How to clone settings, collectons, Stems, etc. from PC to Mac (Traktor Pro 4)

MisterKanister

I have Traktor Pro 4 running on an older MacBook which i use with a S8. Works fine so far, but due to the age of my Mac it´s almost impossible to create Stems inline. So i had the idea to prepare all Tracks, Playlists, Stems, etc. on my Windows PC which has quite more power. Now i wonder if i can take all my prepared stuff 1:1 to my Mac, so that everything is ready to play as soon as i start TP 4 on my MacBook.
All tutorials on the net (even from the NI Forum) regarding this topic refer to older Traktor versions and seem to not work, especially not with Stems.
Any ideas how i can solve this? Help is much appreciated! 😉

saradis

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/172938#Comment_172938

As I've written in other posts, Traktor library and folder structure is extremely simple, clean, and self contained. Moving Mac to Mac / Win to Win is a minute long process really, as long as everything is in the exact same place on both computers.

Now, from Win to Mac there are a few extra steps due to the different file system organisation. This is what you need to do:
1. Make sure both computers are running the exact same TP version
2. Prepare your entire collection with your stems on your pc, make sure all your music is in one base music folder, even if that one has thousands of subfolders, and make a note of where your stem folder is. Close Traktor on Win.
3. Copy your base music folder, your stem folder, and your "Traktor 4.0.2" folder to a portable disk. Prefer zipping the Win Traktor folder first if the collection is big, to save some time with the transfer. Also, if you're doing this for the first time, zip your Mac Traktor folder as well, so you can restore it as is in its place if the operation fails.
4. Transfer your music/stem stuff to your Mac on their final locations, and the Traktor folder to a temporary location (a folder in the desktop for example)
5. Open Traktor on Mac, go to settings for Stems and choose the Stem folder that you brought over from the PC. This will save the path where TP will look for stems when you load the Win collection and save it on the Traktor Settings.tsi file. Close Traktor on Mac.
6. Find the Mac Traktor folder (in your Documents), and throw away "Coverart" "Transients" "Stripes" and the main collection.nml file. Then move over those four things from your Win folder from your temporary location. You can then discard the temp Win folder.
7. Open Traktor On Mac. It will have your entire Win collection, but the files will be in the wrong place because of the different file system. Right click on Track Collection. Check Consistency. Wait for it to scan everything. Go to the missing files tab, press Relocate and point it to your root music folder. Wait for it to scan everything. If you did everything right, in the end you're going to have 0 files missing and every stem re-linked.

PS. For the stems to work as fine as they do and be tied up to the exact file and always be ready for unlinking etc, you need the collection file even though your music files may be in the exact same position. That's where the hash values of the file/stem pairs are stored so Traktor can know what goes where. So if you decide to make more stems in windows in the future, you're first going to have to do the inverted transfer (Mac to Win) so you can "add" the extra work in your existing Mac database in the collection file and then transfer it back. Of course, if the music files remain the same there is no need to transfer them as well each time. This gets extremely easier if you can afford Dropbox pro, so you can keep your music and stems in the cloud and always synced between computers, and all you really have to do is ping pong the collection.nml file.

saradis

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/172938#Comment_172938

As I've written in other posts, Traktor library and folder structure is extremely simple, clean, and self contained. Moving Mac to Mac / Win to Win is a minute long process really, as long as everything is in the exact same place on both computers.

Now, from Win to Mac there are a few extra steps due to the different file system organisation. This is what you need to do:
1. Make sure both computers are running the exact same TP version
2. Prepare your entire collection with your stems on your pc, make sure all your music is in one base music folder, even if that one has thousands of subfolders, and make a note of where your stem folder is. Close Traktor on Win.
3. Copy your base music folder, your stem folder, and your "Traktor 4.0.2" folder to a portable disk. Prefer zipping the Win Traktor folder first if the collection is big, to save some time with the transfer. Also, if you're doing this for the first time, zip your Mac Traktor folder as well, so you can restore it as is in its place if the operation fails.
4. Transfer your music/stem stuff to your Mac on their final locations, and the Traktor folder to a temporary location (a folder in the desktop for example)
5. Open Traktor on Mac, go to settings for Stems and choose the Stem folder that you brought over from the PC. This will save the path where TP will look for stems when you load the Win collection and save it on the Traktor Settings.tsi file. Close Traktor on Mac.
6. Find the Mac Traktor folder (in your Documents), and throw away "Coverart" "Transients" "Stripes" and the main collection.nml file. Then move over those four things from your Win folder from your temporary location. You can then discard the temp Win folder.
7. Open Traktor On Mac. It will have your entire Win collection, but the files will be in the wrong place because of the different file system. Right click on Track Collection. Check Consistency. Wait for it to scan everything. Go to the missing files tab, press Relocate and point it to your root music folder. Wait for it to scan everything. If you did everything right, in the end you're going to have 0 files missing and every stem re-linked.

PS. For the stems to work as fine as they do and be tied up to the exact file and always be ready for unlinking etc, you need the collection file even though your music files may be in the exact same position. That's where the hash values of the file/stem pairs are stored so Traktor can know what goes where. So if you decide to make more stems in windows in the future, you're first going to have to do the inverted transfer (Mac to Win) so you can "add" the extra work in your existing Mac database in the collection file and then transfer it back. Of course, if the music files remain the same there is no need to transfer them as well each time. This gets extremely easier if you can afford Dropbox pro, so you can keep your music and stems in the cloud and always synced between computers, and all you really have to do is ping pong the collection.nml file.

MisterKanister

Sorry for my late reply, i had some serious work do be done which tied me up for few days…
At first i want to thank you for your answer and that "tutorial".
As soon as i have time to check it, i´ll get back t you. 😉