overviews, editing tags and adding cue points) will not be saved when you unload the file. Read only files have a padlock icon in the status column.

Both the pitch and BPM are now shown on the virtual deck – the control vinyl version has been moved to the to left corner of the scope view in the setup screen.

You can now save mic recordings that you have loaded straight to deck. If you have loaded a mic recording without first saving it, first stop playback, then enter a name and click the save button. It is important to stop playback, as the track will be very quickly unloaded and reloaded and you will hear a gap in the audio. In 1.4 clicking on other buttons on the GUI does not stop the mic recording.

You can now select multiple tracks by holding down the shift key and pressing the up or down arrows, and the ‘click’ that was sometimes heard when jumping to cue points has been removed.

The sound quality has been improved, by reducing undesirable modulation of playback by control signal. This will make improvements to issues raised here and here

If you enter "emergency Internal mode" (that is entering Internal mode because you run out of control vinyl / CD) and you place the needle at the beginning of the track, or go back to the beginning of track on on CDs, Scratch Live will automatically switch to Relative mode.

Scratch Live version 1.4 is fully compatible with Mac OS X 1.4 (Tiger)

If you have any questions about Scratch Live version 1.4, please post them in the Help area.
Full change log
- Fixed bug that could cause USB dropouts
- Fixed bug where tracks would sometimes load incorrectly the first time they were loaded
- Fixed potential crashing bug
- Fixed wave file hanging bug
- Fixed bug where you could not add a track to a crate after you remove it from that crate
- Fixed bug where playing in autoplay mode would not reset the next track to play from the start when "play from start" was not turned on
- Fixed bug that would cause the elapsed recording time to reset to 0 at approximately 1:30
- Fixed a bug that would cause the internal mode of an MP4 to show only 1 decimal place on the Virtual Deck.
- Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when in autoplay mode and playing from the prepare crate
- Changed the Virtual Deck to indicate when a file is loading (other than
refinding all the frames)
- Fixed bug where temporary queue point was not being set correctly
- Fixed bug where the pitch display would not update when paused and
moving the pitch slider
- Fixed bug where songs played using the "auto" feature would not be
added to the review list
- Added more precision to the pitch display when in internal mode
- Removed unnecessary reading of album art tag
- Fixed bug where temporary queue point was not being set correctly
- Fixed bugs when copying and pasting into the year and bpm column
- Fixed Mac bug which could corrupt device firmware
- Reduced undesirable modulation of playback by control signal
- Added the ability to drag tracks onto the build overview button to
rebuild overviews on selected files
- Optimised some crate/library manipulations
- disabled "auto" while in absolute mode
- Fixed bug where iTunes import would not update the left panel scroll bar
- Fixed bug where pushing (+) would not bring the new crate into view
- Fixed bugs that would cause the overview builder to crash
- Removed unnecessary writing of crates
- Fixed bug where placing the needle in the first minute of the record
after entering emergency internal mode would not return the current mode
to relative
- Added clock at top corner of screen
- Made corrupt ID3 tag handling more robust
- Fixed bug where some columns would not seek correctly when entering a string
- Fixed bug where the start of a WAV file would sometimes contain random noise
- Changed appearance of level lights to resemble LEDs
- Changed tracking display
- Made output level meters stereo for each virtual deck
- Fixed bug where selecting a range of tracks using the keyboard and 'shift' key would not work
- changed the appearance of the knobs
- Added keyboard shortcuts for prev track, next track, rewind, fast forward as alt-[Q,W,E,R] and alt-[A,S,D,F]
- Added preference to use the 'shift' keys to enable the cue keys
- Added support for temp cue point to SL 1 users ('i' and 'k' keys to trigger, with alt to set)
- Fixed bug where you could edit tags of read-only files
- Added control vinyl description to setup screen
- Added the ability to ctrl-click on the "build overviews" button to rebuild all overviews
- Added keyboard shortcut for the MP4 fader queue point
- Added pitch and pitched BPM to the label view
- Added 'U' and 'J' as keyboard shortcuts for the "censor" feature
- Fixed bug where the vinyl version and time display were present on the label view when no song was loaded
- Added "locked" icon the the track status column to indicate that a file is read-only
- Fixed bug where read-only files would create an extra ".del" file
- Fixed bugs when writing ID3 label tags
- Increased dynamic range of input level meter from 30dB to 60dB
- Changed recording comment to be dependent on the user locale
- Fixed bug when a track was not repeating and using the censor button outside the ranges of a track
- Fixed bugs when selecting tracks with the "command" key on Mac
- Keyboard shortcuts to jump to markers (keys '0'-'9') now requires you to hold shift or have the "Caps Lock" key toggled on
- Inverted pitch sliders
- Fixed bugs playing long MP3 tracks
- Fixed bug where certain corrupted iTunes xml files could crash Mac Scratch Live
- Increased track offset range to 10 minutes
- Matched song overview colors to main waveforms, added dithering
- Increased loading speed for large libraries
- Improved waveform drawing efficiency
- Fixed bug where dragging a file from outside Scratch Live onto a virtual deck would not save the song in the database
- Fixed bug where total silence in a track could cause USB dropouts
- Fixed click at the start of tracks
- Added choosing which crate to select tracks from by dragging the crate to the deck
- Added previous track and next track buttons
- Added overlap cross fading when jumping using the cue points
- Allowed complete control of the GUI while recording
- Added autoplay mode. In this mode when a song ends, the next song in the source crate is loaded.
- Changed the cue-point control layout
- Added larger label color selector
- Added new fine velocity slider
- Added new velocity range buttons
- Added MP 4 fader triggering
- Added support for MP 4 hardware on Mac and PC
- Changed the appearance of the play-head marker on the main waveform and beat displays
- Added Int. mode brake speed knob to the setup screen
- Moved the label color menu, the track loop button and the censor button
- Added markers to main waveform overview
- Added censor button
- Added keyboard shortcuts for forward play
- Added keyboard shortcuts for reverse play
- Added keyboard shortcuts for pitch bend up/down
- Added keyboard shortcuts for pitch nudge up/down
- Added pitch nudge up/down in Int. modes
- Added fast forward/rewind in Int. and Rel. modes
- Added pitch bend up/down in Int. and Rel. modes
- Added play reverse in Int. mode
- Added fine velocity slider in Int. mode
- Added velocity range slider in Int. mode
- Added new velocity slider in Int. mode