Feedback on Auto-DJ Crates

[Dale]

Two points, one is a simple bug in the text.

When right-clicking on a crate which has been added to remove it the text still says "Add Crate As Track Source" although it should clearly say Remove/Delete.

I have to admit I didn't understand how the crates were working until I found this bug report where it is explained.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/1444328

Would I expected, and think would be a better feature than just being able to add tracks at random from thee crates, would be to play through the selected crate (or Playlist if also added) indefinitely/until all tracks are played. Either than or be able to enable Autoplay from other windows and have it working on whatever is currently visible in the Library window (this would be a very nice feature actually, you could use the Search and change the artist you are playing as your mood takes you. I admit currently I use Rhythmbox for everyday playback though...)

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

Hi Dale,

Thanks a bunch for the feedback! One thing of note is that we aim for Mixxx to be a live-performance DJing app, and explicitly avoid supporting the use cases around desktop media players to avoid bloating the code and increasing complexity.

To this end, we've kept all the "auto-play" features confined to the "Auto DJ" section of the app.

Hope that explains a bit of why we don't support what you're asking for. I agree that our verbiage and explanations of Auto DJ creates a little confusing / unclear -- so we should improve that.

[Dale (dj-kaza)]

Fair enough, it's not something I personally expect to ever touch again ;)

Still once crates are added it seems weird you can't click on them to play the contents,once they are added they only be used for random addition of tracks one by one to the playlist. Why not be able to click on the added Crate and have it play through it. That would still be locked within the AutoDJ section and be more intuitive to me.

Plus don't miss the minor textual bug ;)

[Daniel Schürmann (daschuer)]

Hi Dale,

thank you for the bug report, would you mind to file a new bug for the textual bug?

This one can be used for discuss Auto DJ + crates / playlists improvements.

The official way to play a whole playlist, is to add the playlist's tracks to the Auto DJ queue. The Auto DJ queue is a reliable instance that shows what comes next and IMHO important for a DJ set.

The Crates, are not Playlists, that means the tracks are group together, without setting up a play order. The random approach is not that bad for this case.

Do you have an idea to improve the playlist handling without breaking the auto DJ queue?

[Dale (dj-kaza)]

I just created a Playlist for the first time (I don't use them) and with the right-click option to add to AutoDJ list (at either top or bottom) seems pretty reasonable with the way you have it set up. Maybe a third option to overwrite whole AutoDJ playlist??

Playlists themselves seem a little weird to control though. If they are not listed by play position number then I don't understand the logic behind what is happened with the play position data when I try and drag and drop them (the number changes but I can't work out in reference to what, although the list stays in the order as selected by whichever tab was clicked.) When importing my selection, which was a whole Crate I had sorted by BPM, the order added to the Playlist was not the same order as displayed within the Crate. Playlists will usually want to go roughly up or down in tempo, maybe a few skips up and down a little and some double or half tempo pieces, but you get the idea...

So not AutoDJ but Playlists themselves it would be nice if the tracks added (when multiple selection) were added in the order in the view they are added from (I guess it's order in library/on disk.) Maybe an option to also set current view as play order, so if random tracks were added in a session (like I do with Crates) then the user could sort by BPM, set this is order and then play through a few times tweaking to perfection as they find bits that clash or others that work perfectly etc.

Within AutoDJ for similar reasons I think it would be good to be able to use the tabs to change playback order (playback always follows display in this case??) for similar reasons.

[Swiftb0y (swiftb0y)]

Mixxx now uses GitHub for bug tracking. This bug has been migrated to:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/8571