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Prepare window
The prepare window is a holding area for tracks, much like
preparing a set by lifting records part way out of your record bag.
You can drag tracks (or whole crates) from the main track list into
the prepare window, or simply drag them onto the prepare but-
ton. These tracks will be removed from the prepare window once
they have been played. All tracks in the prepare window will be
discarded when you exit Scratch
LIVE
.
Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut ctrl-p to add tracks to the prepare
window.
Tip: Select the contents of the prepare window and drag them
onto the new crate button (+) to save the selection.
Review window
The review window shows the tracks you have recently played
in the order in which they were played. Tracks you have played
recently are colored green – press the
clear
button to reset the list
of recently played tracks.
Tip: Select the contents of the review window and drag them onto
the new crate button (+) to save a history of the tracks you played.
Editing ID3 tags
Much of the information associated with each file can be edited
from within Scratch
LIVE
. Double click on the attribute within
the main library to edit the attribute. Filename, length, size, bit
rate and sampling cannot be edited. This information is saved
in the file itself. Note that the
protect library
option in
setup
must be unchecked to allow edits.
See
Preparing your files
on page 18 for details on prebuild
-
ing overviews and auto BPM.
Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut
ctrl-e
to edit text. Hold down
the ctrl key and move with the arrow keys to change to a different
field while staying in edit mode. When you have more than one file
selected, editing tags changes all the files in your selection.
Tip: The second column in the library
�
is the label color for
that file. Click it to bring up a color palette, and customize the vir-
tual deck for that file.
Display album art
MP3 files can contain album art information. To display this
album art, click the
show album art
button. There are many
third party applications available for adding album art to MP3s.
We recommend Apple’s iTunes™.
Status icons
The leftmost column shows the status of each track. The image to
the left shows 5 tracks with differing statuses.
From top to bottom:
• Scratch
LIVE
has detected some corruption in the
MP3 file. If possible, re-encode the MP3.
• The track has been imported from the iTunes™
library.
• The track has been imported from the iTunes library,
and Scratch
LIVE
has detected some corruption in the
MP3 file.
Solution:
If possible, re-encode the MP3.
• The track cannot be found. Most likely the file has
been renamed or moved.
• Scratch
LIVE
is trying to import a track from the
iTunes library, but cannot find the file.
• Tracks that are read-only have a locked icon.
More info on corrupt files
If you have a corrupt file in your library, hover your mouse over
the status icon for information on what type of corruption was
found. Detailed explanations of these messages can be found on
page 41, and more help with these is at
scratchlive.net
.
Playing tracks direct from audio CD
You can play tracks direct from an audio CD in your CD-ROM
drive. When you insert the CD into your computer, it appears
under your Scratch
LIVE
library. Click on the CD and the tracks
will be displayed in the track list.
Tip: Disable any third-party CD Auto-Play functions before
inserting a CD, as they may interfere with Scratch
LIVE
.
Previewing tracks
You can preview the tracks in your library using your computer’s
default media player. Highlight a track and press
ctrl-o
. This will
launch the player your computer has associated with the file type,
and start playback. Also applies to the
import
panel.
Autobackup
Scratch
LIVE
stores your library database and crates information
in a
ScratchLIVE
folder on your hard disk. This folder is created on
a drive when files from that drive are added to Scratch
LIVE
. This
way, there is one on your system drive and there will be one on
every external drive that you use with Scratch
LIVE
.
Auto backup creates a copy of the Scratch
LIVE
folder on your
system drive once a week on startup. If an external drive contain
-
ing a Scratch
LIVE
folder is detected it will be backed up if the last
backup on that drive is older than a week or if no backup exists.
A copy of each
ScratchLIVE
folder called
ScratchLIVEbackup
is
created next to the folder it is backing up.
Auto-Backup will only keep
one
level backup at a time. Each
time autobackup runs it overwrites the previous backup.