Add a search box to explorer of Rekordbox

@giannis > I understand, you want the application to return to the last location after the search; that makes sense, and can be accomplished without requiring a separate search box.

@Whoopi > I've got over 50,000 songs in my collection and I never find searching my entire collection by a partial string to be restrictive or return so many results that I couldn't add additional words to narrow the results further.

You're right that there is more than one way to use software.

@Pulse except all these I have mentioned it is what @Whoopi mentioned too. I think @Whoopi said the most important problem with search box that I forgot to mention. Please we want to se a good searchbox everywhere in future updates of Rekordbox. Thank you in advance.

I have 300,000 songs that I don’t want ALL analyzed? How long will it take to analalize 300,000 songs into my collection to be searchable? With Serato I only analyzed the songs most played, then I would drop a song in on the fly and it would quickly analyze it. Before I pull the trigger and add my entire 300,000 song library to be searchable, how long might this take?

Sorry 100,000 songs approximately?

If that's a concern, why not analyse the tracks you're most likely to play?

The analysis speed depends entirely on your computer's processor; the speed and number of cores available.

There in lies the issue, I would have to exit the software to search for the song? I do lots of weddings and get random requests for all different types of music. I need to be able to quickly access all my library by artist or song title. This search option found in many other programs would be very much welcomed. So far it’s the only one major missing element, as I consider my switch from Serato DJ to Rekordbox. I have a super fast computer but it’s really uneccessary to scan every single file? If I do I’ll post how long it takes just to circumvent the absence of a simple search button to find files anywhere I need to. Please add this option.

Or just let it scan them all during the week when you're not working, it would only take a couple of days and would be more of a benefit to you than any reason you might have not to analyse them all into the collection.

Running on an Alienware 17 r4 with I7 7820HK, 500 files take 20 mins. After the math it will take approx 2.7 days straight to complete the scan. I have to scan the iTunes folder on my removable drive as well, just to be able to just search any song from one location (collection). Let me just ask, I drag my entire library, all music folders and iTunes backup, to the (collection) tab, and just let it work for 3 days? Will I then be able to search for any song or artist in my collection from that one spot? The as my iTunes folder changes, I will have to rescan that every so often? Seems like a lot of trouble just to find my music quickly and easily. You seriously don’t see a need for a (universal) search option of all accessed media?

@Dean McMuldroch you are totally right my friend! I am facing major problems me and other djs from the world with search box of rekordbox. Pioneer don't mean to understand that it has to create a program which responds to the needs of the customers. We don't want or have to work the way rekordbox creates... Many many dj's mention the same problem from the very beginning of rekordbox and many didn't come to rekordbox for this reason they ask me frequently if rekordbox fixed the search bar. It is just a search bar that appears everywhere and not only on playlists and colection. Is it so hard to create?

Is it so hard to drag all your music into rekordbox? Nobody seems to tell me why that's problematic.

I just gave you one specific example. It’s tedious and uneccessary to have to scan my entire library to search for songs that can easily be found by adding a search bar to each and every tab. How hard can this be? Every other DJ program accommodates this option?

This is not what I mentioned above. All my music is imported but not all of my music is analyzed. I have made many playlists with the most important songs that I use but the problem occurs on the fly when we play. The file tree is enormous to make all these playlists. When you play with folders the search box dissaperas and you may want to find a song only in the specified folder and not in your while playlist. All the other dj programs have this feature! Why don't you fix it and you will have the perfect program! All the other features of rekordbox are totally perfect!

Absolutely agree! I was shocked to not find it when trying out the program. This may keep from purchasing the new DDJ 1000 which requires I use Rekordbox. Unless it maybe supports Serato sometime down the line, or a search bar is added???

@giannis > You do it once, and it's done forever. What's the hesitation?

@Pulse for my laptop to analyse all of my song will take about two weeks just imagine how many months will it take to organise all these songs and folders/subfolders to playlists and sub playlists. I know that the right way to play music is playlists but we are not the kind of djs that are only playing 2 or 3 kinds of music. We have to carry  tons of music with us and different genres. Dean McMuldroch is for example a wedding dj such I am. Rekordbox just created dmx lighting which means to be related with this kind of djs. So this kind of Djs seems to all have the same struggle sadly. Every other program has it. It will make our lives much much better and not only for the first time but for ever my friend.

Again, my point is if you've already imported everything, then you can do one of two things:

1) Search the collection where any matching result in your massive pile of music would be found.

2) Browse the explorer are you do now and when you load the track from there, it's already analysed and ready to play.

I'm a wedding DJ and I understand what you're asking, but I also know what I'm suggesting achieves the end result.

Again our point is to be able to search for files in big collection...

Let's say we import everything like you want us to do, it mean when we want to find a track we have to use the search box as it is now and find for one title mixed with a lot of other title. Here is an exemple for how I use it, I'm playing multi genre, electronic mostly but in a very large way (from hip hop to hardcore stuff), I use 4 different alias, each one playing different genre, and all with its own kind of vibe (one more bass music, one more hip hop music, one more techno-ish music and one more commercial music), so I class everything under a different alias, with subfolder for genre and sub folder again for intensity of the track.
Let say there is a track I only know one part of the title, I know it's in bass house, but don't remember the full title and if I type the part of the title I remember in the bass house folder, I will find it easily cause it will narrow the search from 1000 to 10 track.
But if I use the search bar as it is now, it will look in the entire collection, and I will still have 100 track to read before finding it, and also it can show me the track with the same title but different remix, track that could be in another folder that I'm not planing to play on this moment. So I'll have to listen every different remix to find the one I want (after of course having to find the right song between all the track with the same key word in the title that I remember).

So yes, at the end I will probably find what I want, but it took me more time to do it. For now I use the windows explorer to do this. It would be great to be able to do it in rekordbox directly.

And this is just an exemple, I'm sure all the people here can tell you a different one with another use of this search bar we want.

We don't want all do playlist to use rekordbox, we don't all have a small collection of 10 000 track max to look through when we work, we don't all plan our set in advance, and some of us can have more than 100 track to add in different folder each week (even more sometime, this is not even the number of promo I receive each week...) so analyse the collection and every folder, doing playlist to match every folder and stuff like that is not possible, because it would take a lot of time every week to update.

I read that this kind of search box take to much processing on the computer or something like that, but Traktor has one since at least the first version 2, with a search box for searching into folder you are, and the possibility to do the same in all the collection folder, I think even Virtual DJ has this option, and I never had any problem using it even on a slow computer while mixing with timecode vinyl, external hard drive and 2 controller plug in.

Rekordbox DJ took a little from Serato and Traktor, why not taking that too. If you want to be the leading and most liked DJ software, do the same or improve what competition does, don't do it worst...

@Whoopi Nez You are absolutely right my friend... I hope they will understand it in Pioneer...

Now that I’m tediously waiting for my 95,000 tracks to be analyzed. I’m fearful about the format of the external drive used to store my “master” file? It’s formatted in exFat for previous use in Serato. Can I move this master file without issues having created it on a exFat drive? I know if I use a thumb drive for CDJ’s I would need to use Fat32 but I will be only using the DDJ 1000 for now. Please tell me this is not an issue? I don’t want to have to start all over again with playlists and importing my collection?

HFS+, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS are fine as source drives, but won't work as export drives - for that you need FAT32 or HFS+ only.

You'll be fine.

Now that is music to my ears!

Just a quick note to say that I have the same issues described above. When I don't remember the exact string to search I either get too many or too few results. Everything is imported to Rekordbox in advance.

Question: Is it possible to search on an all Playlists contained in a Playlist folder? eg in Serato there is an option for "library: (crates) include subcrate tracks". This is enables this feature.

Thanks...

This is exactly what would solve so many issues with library control and accesss! A simple search function throughout the source drive of music, without analyzing all tracks, is the preferred method for all DJ’s in my opinion.

I have found a solution to there being no search for your files. Instead of leaving your files you want to search in their current folder, go into rekordbox explorer and drag all the files you want to potentially search for into a playlist. You can have multiple playlists and from them you may search for files.

- $kywalker

Luke, I know you are trying to help, but this is not a solution. The moment new tracks are added to folders, these no longer appear on such user-created playlists. In comparison, on Traktor this operation is trivial by allowing searching on the explorer node.

I currently use a really annoying and slow workaround of manually deleting all playlists and recreating them on itunes using these tools:

[7] MAC folders to itunes playlist: https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=droptoaddnmake
[8] Windows folders to itunes playlists: http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp

Honestly, As a DJ I don't understand why this software won't allow us to search up thru Explorer. The name of the category is "Explorer" You would think with a name like that you could search in-depth thru the actual files you have organized thru your harddrive. I know what most everyone is going to say. Why not use intelligence playlist or make a playlist of the music to search. That is true but why not have the software we pay a monthly subscription on have all the tools we need to look for our music. I just find it very odd. It's just the peace of mind knowing if I'm djing at an event I can search something without having to click off of explorer and manually go to the playlist you know... If this does not get fixed I'd at least like an answer to why a "DJ" Software is missing this key fundamental function.