Ableton Forum

Since so many of us are starting to use Live as DJ Application I would like to see it store more metadata with audio files. Specically I'd like it to store information similar to ID3 that could then be searched on easily in the file browser. For example songs could have metadata for their:
Title, Artist, Remixer, Year, Lable, Genre, etc.

Then if I was doing a progressive breaks set I could easily sort all my music in that order in the application. Or if I wanted to to sort by year and play music all from 92-93 I could do that as well.


Second I would like to see rex file support added. I would imagine it would be easy to use the rex slice points as the warp markers. The more file types Live can support the more useful it becomes.

Grade E wrote:Since so many of us are starting to use Live as DJ Application I would like to see it store more metadata with audio files. Specically I'd like it to store information similar to ID3 that could then be searched on easily in the file browser. For example songs could have metadata for their:
Title, Artist, Remixer, Year, Lable, Genre, etc.

Ooh, great idea.

Can I add "original BPM" to the list too....

Not just for DJs either. Especially if we add things like "component" (e.g. "bass", "vocals", etc.) and "section" ("verse", "chorus", etc.)

Cool idea. It might be worthwhile to just have user-defineable fields, so that the metadata concept could be suited to whoever uses Live... and could be ignored for those who don't want to bother. (Can't imagine who wouldn't want to, though!)

Totally been asking for this forever, it could be displayed in that useless (after the first hour anyway) HELP pane.

robbmasters wrote:
Not just for DJs either. Especially if we add things like "component" (e.g. "bass", "vocals", etc.) and "section" ("verse", "chorus", etc.)

of course, this goes along with a complete revamp of the file browser system

Live definitely needs it

.

I'm interested in MacOSX Tiger's Spotlight and virtual folders that could be generated with such information outside the applications. Thus, if you open up the right folder hiearchy, you might get files with information, let's say a folder that says 128-130bpm, and all files with such information is listed in there. Anyway, I don't know more about the use until we have Tiger available for testing. It would not be hard to write tools/apps that scan for meta information and creates such virtual folders, in case not all the support is in place. --Kent

I'm interested in Spotlight for organizing music as well, but you can't drag audio from the Finder directly into Live, right?

It'd be nice if that were possible... use the Finder instead of Live's browser, and just hide the browser.

Yes, but if those virtual folders work the way I think they work, you could open up the file browser in Live and drag contents from those folders into your workflow.

But yes, I agree, a good new feature would be drag-and-drop of files from the finder into the surface of Live (something that could be done with Logic Pro 7). --Kent

Come to think of it, that's related to another problem I've had with Live and OSX -- apparently, if you try to drag and drop an alias of an audio file from the browser into Live, it attempts to load the alias (symbolic link) and fails, rather than pointing to the audio file on the hard drive.

I guess this has something to do with Live's ability to direct stream from disk at a low-level, but I wish aliases worked for various reasons..

If I do something similar, I rather create symlinks (ln -s) in the terminal than aliases, as not all apps understand the Alias concept. But symlinks are very much transparent, as long as the permissions are the same. --Kent

Kent:

Have you tried using symbolic links with Live? Do they work?

Say you have a song for DJ use called song.aif. Could you then create symlinks to song.aif called 1.aif, 2.aif, 3.aif, etc., and then create new default clip settings for the symlinks?

That way, you could keep a bunch of different clips in a folder that all reference the original song, unedited. (A workaround for the feature most of us DJs have been begging for!)

I'll give it a shot sometime soon, but if you know offhand, that'd be great.

-- Casey

Update on symlinks:

Live will allow you to drag the symbolically linked file from the browser into the session, but when it loads the clip preview, it's mostly blank. The file doesn't play back properly. (As an aside, when I switch applications from Live to, say, Safari, the clip preview updates to read "Sample Offline.")

Strange...

Tails wrote:(As an aside, when I switch applications from Live to, say, Safari, the clip preview updates to read "Sample Offline.")

I though Live always did that anyway, even when you're not using symlinks? It does on my PCs...

I would love to be able to store info against a track, and then be able to sort/filter on this info (Artist, Genre, Date etc) - great suggestion.

I would like to add something else tho...

As a turntable (remember those old things!) DJ of over 10 years, the biggest thing i miss about vinyl was flicking thru ur record box frantically trying to find the next track to play, when all of a sudden the sleeve of that next track magically stands out from the rest, you instantly recognise the track by the picture/logo on the front, u know the artist even tho the name isnt on the sleeve, you cant read the text on the vinyl but u know its the side with a '*' on it that you've put on with a black marker pen, or it has some obscure design or logo on it.

Whereas now, dj'ing with Live, I feel that when i'm having one of those nights, when i scroll thru 100's of lines of text, looking for the next track to play, and nothing seems to be jumping out at me, i just feel if i could physically see an image then it would instantly jump out at me and mean more that squinting to see the track name.

What i would love is Image support in Live.

It would be great if you could get a small thumbnail image against each track in your folder browser, and then when you preview it or select it in Clip view, the Info View shows it in a bigger size, with some of the Meta (ID3 type) info (you would be able to select which).

Here's an example....



Obviously this is a quick paint job in windows, the thumbnails aren't quite fitting but you can get the gist of what i saying.

Anyone else missing this part of the DJ'ing process, or is it just me!

I think it would be great to get this in a future version, along with the meta (ID3 type) of data held against each track.

Yeah, agreed. I feel like I become "word blind" when looking at Live's browser, and find it much easier to pick the next tune when I can see the covers.