Þ Trainspotter makes an educated guess at where your Traktor collection.nml file and backup directory are located. If these don’t reflect what you have installed then either manually correct them or click the “Browse” button to find them. As long as these top three settings are correct you can click OK and Trainspotter will load

Þ At the bottom of this screen is the “Fields to update” setting. When updating your collection from Discogs, the fields in the list to the left will be updated. If you want to preserve some of your fields in your collection (such as GENRE), transfer then to right hand list box by selecting the field and clicking “Remove”. The corresponding tag values will be written to your audio files if the “Write tag values to audio files” option is set.

Þ For details of the rest of the settings in the preferences see Preferences Reference.

Þ Click OK and Trainspotter starts.

3 The Trainspotter User Interface

3.1 The Toolbar

3.1.1 Search Mode

Selecting Search Mode instructs Trainspotter to take you to the Discogs Browser tab to help you search for the selected track in the Discogs database. Tracks can be selected for searching by clicking on tracks in the Collection tab or double clicking a track in the Playlist Viewer in the Playlists tab.

3.1.2 Tag Mode

Selecting Tag Mode instructs Trainspotter to take you to the Custom Tagging tab when selecting tracks, this will allow you to manually update the track fields and insert custom tag string.

Tracks can be selected for searching by clicking on tracks in the Collection tab or double clicking a track in the Playlist Viewer in the Playlists tab.

3.1.3 Playlist mode

Selecting Playlist Mode and clicking a track in the Collection tab will start playing the selected track (if the “Automatically play track when tagging” preference is set in the “Custom Tagging” preference page). This allows you to quickly preview tracks before right clicking the track and selecting “Add to Playlists”. Note that you need to have selected one or more playlists in the Playlists tab beforehand.

3.1.4 Group By

The Group By drop down allows you to select the field by which tracks are grouped in the Collection tab. Trainspotter uses the first letter of the selected field, fields starting with a non-alphanumeric value are placed in the ‘-‘ tab. Grouping by different field can speed up the tagging process as once you’ve identified an artist/album/label in discogs you can use the Discogs browser’s back and forward buttons to identify other releases.

3.1.5 Left/right Arrows

Clicking on the left/right arrows will select the previous or next track in your collection and will take you to the Discogs Browser tab or Custom Tagging tab depending on which mode is selected. Clicking the second right arrow will select the next track in your collection without cover art.

3.2 The Main Menu

3.2.1 File Menu

Open

Opens an nml file to edit

Save As

Saves the current nml file to a different location

Save

Saves the current nml file

Exit

Quits Trainspotter

3.2.2 Edit Menu

Preferences

Opens the Preferences dialog

3.2.3 Tools Menu

Encode Collection to Flac

Opens the “Encode to Flac” tab. This allows you to encode all the wav files in your collection to the flac format. If cover art has been defined then this will be added to the resulting flac files.

Encode Collection to MP3

Opens the “Encode to MP3” tab. This allows you to encode all the wav files in your collection to MP3. If cover art has been defined then this will be added to the resulting MP3 files.

Detect Keys

Opens the “Detect Keys” tab. This allows you to detect the keys of your tracks, updating your nml file and writing the key tags to your tracks.

Run Script

Executes an ant script across your collection or playlist.

Relocate Files in Collection

3.3 Moves or copies your audio files according to the file naming settings defined the preferences (see Script

3.3.1 Ant script

The path to an ant script to execute on the collection.

Trainspotter sends and receives track information using properties. The following table shows the names of the properties that are set so that your ant script can read them. If your script sets a property in the “Output property” column, your collection will be updated with the new value.

Input property	NML mapping	Output property
album.title	The TITLE attribute from the ALBUM element	output.album.title
artist	The ARTIST attribute from the ENTRY element	output.artist
bpm	The BPM attribute from the TEMPO element	output.bpm
catalog.number	The CATALOG_NO attribute from the INFO element	output.catalog.number
comment	The COMMENT attribute from the INFO element	output.comment
comments2	The RATING attribute from the INFO element	output.comments2
directory	The DIRECTORY attribute from the ENTRY element	output.directory
file	The full path of the audio file	output.file
extension	The audio file extension
genre	The GENRE attribute from the INFO element	output.genre
import.date	The IMPORT_DATE attribute from the INFO element	output.import.date
key	The KEY attribute from the INFO element	output.key
label	The LABEL attribute from the INFO element	output.label
lyrics	The LYRICS attribute from the INFO element	output.lyrics
mix	The MIX attribute from the INFO element	output.mix
producer	The PRODUCER attribute from the INFO element	output.producer
ranking	The RANKING attribute from the INFO element	output.ranking
rating	The RATING attribute from the INFO element	output.rating
release.date	The RELEASE_DATE attribute from the INFO element	output.release.date
remixer	The REMIXER attribute from the INFO element	output.remixer
title	The TITLE attribute from the ENTRY element	output.title
track.number	The TRACK attribute from the ALBUM element	output.track.number
xml	The XML fragment of the entry

File relocation)

3.3.2 Help Menu

Manual

Opens up a browser showing you the latest Trainspotter manual.

Check for Updates

Checks the tspotter.net website to see if there is a newer version of Trainspotter to download.

Donate

This opens a browser to a page where you can donate to this project. If you donate you’ll get a license which will remove the nagging dialogs and give you enhanced functionality.

User Forum

Opens up the user forum in a browser.

Install License

This allows you to specify the license file you want to use.

License Info

Displays the current license information

3.4 The collection tab

3.4.1 Data display

The collection tab shows the contents of your Traktor collection. The name of the tab is the name of your collection nml file. If the collection has been edited and needs saving, an asterisk will appear to the left of the name.

You can order the tracks by clicking on the column heading.

You can rearrange the order of the headings by dragging and dropping them.

Moving your mouse over a cover picture will pop up a box showing all the stored album art for the track.

If there is no cover art for the track, a question mark icon will be displayed. If no art is displayed, this means that Trainspotter has run out of cache space to cache the image. To see the cover art, move the mouse over space in the image column

3.4.2 Hotkeys

Moving between tabs in the collection can be done by using the ALT+LEFT and ALT+RIGHT.

To add the currently selected track to the selected playlists press INSERT.

3.4.3 Context Menu

3.4.3.1 Edit

Right click on the data field you want to edit and then click Edit to edit it. Hit enter to finish.

3.4.3.2 Add to Playlists

Selecting this item adds the selected track to the playlists selected in the Playlists tab

3.4.3.3 Show/Hide Columns

You can show or hide columns by right clicking on the table and selecting “Show/hide columns” and then the name of the column you want to show or hide.

3.4.3.4 Search

Right click on the track you want to search for, select “Search” and then select the field that you want to search for in Discogs. Trainspotter will take you to the Discogs Browser page and search Discogs for the selected field value.

3.4.4 Drag and Drop

You can drag and drop a track from your collection in to Traktor or other application, just as you would drag a track from your file system.

Dragging tracks and folders in to Trainspotter will add the contained audio files to your collection and name them according to your defined filenaming structure (see Track Import)

3.5 Discogs Browser Tab

3.5.1 Search Results

The Search Results list is populated when a track is selected in “Search Mode” or when a new track is selected in the collection (either explicitly or when Trainspotter automatically selects the next untagged track).

Trainspotter will use information from your collection to query discogs, however, you can highlight a portion of the track path (displayed in the heading) and click “Search selected text” to query discogs for a particular string. Alternatively, if your files follow a uniform naming convention you can configure a regular expression in the preferences to extract tag values from the filename which will give you more accurate results and less clicking around.

The first column shows the cover art of the matching release or a question mark if no cover art is available. The second column gives a description of the release.

The number of search results that are returned is configured in the Searching page in the Preferences.

You can alter the sizes of the Search Results window and the browser window by dragging the dividing line between the two panes.

Clicking a search result will set the Discogs browser to the release page. Trainspotter will then try and match the current track with one in the release (see 5.4.3). If you have defined a regular expression (see 5.4.3) then the track name extracted using the regular expression will be used.

3.5.2 Hotkeys

To select the next/previous track in your collection press ALT+LEFT or ALT+RIGHT and Trainspotter will update the Search Results accordingly

3.5.3 Search Update from Discogs

This pane allows you to browse the discogs web site and identify matching releases to the track you are searching for. When you land on a “release” page Trainspotter will automatically populate the matching tracks dropdown.

3.5.3.1 Back/forward buttons

These control the browser window beneath and browse back or forwards.

3.5.3.2 Search buttons

If the search results don’t contain the correct release, click “Artist”, “Album”, “Label”, “Filename” or “Collection” to search Discogs for potential matches.

The “Collection” search will search from within your Discogs Collection if you have a discogs account.

The “Filename” search will search using the filename of the track on your hard drive.

3.5.3.3 Select matching track drop down

This is populated when Trainspotter detects that you are on a Discogs page containing details of a release, or after you have clicked a release in the Search Results.

3.5.3.4 Record button

After a track has been selected from the matching track drop down, the “Record” button is enabled. Clicking this button creates a blank WAV file using your filename format (see 5.5.2) and opens it up in your audio editor (see 5.5.4).

3.5.3.5 Rip Button

After a release has been selected, the “Rip” button is enabled. Clicking this button opens a dialog box to select the tracks that you want to rip. If the release span more than one CD you can tell Trainspotter which track is the first track on the CD in your drive so the tracks match up. After selecting the tracks Trainspotter runs your configured CD ripping program (see 5.5.5).

3.5.3.6 Update Fields button

After a track has been selected from the matching track drop down, the “Update Fields” button is enabled. Clicking this button will update the fields in your Traktor collection with information from Discogs. You can be selective about the fields that you want Trainspotter to update by configuring the “Fields to update” preference (see 5.1.9).

Trainspotter will also try and identify other tracks in your collection from the same release and automatically update these tracks also. Trainspotter will try and match the tracks titles using the preferences in the Searching preference page. It will also try and match track numbers.

3.6 Custom Tagging Tab

This tab allows you to edit the standard Traktor fields for the selected release, apply cover art and add custom tags to the Comments2 field in your Traktor collection. By default Trainspotter will open up your music player and play the track. This can be turned off by going to the Custom tag configuration page and unchecking Automatically play track when tagging.

3.6.1 Custom Tags

The top two lines of fields are those which you have defined in Custom tag configuration. The selected text in these fields is aggregated in to the Comments2 field if the track in your Traktor collection. The “Other Info” is free text that you can add, such as tracks that mix well with the current track.

3.6.2 Standard Tags

These are just editors for the standard fields you can set in a track in your Traktor collection.

3.6.3 Cover

This is where you can define the images that are displayed in the collection tab and which image to include in your FLAC/MP3 file of the track. Trainspotter uses the Comments field to store the paths of the images relative to the collection.nml. When encoding tracks to FLAC/MP3, only the first image is encoded in to the FLAC/MP3 file as cover art.

Trainspotter will also update the embedded images after you have encoded the file.

3.6.3.1 Paste

Clicking the Paste button pastes image data from your clipboard as cover art for the release, also updating the embedded cover art.

3.6.3.2 Browse

Click the Browse button allows you to select an image from your file system as cover art for the release.

3.6.3.3 Download

Clicking this button opens up a browser to Google images to search for the cover art of the track. You can customise the search parameters by using the Additional Google image search parameters setting.

3.6.3.4 Apply to album

Clicking this button applies the cover art on this track to all tracks on the album.

3.6.3.5 Delete

Clicking the red X button next to an image will remove the image from the track.

3.6.4 Hotkeys

Press the Tab key to move to the next tag to update, or SHIFT+Tab to move to the previous tag.

When setting the Ranking use the LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys for fine adjustment, and use CONTROL+LEFT/RIGHT to move the ranking in steps of 20%.

To select the next/previous track in your collection press ALT+LEFT or ALT+RIGHT and Trainspotter will update the data accordingly.

3.7 Playlists Tab

This tab allows you manage your Traktor playlists and create dynamic query-based playlists.

3.7.1 Playlists Tree

The playlists tree to the left allows you to navigate your Traktor playlists. Regular Traktor playlists are shown with a “file” icon, dynamical playlists are shown with a “play” icon. Right clicking a node in the tree will brings up the following menu options:

3.7.1.1 New Dynamic Playlist

Allows you to create a playlist whose contents are based on a query of your collection. When selected the following dialog appears:

Playlist Name

Enter a description of the playlist query

Tracks

This allows you to select which tracks will be queried to generate the playlist. By default, the “Select all tracks from collection” is enabled, so the query will check all the tracks in your collection. Unchecking this option allows you to select which playlists and playlist folders to get tracks from for the query.

Selecting playlists and playlist folders to exclude removes any tracks contained in those playlists from the query source.

Match

This dropdown allows you to specify whether tracks must satisfy all rules or any of the rules.

Rules

This area allows you to add rules to your query.

Sorting

This allows you to specify how the resulting playlist will be ordered

Use rules/XQuery

For users familiar with the XQuery language, this allows you to specify your own custom XQuery. Note that the query must return ENTRY objects to work. See www.tspotter.net for XQuery examples that produce playlists or ask on the user forum.

3.7.1.2 New Playlist

This option creates a new regular Traktor playlist.

3.7.1.3 Copy Playlist

This option creates a duplicate playlist.

3.7.1.4 Edit

This option is only highlighted for dynamic playlists and brings up the same dialog as “New Dynamic Playlist”. This option can also be performed by double-clicking a dynamic playlist.

3.7.1.5 Delete

Deletes the playlist

3.7.2 Playlist Viewer

The area to the right of the Playlist Tree is the Playlist Viewer. This will show you the contents of the playlists selected in the Playlist Tree.

Tracks can be selected and dragged and dropped to Traktor. Use CONTROL+A to select all the tracks in the playlist.

Double clicking on a track in the playlist viewer will find your track in your collection and invoke the search, tag or playlist functions, depending on what mode is selected (see 3.1).

3.8 Batch processing tabs

The batch processing tabs for items in the Tools menu all allow you to pick from either your entire collection or a playlist.

The bottom of the tab shows the progress and output of the tasks being performed. This will vary depending on the tasks being performed.

The “Total progress” bar tells you how far through your collection or playlist you are, and if you move your mouse over the bar, the tooltip will tell you when it estimates the batch processing will finish.

The Start and Stop buttons control the execution of the tasks. The Stop button will stop processing after the current threads have finished executing.

The number of processing threads allows you to process more than one item at once which speeds up processing time, however, more threads doesn’t always decrease the processing time as your hard drive can become a bottleneck. It’s recommended that you leave this set this to no more than the number of processing cores in your machine.

4 Using Trainspotter

4.1 Tagging your Traktor Collection from Discogs

This section describes the steps involved in tagging your Traktor collection using information from Discogs.

4.1.1 Searching for a matching release

When you select a track in on the collection tab in Search Mode, Trainspotter will use the available information stored in your Traktor collection to query Discogs and display matches in the Search Results window. See the preference setting Maximum number of search results to retrieve from Discogs

Sometimes the displayed search results won’t contain any releases or won’t contain the exact release that you have. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the track isn’t listed in Discogs, but you’ll have to do some additional digging to find the release.

To help you find releases in Discogs there are four search buttons (Artist, Album, Label and Collection) that you can use to take you to pages in Discogs where you may find the release you’re looking for.

Alternatively, you can highlight a portion of the filename to use to search discogs.

If you have already registered with Discogs and have put all your releases in your Discogs collection, then you can use the “Collection” button to search your Discogs collection.

4.1.2 Selecting a matching release

If your release appears in the Search Results window, select it, and the browser window beneath will take you to the release page in Discogs. Trainspotter will automatically do this for you if only one release appears in the search results.

Once the browser window is showing a “release” page in Discogs, you will be able to select the track from the release that you were originally searching for. Trainspotter will help you out here by trying to guess which track by comparing the name of the track in your Traktor collection with the ones in the release, and also by using the Track Number of the track if present.

See the preference setting Maximum number of characters that can be different before two track names are considered different

4.1.3 Updating your Traktor collection

Once you have selected (or Trainspotter has selected for you) the matching track, you can click “Update Fields”. This will update the entry in your Traktor collection with data held in Discogs. If Trainspotter detects that there are other tracks in your Traktor collection that are also on the release, Trainspotter will also update these tracks also. Depending on whether the track names match, Trainspotter may ask you to confirm that track in your Traktor collection matches the one in the Discogs release.

After all the tracks in the release have been updated Trainspotter will automatically select the next track in your Traktor collection to search for.

Use the Add recorded/updated tracks to discogs collection preference setting to add your identified release to your Discogs collection.

4.1.4 How Trainspotter Handles Cover Art

4.1.5 When updating a track, Trainspotter will download cover art to the “images” directory in the same directory as your collection.nml resides. It then inserts relative links to the images in your chosen field (see Apply album art to all tracks in release

When you click the “Download” button in the custom tagging page, if this preference is set, the image that you select will automatically be applied to all track in the release in your collection.

Field to use store image paths) in your entry in your Traktor collection. It will also put a copy of the first image in the folder that the track itself resides, called “folder.jpg”, if the corresponding preference is set (see 5.1.6).

If the file is FLAC or MP3 then Trainspotter will also update the embedded cover art in the file.

If you don’t want Trainspotter to update your Comments field, then remove it from the “Fields to update” preference (see 5.1.9).

4.2 Recording tracks

4.2.1 Prerequisites

1. Click Edit->Preferences from the menu.

2. Click on the Recording item on the left hand pane

3. Verify that all the settings are correct for your machine, see Recording.

4.2.2 Selecting a track to record

1. To select a track to record you first need to browse to a release page in the browser on the Discogs Browser page.

2. Once on a release page use the “Select Matching Track” drop down to select the track you want to record.

3. Click the record button.

Your audio editor program should start and it should load a blank WAV file created using the Filename Format you specified and the WAV file audio format you specified. The track will also have been added to you Traktor collection.

4. Record the track as normal.

4.3 Ripping tracks

4.3.1 Prerequisites

1. You need to have installed third party software for extracting digital audio from CDs.

2. Click Edit->Preferences from the menu.

3. Click on the Recording item on the left hand pane

4. Verify that all the settings are correct for your ripping software, see Recording.

4.3.2 Ripping a release

5. Put the CD in your drive

6. Open the Discogs tab in Trainspotter

7. Browse to a “release” page in discogs matching your CD

8. Click the Rip button

9. Select the tracks you want to rip

10. Click OK

11. Ripping progress is shown in the status bar in Trainspotter. When ripping is complete the wav files are added to you collection

4.4 Encoding tracks to FLAC and MP3

4.4.1 Why?

Although WAV files allow you to store some image information inside them, this is not read by Traktor Pro. Nor does Traktor Pro read the folder.jpg file from the tracks directory to use as cover art. Traktor Pro stores cover art in a proprietary format that makes it impossible for third party applications to programmatically alter. The only way of modifying it is through Traktor Pro itself.

FLAC is a lossless audio file format that can store cover art inside it, and is able to read by Traktor Pro. Hence by converting your WAV files to FLAC, you’ll be able to view the cover art in Traktor Pro.

If you choose to encode tracks to MP3 the cover art will also be available, but there will be some loss in audio quality (the amount of which will depend on your encoder settings).

4.4.2 Prerequisites

1. Click Edit->Preferences from the menu.

2. Click on the Encoding item on the left hand pane

3. Verify that all the settings are correct for your machine, see Encoding.

4.4.3 Starting and Stopping encoding

1. Click Tools->Encode Collection to FLAC/MP3

2. The Encode to FLAC/MP3 tab appears

3. Click Start Encoding

Trainspotter will now scan your Traktor collection for any WAV files and encode them to FLAC or MP3 and embedding the first image as the cover art. The window shows the current encoding progress.

4. You can stop the encoding at any time by pressing the Stop Encoding button. This will instruct Trainspotter to stop encoding after the current track has been encoded.

Trainspotter will save your collection after it has encoded each track.

4.5 Applying custom tags to tracks

4.5.1 Why?

Traktor allows you to search your entire collection to find matching tracks given various search terms. If you have a large collection finding the right track to play next can be quite a challenge. Traktor gives you to a Comments2 field in which you can write free text about the track. The problem is, if you want to use this as a method of categorising your tracks it will take you a very long time indeed to type descriptions in to the Comments2 fields in all your tracks, and also you may not spell everything correctly or describe things consistently, the result is that when you go and search in Traktor, not all the tracks you hoped would appear show up in your search results.

Trainspotter allows you to define a set of custom tags that you can embed in the Comments2 field, so you can describe and categorise tracks in a way that makes sense to you.

For example, you could define a set of tags to use indicating the time of night that a track might be played at, time_early, time_middle, time_primetime, time_end. You could then apply these tags to your tracks and search for them in Traktor.

You can also use these to describe things like:

Þ Instruments used

Þ Rhythm type

Þ Bassline type

Þ Mood

Þ Energy level

4.6 Creating Dynamic Playlists

4.6.1 Why?

Currently Traktor only produces lists of tracks from a certain genre/label/artist/release. It’s not possible to create playlists that represent a query of your whole collection. iTunes allows you to define smart playlists but the data that is available is only from the file itself and not from your collection. So, for example, iTunes would not be able to give you a smart playlist of all your beatgridded tracks or all the tracks that had loops defined.

4.6.2 Using Dynamic Playlists

One good use of dynamic playlists is to define them based on the custom tag values you have defined. The field that you need to use is the “RATING” field as this is the field that stored the Comments2 data.

See www.tspotter.net for examples of dynamic playlists.

4.7 Detecting Keys

4.7.1 Why

Tracks that have the same key or a compatible key generally sound better mixed together. Knowing what key the playing track is in can help select a song in a compatible key or tell you by how many semitones you need to raise or lower your next track.

4.7.2 Using Key Detection

First, make sure you have set your preferences on the “Key detection” page of the preferences. This allows you to specify what format you write your keys in, how Trainspotter colours keyed tracks in the collection browser, and to specify an external program to decode your non WAV, FLAC and MP3 audio files to WAV format (the key detection in Trainspotter requires audio files either in WAV format or to be able to be decoded to WAV format).

Once your preferences are set, click “Tools->Key Detection” from the menu.

Next select either all tracks or a playlist of tracks to detect the keys and click “Start”.

Once you’ve finished you can use the Dynamic Playlists to create a playlist for each key, or pair of compatible major and minor keys.

5 Preferences Reference

5.1 File

5.1.1 My collection.nml file

The path to your collection.nml. Trainspotter will automatically load this file each time it starts.

5.1.2 Periodically save a backup of your collection after updates have been performed

With this setting enabled Trainspotter will save a backup of your collection as you are editing it. If you make a change to your collection and it’s been over a minute since it saved a backup, then a new backup is created.

5.1.3 My collection.nml backup directory

The path to your Traktor backup directory. Trainspotter writes a file called collection.nml.bak to this directory as a running backup of your collection as displayed in Trainspotter. Should Trainspotter exit unexpectedly, you can use this file to continue from where you were last editing it.

5.1.4 Default file open directory

This is the directory that is opened when you click File->Open.

5.1.5 Maximum number of images to store per track

This limits the number of images downloaded from Discogs and also the number of images you can apply to a track in the Custom Tagging tab.

5.1.6 Update folder album art

Many applications will use a file called “folder.jpg” in a track’s directory as the displayable cover art. Checking this item will copy the first image stored against the track to the “folder.jpg” file.

5.1.7 Update embedded art in mp3 and flac files

When enabled and you click “update fields”, this will update mp3 and flac files to contain the cover art in the discogs release.

If you are updating the cover art on the “custom tags” page, the images you select will also be embedded in the mp3 or flac file you are tagging.

5.1.8 Apply album art to all tracks in release

When you click the “Download” button in the custom tagging page, if this preference is set, the image that you select will automatically be applied to all track in the release in your collection.

5.1.9 Field to use store image paths

Trainspotter needs to use a field to store the relative image paths. By default, the comments field is used, but you may want to change this if you are already using comments to store other information.

5.1.10 Fields to update

The tracks in a Traktor collection contain many different fields. Some of these fields you may not want Trainspotter to change. The fields that you don’t want Trainspotter to update should appear in the right hand list. You should include the field assigned to hold relative image paths.

Check the “Write tag values to audio files” if you want the fields updated in you nml file to also be applied to your audio files. Currently the following tags are written:

· Album title

· Artist

· Catalog Number

· Comment

· Genre

· Key

· Lyrics

· Label

· Remixer

· Track Title

· Track Number

Note that Trainspotter does not update any fields not mentioned in the list, such as Cue Points.

5.1.11 Update Mix Fields from History

With this option enabled, Trainspotter will scan through your Traktor history folder and update the MIX field for tracks in your collection with the names of tracks that a particular song has followed.

The result of this is that when you run Traktor you can search for tracks that you have mixed with the current track simply by searching Mix = <current artist> <current track>. This is useful if you know that you’ve previously found a good track to mix with the current one, but can’t remember what it was.

5.1.12 Check for Trainspotter Updates on Startup

This option will automatically inform you if there is a later version of Trainspotter to download from the website.

5.2 Track Import

The settings on this page determine how filenames and paths are turned in to tag information. Users of the Beatport Downloader can set their folder structure, file naming and separator to the same setting as in the Beatport Downloader application.

5.2.1 Folder Structure

Flat (Beatport Option 1)

Trainspotter will ignore the track’s parent folder and just extract information from the filename.

Artist/[Catalog Number] Release/ (Beatport Option 2)

Trainspotter will assume that the folder structure is formatted the same as Beatport Option 2 and extract the fields accordingly

Label/[Catalog Number] Release/ (Beatport Option 3)

Trainspotter will assume that the folder structure is formatted the same as Beatport Option 3 and extract the fields accordingly

Artist/Release

Trainspotter will assume that the folder structure is formatted and extract the fields accordingly

5.2.2 File Naming

TrackID-TrackName-MixName (Beatport Option 1)

Trainspotter will assume that the filename is formatted and extract the fields accordingly. The TrackID field is ignored and not stored.

Artist-Track-MixName (Beatport Option 2)

Trainspotter will assume that the filename is formatted and extract the fields accordingly

Label-Track-MixName (Beatport Option 3)

Trainspotter will assume that the filename is formatted and extract the fields accordingly

Artist – Track

Trainspotter will assume that the filename is formatted and extract the fields accordingly

5.2.3 Preferred Separator

Set this character to the one used to separate fields in the filename

5.3 Look and Feel

5.3.1 Window width

The width of the Trainspotter window when opened.

5.3.2 Window height

The height of the Trainspotter window when opened.

5.3.3 Open window maximized

Opens Trainspotter maximized.

5.3.4 Run on top

Forces Trainspotter to always be the topmost window.

5.3.5 Default grouping column

The value of the Group By dropdown when Trainspotter starts.

5.3.6 Show the following fields in your collection

A list of the track fields to display in the collection tab.

5.3.7 Height of rows in collection browser

Use this to adjust the row height, this will clip the bottom of the cover art off at lower settings, similar to the browser in Traktor Pro. The effect of changing this setting will only be seen the next time you start Trainspotter.

5.3.8 Display embedded cover art in collection browser

When enabled this tell Trainspotter to read the embedded cover art from flac and mp3 files. If you have a large collection this will increase the startup time of Trainpotter.

5.3.9 Maximum number of cover art images to cache

When Trainspotter loads your collection it reads the cover art to display in the collection browser. Depending on the size of your collection and the amount of images included in the tracks this can mount up to be a large amount of data. This setting limits the amount of images that Trainspotter loads. This means a tradeoff between the startup time and the number of images displayed in the browser.

If you have a large collection, there is a risk that your machine will run out of memory or file handles when starting up. Should this happen you will need to manually edit the Trainspotter.properties file (see ) and set the image.cache.size to a lower value and restart.

5.3.10 Key Colours

The “Start Hue” option allows you to set the colours of the keys as they are shown in the circle of fifths. The value chosen for the Start Hue is the colour that will be applied to E Major and C#/Db Minor. 0/360 is red, 60 is yellow, 120 is green, 180 is cyan, 240 is blue, 300 is purple.

5.4 Searching

5.4.1 Maximum number of search results to retrieve from Discogs

Limits the number of search results returned. Note that Discogs allows only 2000 queries per day per IP address, and increasing the number of search results retrieved will use up those queries quicker, and also take longer to display.

5.4.2 Add recorded/updated tracks to discogs collection

When you click either “Update Fields” or “Record” this setting will add the release displayed in the Discogs Browser tab to your Discogs collection, as if you had clicked “Add to Collection” on that page.

5.4.3 Match filenames to regular expression

Here you can supply a regular expression to help Trainspotter extract tag values from your audio filenames before it queries Discogs. If you’re not familiar with regular expressions post your filename format to the user forum and we’ll help you out.

5.4.4 The regular expression group to use for (artist/catalog number/track/label)

Once Trainspotter has matched the filename to the regular expression, fields can be assigned to the matching groups (i.e. the characters matched between the brackets) and used to search discogs and match track names.

If you are using a regular expression that only matches a selection of the tags, set the group numbers for the unused tags to number greater than number of groups you are capturing.

For example, say your filename looked like:

The Beatles – Yesterday.wav

And your regular expression was:

.+ ([^-]+)-([^-]\.)\.wav$

Then you would set the artist group number to be 1, the track name group number to be 2, and all others to be group number 3.

5.4.5 Maximum number of characters that can be different before two track names are considered different

Sometimes the track name that you have in your collection doesn’t match the one held in Discogs for the same release. There are many causes for this including typos, different punctuation and different capitalisation.

When Trainspotter tries to match a track name in your Traktor collection to a track name in a release in Discogs it ignores case and punctuation and also allows for a limited number of characters to be different before it identifies it as a match.

For example if the setting is 3 characters:

Traktor Track Name	Discogs Track Name	Match
hello world (the remix)	Hello World (The Remix)	Yes (case is ignored)
hello world the remix	Hello World (The Remix)	Yes (case and punctuation ignored)
hello world (88 remix)	Hello World (‘88 mix)	Yes (remix and mix differ by less than or equal to 3 characters)
hello world (remix)	Hello World (The Remix)	Yes (track titles differ by less than or equal to 3 characters
hello world	Hello World (The Remix)	No (track titles too different)

This setting is used in two places:

Þ when Trainspotter finds only one matching release for a track it will try and automatically select that track from the dropdown

Þ when Trainspotter is updating fields on other tracks on the same release in your Traktor collection it will use this algorithm. If Trainspotter doesn’t find a match here then it will prompt you to select a matching track from the dropdown.

5.4.6 Additional Google image search parameters

Google images allows you to refine your search by providing additional parameters on the query string. If you open up a browser and browse to google images, each time you refine you search parameters, different parameters and values appear after the question mark in the URL. The default setting, imgsz=qsvga, corresponds to images “larger than 400x300”. Other setting you might want to use are:

Þ imgsz=vga - “larger than 640x480”

Þ imgsz=s – “small”

Þ imgsz=m – “medium”

Þ imgsz=l – “large”

5.5 Recording

5.5.1 Recordings directory

The directory where Trainspotter will write blank audio files when you click “Record”.

5.5.2 Filename format

The filename format of the blank audio files created when you click “Record”. Note that the filename format can contain slashes, this allows you to specify a directory structure to store your recordings in.

This filename format is also used when encoding files to MP3 or FLAC.

5.5.3 Recorded audio format

The sample rate and bit depth of audio files that are created when you click “Record”.

5.5.4 Audio file editor command

The command line that Trainspotter invokes when you click “Record”. Trainspotter will append to this line the name of the blank audio file it has just created. Construct this command line so that your audio editor opens the file for editing.

5.5.5 Rip Command

The path to the program that Trainspotter runs for each track you see when you press the “Rip” button.

5.5.6 Parameters to Rip Command

The parameters that are supplied to the “Rip Command”.

%n will inline a two character track index, e.g. 01

%N will inline a single character track index

%f will inline the filename (in the format specified by “Filename format”)

5.5.7 Rip command outputs to standard error

In order to show the progress of the ripping operation, Trainspotter can read either the standard output or standard error streams. If the wrong one is selected the ripping process will hang. If this happens, change this preference and try again.

5.6 Encoding

5.6.1 Path to FLAC encoder

The path to your FLAC encoder executable in your filesystem.

5.6.2 FLAC arguments

The command line arguments to supply to FLAC. -0 gives the least compression, -10 the greatest

5.6.3 FLAC output directory

The directory where encoded audio files will be written. The Filename Format parameter also applies to encoded audio files.

5.6.4 Path to LAME encoder

The path to your LAME encoder executable in your filesystem.

5.6.5 LAME arguments

The command line arguments to supply to LAME – see the LAME documentation for details.

5.6.6 LAME output directory

The directory where encoded audio files will be written. The Filename Format parameter also applies to encoded audio files.

5.6.7 Continue processing when error occurs

If enabled this will halt encoding when the command line encoder returns an error.

5.7 Key detection

5.7.1 Key Labels

These allow you define what text gets written to your collection.nml and your audio file tags when Trainspotter has detected a key.

5.7.2 Overwrite Existing Key Values

By default Trainspotter will not attempt to detect a key for a track that already has a key value defined. However there may be cases where you want to overwrite existing values.

5.7.3 Perform key detection as part of encoding tracks to MP3/FLAC

When selected this will run the key detection process before encoding. This means that the key detection process will be quick as Trainspotter will not have to first decode the audio files to WAV.

5.7.4 Perform key detection after ripping tracks from CD

When selected this will run the key detection process after each track has been ripped.

5.7.5 Path to LAME MP3 encoder

The location of your lame executable if you want to detect keys of MP3s.

5.7.6 Path to FLAC encoder

The location of your lame executable if you want to detect keys of FLAC files

5.7.7 Temporary directory to use for decoded MP3/flac files

The default value for this setting is your system default temporary folder, however it may speed up decoding performance if you change this location to a folder on your fastest hard drive.

5.7.8 Path to audio decoder

The location of a program used to decode an audio file format extension to WAV format.

5.7.9 Arguments to audio decoder

The required arguments to the program to complete the decoding.

5.7.10 Extension to apply audio decoder to

The audio file extension to run the decoder against.

5.8 Custom tag configuration

5.8.1 Type

Whether the tag should be shown as a single select or multi select listbox.

5.8.2 Name

The name of the tag to be displayed in the Custom Tagging tab.

5.8.3 Values

A comma separated list of values that the tag can take. Note that each value should be unique across all tags and should not be a substring of any other tag value, otherwise Trainspotter may mark the value as selected in more than one tag.

5.8.4 Automatically play track when tagging

When selected, Trainspotter will invoke your system default audio playing application to play the track.

5.9 Colours

You can use these settings to change some of the user interface elements in Trainspotter.

5.10 Script

5.10.1 Ant script

The path to an ant script to execute on the collection.

Input property	NML mapping	Output property
album.title	The TITLE attribute from the ALBUM element	output.album.title
artist	The ARTIST attribute from the ENTRY element	output.artist
bpm	The BPM attribute from the TEMPO element	output.bpm
catalog.number	The CATALOG_NO attribute from the INFO element	output.catalog.number
comment	The COMMENT attribute from the INFO element	output.comment
comments2	The RATING attribute from the INFO element	output.comments2
directory	The DIRECTORY attribute from the ENTRY element	output.directory
file	The full path of the audio file	output.file
extension	The audio file extension
genre	The GENRE attribute from the INFO element	output.genre
import.date	The IMPORT_DATE attribute from the INFO element	output.import.date
key	The KEY attribute from the INFO element	output.key
label	The LABEL attribute from the INFO element	output.label
lyrics	The LYRICS attribute from the INFO element	output.lyrics
mix	The MIX attribute from the INFO element	output.mix
producer	The PRODUCER attribute from the INFO element	output.producer
ranking	The RANKING attribute from the INFO element	output.ranking
rating	The RATING attribute from the INFO element	output.rating
release.date	The RELEASE_DATE attribute from the INFO element	output.release.date
remixer	The REMIXER attribute from the INFO element	output.remixer
title	The TITLE attribute from the ENTRY element	output.title
track.number	The TRACK attribute from the ALBUM element	output.track.number
xml	The XML fragment of the entry

5.11 File relocation

5.11.1 Relocation root directory

Use this to select the base directory that files should be moved/copied to.

5.11.2 Filename format

This is the setting that determines the directory and filename structure of your audio files. The text that you can put in here is the same format as in Filename format.

5.11.3 Copy files when relocating

By default audio files are copied, unchecking this setting will mean that files are moved. Note that if the files are on different drives or volumes and this setting is unchecked, the files will be removed from the source drive or volume.

6 Troubleshooting

6.1 Log File

On Windows XP Trainspotter logs to <user home directory>\My Documents\Trainspotter\trainspotter.log, e.g. C:\documents and settings\fred\My Documents\Trainspotter\trainspotter.log

On Windows Vista and Windows 7 Trainspotter logs to <user home directory>\Documents\Trainspotter\trainspotter.log, e.g. C:\Users\fred\ Documents\Trainspotter\trainspotter.log

On OSX Trainspotter logs to <user home directory>/Documents/Trainspotter/trainspotter.log, e.g.

/Users/fred/Documents/Trainspotter/trainspotter.log

The logging is controlled by a log4j.properties file in the Trainspotter install directory, e.g. c:\program files\Trainspoterr\lg4j.properties on Windows, or /Applications/Trainspotter/Trainspotter.app/Contents/Resources/Java on OS X

6.2 Settings file

Trainspotter reads its settings from a file called Trainspotter.properties which is located in the same directory as the log file.

If you find that Trainspotter no longer starts up fully it may be necessary to edit this file to change one of the settings back. If you delete the properties file, a new one is created and you are presented with the preferences dialog with the default settings.

If your settings are not being preserved from one session to the next, check that your Trainspotter.properties file is writable by the user running Trainspotter.

7 Acknowledgements

Trainspotter uses the following third party libraries:

· Apache ant - http://ant.apache.org - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· Apache Commons - http://commons.apache.org/ - Codec, Collections, HttpClient, IO, Lang, Logging - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· Apache log4j - http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/index.html - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· Apache Xalan - http://xalan.apache.org/ - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· Apache XMLbeans - http://xmlbeans.apache.org/sourceAndBinaries/index.html - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· SWT - http://www.eclipse.org/swt/ - under Eclipse Public License v1.0

· Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ Eclipse Public License v1.0 - commands, runtime, equinox common, jface, osgi, ui forms, ui workbench

· Xerces - http://archive.apache.org/dist/xml/xerces-j/ - under Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

· The Saxon XSLT and XQuery Processor from Saxonica Limited - http://www.saxonica.com/ See http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/conditions/contributors.html for a list of included third party components

· This product includes the TrueLicense Library Collection (TrueLicence) which has been developed by Schlichtherle IT Services (http://schlichtherle.de) and is covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).

· This product includes modified example code published on Sun's Java web site at http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/swing/wizard/index.html.

· JAudioTagger - http://www.jthink.net/jaudiotagger/ under the Lesser GPL - http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html

· Minim - http://code.compartmental.net/minim/distro/minim-2.0.2-full.zip - under the Lesser General Public License http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0-standalone.html

Trainspotter also integrates with the following:

LAME - www.mp3dev.org

FLAC - http://flac.sourceforge.net/