Markers in Playlists and AutoDJ

[webdb22]

Feature Description

It would be great to have some kind of "Markers" in Playlists and in AutoDJ. Use cases would be to be able mark the beginning of a specific part in a playlist e.g. a special type of music; or where to hand over or hand back, e.g. last song before handing over to a live band or the first song when starting again after a live band; or when preparing a playlist to know where a part is still missing, e.g. where the songs from a wish-list need to be inserted.

From a UI perspective this "Marker" could be simple an entry like any other song in a Playlist or AutoDJ, the difference being that it has only a text field and no other attributes, and could be coloured to make it easy visible. The default could be just a single horizontal line, if some text is entered, it could be displayed centred on the line, e.g.:

-------------------------------------- Hand over to Live Band here ----------------------------------

As a workaround I'm currently using a short, silent track labled with dashes ("---------"), but that is very limited and has quite some drawbacks, so a proper implementation would be useful.

Thanks for considering this feature request and happy to discuss further!

[daschuer]

This is almost a duplicate of https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/6796

[webdb22]

@daschuer Thanks for promptly looking into it!

Agree, there is an overlap with #6796 or rather my suggestion being a subset from a functional perspective, as #6796 describes actions linked to the "Markers", whereas I'm looking for just the visual clues.

Maybe the "Markers" I proposed could be a first iteration as they could be visual basically identical to what is described in #6796, and the second iteration could add the actions to these visual elements?!

I've also suggested this "Markers" to be available in Playlists also, not only in AutoDJ, to be able to use these "Markers" already when preparing stuff.

[Holzhaus]

I think there are alternatives for this use case. Instead of a "handover to live band" marker, you could just use two playlists (one before, one after).

Another option would be using track colors. For example, the color red could mean "insert wishlist track after this one".

[webdb22]

@Holzhaus Thanks for your ideas and sure, there are workarounds for these use cases, like e.g. the "silent" track I've tried, but the point of this "feature request" is to have a proper solution for theses use cases (any maybe others).

Regarding your alternatives:

• Using different playlist before and after a "handover" might work for one, but if you have more than one handover, e.g. 4 live sets during an evening, you'd easily get lost with several playlist, especially if you need to move tracks because e.g. the schedule has slightly changed. With "Markers" you'd have just one playlist with 4 "Markers" and you could move things around easily.
• The colors are track attributes afaik, so coloring it in one playlist, would color the same track in any other playlist. A "Marker" would be specific to the playlist where used and could be labled.

[daschuer]

Such nice to have feature request will probable never become reale without a contributor with intrinsic interests. Do you have some skills to start with it?

The silence track workaround seems to be close to a possible solution, because we need a kind of track like base, to drag and drop / move it.

So let's have a look to this. What we need to add to make it a marker:

• Not loadable to the deck
• Not add-able to crates
• Holding an Auto-DJ action/Any other action

Than we need a GUI to add an configure them.

Many you can scribble a Mock-up for discussion?

[Holzhaus]

Another option we could consider that is possibly more flexible would be something like per-playlist track comments. I suppose this would be easier to implement, covers the use cases mentioned above and saves vertical space.

[daschuer]

This has the drawback that you do not have handle for drag and drop. For instance if you have commented a track as the last track before handover to the band and than skip one track before and you want to add another track at the end, you need to delete the comment from the original last track and add it to the new one. With an independent hand-over marker it would be just a drop before the end marker.

[daschuer]

This has the drawback that you do not have handle for drag and drop. For instance if you have commented a track as the last track before handover to the band and than skip one track before and you want to add another track at the end, you need to delete the comment from the original last track and add it to the new one. With an independent hand-over marker it would be just a drop before the end marker.

[Holzhaus]

I think DnD could be solved,e.g. by holding some modifier key or something. The comments approach would also work for use cases such as announcements ("the next song is for $name").

[uklotzde]

Feel free to adopt some of the ideas implemented in aoide.

Extended as requested and used by ballroom-dancing/samba.

[daschuer]

The comments approach would also work for use cases such as announcements ("the next song is for $name").

Oh yes, that makes perfectly sense. We can also use such comments to give the auto-DJ/human DJ hints for the transition.

So I think we need both, track dependent markers and position dependent markers, almost like markers on an empty track.

[Eve00000]

You misunderstood, I meant virtual filetypes, insread of the mp3, wav,... only exissting in the database as records...