18
Playing your first track
Now that you have calibrated Scratch
LIVE
, you are ready to play
your first track. We will return to the
setup
screen later to set
general system preferences.
When you first run Scratch
LIVE
, your library contains only
the pre-installed tracks. Load files into Scratch
LIVE
by pressing
the
import
button. Navigate the hard drive of your computer to
locate your audio files. Click on these files (or folders containing
files) and drag them onto the
✽
All
…
icon.
You can also import by dragging files and folders directly
from Windows Explorer (PC version) or Finder (Mac version)
into the Scratch
LIVE
library (see pic below).
Scratch
LIVE
supports importing M3U playlists.
Loading tracks
Click on the
✽
All…
icon to show all the tracks in your library.
To load a track on to one of the decks, drag the track from the
track list on to either deck. You can drag the same track on to
both decks to load it onto both turntables.
Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut
shift
to load the highlighted
track on to the left deck, and
shift
to load the highlighted track on
to the right deck.
To start playing a track, simply put the needle on the record
and start the turntable. The track will start playing from the posi-
tion dictated by the placement of the needle on the record – if
you place the needle at the beginning of the record, the track will
start playing from the beginning. You can skip through the track
by picking up the needle and placing it further into the record,
just as with regular records (This is known as needle dropping).
Supported file types
Scratch
LIVE
supports fixed and variable bit rate .MP3, Ogg Vor
-
bis, .AIFF, .AAC and .WAV file types. iTunes™ library and iTunes
playlists can be automatically imported in the
setup
screen by
clicking
read iTunes library
. See
Rescan 1D3 tags
on page 35.
NOTE: iTunes Music Store DRM-protected files are not able to
be played back using Scratch
LIVE
.
Preparing your files
Build overviews
If you run Scratch
LIVE
with the hardware interface disconnected,
you will notice a button labeled
build overviews
on the main
screen. Click this to automatically build the overviews for all the
tracks in your library. The track name (and location) are shown
in the bar immediately below the button. When activated, three
more bars appear. The first bar shows track reading progress, the
second bar shows overview building, and the third bar shows
track writing progress. This process prepares the overviews of all
your tracks, and alerts you to any corrupt files you might have.
These are indicated by
Status Icons,
shown on page 29.
Set auto BPM
If this option is checked, building overviews will include the
estimated tempos of your files. If Scratch
LIVE
is confident that
the auto BPM estimate for a file is accurate, it will be written to
an ID3 tag in the file. The auto BPM function will not be applied
if the track already contains BPM information. If you know your
files BPM will fall within a certain range, use the range dropdown
to avoid double or half value BPMs being calculated.
Note: As
auto BPM
is part of the overview building process, files
in your library with overviews already built will not be processed
by clicking the
build overviews
button. To rebuild overviews and
use auto BPM or auto gain on those files, drag them onto the
build
overviews
button.
Offline Player
The offline player is available when Scratch
LIVE
hardware is not
connected, and outputs through the current default audio device.
Load a track to the offline player by dragging and dropping onto
the deck, or pressing
shift
. If the end of the loaded track is
reached, the next track in the current playlist is played automati
-
cally.
The offline player is a useful tool for preparing crates, audi-
tioning tracks, and setting cue and loop points.
Note: for more information about cue points and looping, see
page 25. For more information on crate organization, see page 27.