Hi All,
So I have been poking around the backend of Rekordbox to help me fine tune my library. I have come across a few tricks that I have found helpful that require modifying rekordbox.xml, and then reimporting songs from there back into my library. Not sure if any of you would be interested but here are a few of the things I have been able to do by manually editing that file.
I can alter an otherwise good beat grid for specific sections where the beat has gone off. For instance when rekordbox does a dynamic grid and messes up some beats in the beginning of a song but gets the rest perfect, I don't want to manually redo the rest of a complicated song, so now I just edit the beat grid directly. Works perfectly.
Say I want two versions of the same song in different playlists one at normal tempo and one at half tempo (or vice versa). If the song is already in your collection you normally can't have a second version of it in your collection unless you have a second copy of the song. That's a waste of space when all you want is two (or more) beat grids of the same song. Well you can do that! Either by editing the XML or doing a simple filename change (in Windows) or both.
Another thing is being able to correct the 1 beat anywhere in the song that it goes off. For instance if you set 1/1 correctly in the beginning of a song, but after some sloppy edits the remixer/producer throws off the 1 count in the rest of the song, you can now correct that too. That is you can reset the Red Bar back to a one beat anywhere in the song it goes off (currently you can only do that once per song but that is only a limitation of the user interface, the grid - through the rekordbox.xml interface - can actually support resetting this).
I am not sure if there is any interest for this kind of stuff but figured I would put it out there rather than writing a "how to" guide. Most of this is easily achievable with a simple text editor like Notepad or Notepad++. When I get some time on my hands I will automate some of this with a Rekordbox.xml editor program to further enhance beatgridding, as Rekordbox is currently lacking in some areas.
If you are interested let me know and I will write up the tips one at a time.
Regards!
Keep Spinning!
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Also forgot one of the biggest reasons to use Rekordbox.xml, it backs up your playlists quickly!! If you have ever suffered the dreaded "oh s**t I deleted my playlist and there's no undo in rekordbox" never fear, if you consistently export your rekordbox.xml file, you will always have a way to get you playlist back!
I don't know a lot about xml but this sounds really cool would also like to a how to video of this ideal .
Always happy to see how DJs are making use of the software - let us know what you're doing and maybe those are things the rekordbox team can incorporate into the UI in future.
yeah really interested in your findings!!!
very interested in your findings, especially about where you clone beatgrids between duplicates. Please document that!
I have done the same for traktor; adapting to the rekordbox.xml format would be very easy
https://github.com/pestrela/music/blob/master/traktor/tools_traktor/traktor_clone_cues.py
As I already read ithis format in this other tool
https://github.com/pestrela/music/blob/master/traktor/tools_traktor/rekordbox_add_beatmarkers.py
sadly this is yet another thing now made impossible by RB6 removing the XML export function.
Hey Pedro,
I would love to show you how I am doing this. Not sure how to go to a personal message, is there a way to message you on your GitHub?
I think I also looked at some of your stuff for midi mapping (I think on the Bome website) and would like to discuss that to...
Let me know how to proceed!
Pedro,
I posted my contact information to your Facebook if you want to discuss details. Here is a forum response I sent a while ago on how to have multiple RB.XML entries for the same track. You have to look down in the thread for my response.
Regards
Carlton
CRSounds
https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115017700123-Rekord-Box-Library-Issue
Here is another forum post where I showed the OP how to create the duplicates on a Windows Machine... not sure if it can work on a Mac the same way...
Thanks for these links.
They exploit a bug about case sensitivity that I actually opened a support ticket before.
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I appreciate they are useful to support multiple grids/cues for the same file. However this causes havok when using OS folders only to organize your collection: