APE's track information editor

Smart Playlist Editor

APE running under MacOS through Mono

Advanced Playlists Editor for Traktor Pro (or APE for short) has been designed to ease the process of managing Traktor's collection while providing a set of advanced (yet very easy to use) tools that allow operations that cannot be performed with Traktor nor any other tool (such as iTunes).

Please note that this version of APE is still considered a beta which basically means that (a) not all features are implemented and (b) those that are, are not guaranteed to work.
Also, the documentation included with this release is not complete but should help you get started and take advantage of the many options provided by APE.

History

Well, I decided to write this program after all the frustration and problems that I encountered trying to manage my music collection through Traktor.
I did try using alternative tools, such as iTunes, but the tools I tried either non provided everything I needed or they simply didn’t work. iTunes was the one that came closer to provide everything I needed but (sorry) I just can’t stand it.

So what were the problems I was having?

Importing new music

I have a generic playlist where I store all the music I use for live performances and then I have several sub-playlists where I store tracks based on a particular theme. For example, I have a playlist called “70’s” where I store all the tracks that are modern remixes from 70’s tracks. Of course, some of those tracks could also fit inside other playlists, such as “Electro” which is where I store tracks with the so-common electro sounds. An example would be “Shaft - Mucho Mambo [Michael Fox & Taito Remix]”.

So I needed a way to determine: (a) which tracks had already been classified into the sub-playlists and (b) to which playlists did the track already belonged to.
The latest version of Traktor Pro (1.1.2) has the new option “Search in Playlists” but to access this option you need to right click the track and then you get a modal window with the playlists that contain the track – not very useful.
With APE you just select a track (either in the collection or in a playlist) and it will automatically highlight the playlists that contain that track; just by selecting it. Actually, you can even select multiple tracks at once and APE will highlight the playlists that contain the selected tracks.

Managing the collection

This was probably by biggest issue.
We all know the numerous issues that Traktor has detecting changes in the files’ tags and, to make things worse, NI removed the Read/Write tags options! Well, the ID3 version 2.4 tag editor included in APE will let you:

1. Read the tags in your track(s)
2. Write the information for the track(s) into the tags
3. Both (1) and (2) are (by default) performed automatically so you always have both the information in the collection and your files’ tags synchronized
4. And this is the one that I love: you can even rename the file from within the ID3 tag editor window and APE will make sure that both the collection and any playlist containing the track is updated accordingly!

As expected, APE also supports the standard management features in Traktor, such as:

• Creating/Renaming/Deleing playlists
• Creating/Renaming/Deleing folders

But APE also provides the following additional options:

• The ability to duplicate playlists (something that I’ve found quite helpful)
• Automatically remove duplicate tracks from any given playlist
• Export any number of playlists into “standardized” formats
• Physically delete tracks from disk (this feature is now available in the latest version of Traktor but the difference is that APE will not actually delete the tracks but move them to the Recycle Bin)

Importing a collection

This is probably the coolest feature in APE.

I do my live performances using my laptop but I just don’t want to use my laptop when I’m in my studio, I prefer to use my desktop PC (for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, my laptop uses XP and my desktop uses Vista so I cannot just copy the collection.nml file from my laptop into my desktop and vice-versa because the folders containing my media are completely different so, until now, I’ve been forced to maintain my collection using my laptop.

But now, with APE, I can import a collection from any source and map the folders in the collection to folders on the local computer. This allows me to perform modifications to my collection in either computer and keep them synchronized. Of course, this feature has many applications which I’m sure I don’t need to explain...

It’s a pain to create manual playlists!

Yep, it is a pain... and that’s why most modern players use/supports smart playlists, and so does APE.
Of course, APE’s Smart Playlists feature have been optimized for Traktor so the available options are specifically targeted to ease the collection organization.

Click here to download APE