Traktor Pro 3 - music files

Mulatows

Hi,

I have recently bought and downloaded the Traktor Pro 3 and it has messed up my music files when I am within it.

I have no idea how to re-range the music files / genres etc. back to how I had them.

I’ve checked the Traktor manual and cannot locate anything there unless I have missed something.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Mark

MrCee

Music.app is brilliant to manage your library first, and you can extend this amazingly with AppleScript… but a couple of things to look out for:

Don't let Music.app organize your library for you, so turn this off straight away under SETTINGS > FILES and disable both 'Keep Music Media folder organized' & 'Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library'

Dont edit in Music.app while traktor is open. Traktor will save its own set of tags to the actual file itself if you have "Write all tags to files" on and some of which are stored in xml and not always written to files, so this combination of tags are displayed in the Traktor GUI, and only mostly saved consistently when you exit Traktor.

If you want to bulk edit your library, do this while Traktor is closed, perform actions, make everything perfect…. THEN you can open Traktor, run a consistency check, every change should be imported as far as tags go, and yes you want to do this big long check every time you have bulk edited externally. Close Traktor to save to it's xml (mp3 file tags will already be synced by now, but Traktor needs to update its xml).

The only other factor I can think of is dont add your entire Music folder to Traktor as this contains Music.app databases and other hidden files that can cause issue. And delete any .m3u files.

It does sound like you need to put everything back to where it was before and I have been there, so dive deeper in your folder structure of music… it will all still be there. …Hopefully 😎

Heisenberg

You can delete the Traktor metadata if you want to remove music from the collection. A dialog should then appear asking whether Traktor should delete the metadata created by Traktor.

But normally, traktor doesn't write a genre etc. into the files on its own!? After the analysis, Traktor only writes gain, key, bpm into the metadata for me, and that's correct so that everything works.

You can also check your tags with MP3Tag, the software is free. And I would always check new files first with MP3Tag and add data if necessary before I enter them into my system, e.g. in Trakor, Plex, etc.

lord-carlos

Except adding some tags (which can be disabled) Traktor should not touch the files.

Did you maybe use iTune/Apple Music app?

Heisenberg

With any library software for music, make sure that all options are switched off which update metadata from the internet, otherwise they will actually mess it up.

Mulatows

Hi and thanks. I used iTunes.

Heisenberg

Then iTunes will probably have pulled the ID3 tags from the Internet; such functions for automatic metadata updates should always be turned off.

I don't know what happened to your files or how many you have, but with a bit of work you might be able to correct it using MP3 Tag.

Or better yet, if you have a backup, restore it after checking in iTunes that all options are turned off for automatic metadata.

lord-carlos

iTune can also move files etc. But you can disable that.

MrCee

Music.app is brilliant to manage your library first, and you can extend this amazingly with AppleScript… but a couple of things to look out for:

Don't let Music.app organize your library for you, so turn this off straight away under SETTINGS > FILES and disable both 'Keep Music Media folder organized' & 'Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library'

Dont edit in Music.app while traktor is open. Traktor will save its own set of tags to the actual file itself if you have "Write all tags to files" on and some of which are stored in xml and not always written to files, so this combination of tags are displayed in the Traktor GUI, and only mostly saved consistently when you exit Traktor.

If you want to bulk edit your library, do this while Traktor is closed, perform actions, make everything perfect…. THEN you can open Traktor, run a consistency check, every change should be imported as far as tags go, and yes you want to do this big long check every time you have bulk edited externally. Close Traktor to save to it's xml (mp3 file tags will already be synced by now, but Traktor needs to update its xml).

The only other factor I can think of is dont add your entire Music folder to Traktor as this contains Music.app databases and other hidden files that can cause issue. And delete any .m3u files.

It does sound like you need to put everything back to where it was before and I have been there, so dive deeper in your folder structure of music… it will all still be there. …Hopefully 😎