Clean

Clean is where CuePoint matches your library to Beatport and helps you fix what it finds: tracks to review, files that have gone missing, possible duplicates, and a count of everything that needs you. It works on the library you imported on the Library page, so import a collection first.

Clean has five tabs: Review matches, Fix values, Missing files, Duplicates and Health. It reopens on the tab you used last. Each tab opens with a line saying what it is for, and the tabs show where work waits: Review matches (42) counts the tracks waiting for you plus those that changed since you decided, Missing files (3) and Duplicates (5) count what the last check found; Duplicates counts the tracks in duplicate groups, not the groups. A tab shows no number when nothing is waiting, or when that check has never run.

Match tracks…, in the page’s header, opens the window where many tracks are matched on Beatport; see Matching. Three things hold everywhere on this page:

• Clean deletes nothing. No track, file or playlist is removed, moved or renamed by anything here.
• Moving a file is done in Rekordbox. Clean shows which files are missing; Rekordbox’s Relocate is how you point a track at its new place.
• Tags written to files reach Rekordbox only when Rekordbox re-reads them. Until you choose Reload Tag in Rekordbox, it keeps showing the old values.

Review matches

CuePoint looks each track up on Beatport. Sure matches are accepted for you; the rest wait here for a yes or no. The first time you open Clean, with nothing looked up yet, it offers Match all N tracks… and says what that does: CuePoint searches Beatport for each track to find the right release, key and label, in the background, and you can keep using the app. The offer opens the match window with Tracks not looked up yet chosen. Choose a playlist first takes you to the In menu; pick one and the match window opens on it.

Save review list as a file…, in the page’s header, is described under Saving the review list.

The review queue is a table of tracks, chosen by two menus:

• Show — which tracks: Waiting for you, Changed since you decided, Accepted, Rejected, No match or Not matched.
• In — where: the whole library, a Rekordbox playlist, one of your Collections or a Smart Collection.

Matching

Match tracks… opens a window that asks which tracks:

• Tracks not looked up yet, with how many there are.
• All tracks.
• Tracks in chosen playlists, Collections or Sets: tick any mix of Rekordbox playlists, your Collections and your Sets, the same places the Library’s In playlist filter offers.
• The N tracks you chose, when you came from somewhere with tracks selected: the Library’s notice line or a Health count. In Review matches, Match tracks… opens on the tracks you selected, or else on the playlist chosen in In.

Look up tracks that already have a match again is off unless you turn it on. Left off, only the tracks not looked up yet are searched, and the window says how many that is for what you chose. The window ends with what it will do, for example “CuePoint will search Beatport for 1,204 tracks.” Matching runs in the background: a note on the page says how many tracks are being matched, that the bar at the bottom shows progress and the list updates when it finishes, and you can leave the page. The status strip shows Matching on Beatport with its progress and a Stop button. One track is matched in place with Search Beatport again for this track, in Review, and from Track details.

A track already matched or decided is skipped, so matching a playlist twice does not look anything up twice, unless you choose to look them all up again. A decision you made is kept either way; if a newer search found a different best match than the one you chose, the track is marked Changed since you decided so you can look again.

Matching takes a while: each track is several Beatport searches. A match you stopped, or one that CuePoint’s closing cut short, can be carried on: the review queue says how many tracks it left, with Resume, and the Activity entry for an interrupted match offers Resume too. Resuming matches only the tracks it had not reached; nothing is matched twice.

What matching decides for you

Every candidate a match found is kept, with its score and the reason it was turned down, so you can pick another one later.

Deciding

Select a track and the Comparison below the queue shows it beside its candidates: key, BPM, genre, label, year and release. A value that differs from your track is marked with ≠ as well as a color. The Key row shows Rekordbox’s key against Beatport’s, and says Rekordbox’s is not used.

Each candidate has one plain line under its number: Very likely (94/100), Possible (71/100), Unlikely, or Ruled out with the reason, such as no artist in common. Why this score? opens the matcher’s own working: the score before bonuses, title and artist similarity, the year and key bonuses, the checks and the search that found it. It stays open or closed as you left it. A candidate is badged Suggested, Best score, Accepted, Rejected or Ruled out.

Choose a candidate by clicking its heading, then Accept. Accepting links this track to the Beatport release. It changes no values. Reject says none of them is right. Undo my decision hands the track back to what the matcher proposed. Search Beatport again for this track looks it up again, even if it is already matched.

The keyboard does the same, which is the quick way through a long queue. The hint is behind Keyboard shortcuts under the comparison:

The keys do nothing while you are typing in a field or have a dialog open.

Applying Beatport’s values

Accepting a match gives the track its key and changes no other value on its own. The key is Beatport’s, from the accepted match, whether you or CuePoint accepted it (matching again can change an automatic accept’s key); rejecting the match takes it away again. Once a track has an accepted match, Apply from the accepted match lists its BPM, genre, label and year, and says what applying does: it copies the values into CuePoint, and your audio files and Rekordbox are unchanged until you export. Untick what you want to keep and choose Apply. The applied values become your values: the Library shows, sorts and filters by them, marked with where they came from, and Rekordbox’s values stay underneath. Title, artist, remixer and album are never changed.

To take an apply back, use Revert in Track details’ History, or Revert this batch in the Activity panel for an apply over many tracks. See Taking a change back.

Saving the review list

Save review list as a file…, beside the page’s title, saves the tracks shown (or the ones you selected) with their match state and Beatport link, as a spreadsheet (CSV or Excel) or JSON that you can share or check by hand.

Fix values

Change many tracks at once. Pick the tracks, then use one of three buttons:

• Edit values… sets or clears your key, BPM, genre, label and year on all of them.
• Use Beatport’s values… copies the BPM, genre, label and year you choose from each track’s accepted match. The key is not on the list: an accepted match already gives a track its key.
• Save changes into the files… writes your values into the audio files. A preview comes first and nothing is written until you read it. See Writing tags to files.

Which tracks: The whole library, or Tracks in chosen playlists, Collections or Sets (tick any mix; the page says how many tracks that is), or the tracks you came with from the Library. With nothing chosen the tab says “Choose tracks: pick playlists here, or select tracks in the Library and use Fix ▸.”

A change over more than 1,000 tracks asks first, with the number (“Change 4,213 tracks?”), and runs in the background. Every change is recorded in each track’s History, and the whole batch can be undone from Activity in the status strip.

Missing files

The tracks whose file was missing or unreadable at the last check. The check runs on its own after every import and refresh. Check every file checks the whole library again; Check these again and Check selected again check only what is listed or selected.

A drive that is not connected is reported once, not as thousands of missing files. Plug it in and check again.

Missing means nothing is at that path; Unreadable means the file is there but CuePoint cannot open it. To fix a missing file, use Show in folder to find where it was, then follow the three steps on the page: in Rekordbox, right-click the track, choose Relocate and point it at the file; in Rekordbox, choose File, then Export Collection in xml format; then here, choose Check Rekordbox for changes, a button that takes you to the Library and starts it. See CuePoint checks that your files are still there.

Duplicates

Groups of tracks that may be the same recording, each saying why: the same file, the same Beatport track, or the same artist, title and mix. Find duplicates looks again; it also runs after every import, refresh and match.

A group you know is fine can be marked Not duplicates, and stays hidden until its tracks change. Show groups marked not duplicates lists them, and Show as duplicates again brings one back.

A group can be tagged or added to a Collection from here. Nothing is ever merged or deleted: to remove a duplicate, remove it in Rekordbox and refresh.

Health

A count of everything that may need you: missing or unreadable files, tracks in a duplicate group, tracks not looked up yet, waiting for you or changed since you decided, and tracks with no Beatport key, or no BPM, genre or artwork. Each count opens what fixes it, and shows exactly that many tracks. Missing or unreadable files open Missing files, tracks in a duplicate group open Duplicates, and Waiting for you opens Review matches. The rest open the Library on exactly the tracks they count, as an ordinary filter you can change or save as a Smart Collection.

No Beatport key opens the Library on Key is empty, and its notice line offers Match tracks… with those tracks. It is not the same as Not matched: a track that was matched can still have no key when Beatport’s record has none.

Checks has a line for what each is for and when it last ran, or Not done yet: Files on disk (looks for tracks whose file has moved or been deleted), Duplicate search, Cover art in your files (Read cover art reads the pictures stored inside your audio files) and Waveform drawing, each with a button to run it again.

Waveform drawing is the one check that runs on its own. After every file check, CuePoint works out a waveform for each file the check found, in the background and at low priority: the tracks in your Sets first, then those in your Collections, then the newest. It says how far it has got (“Analyzing · 1,234 of 50,000 · about 6 hours left”) and offers Pause while it runs, Resume while it is paused, and Analyze waveforms when it has nothing left to do. A paused analysis stays paused, after a restart too, until you resume it. A file that could not be read is not tried again until it changes; a file on a drive that is not connected is not counted against it. On a build without the player’s decoder it says so, and nothing is analyzed. Settings → Waveforms shows the same and chooses how waveforms are colored. See Waveforms.

Health gives no overall score. A library with 40 tracks without a genre is not “92% healthy”; it has 40 tracks without a genre.

Where inKey and Results went

Earlier versions matched from a separate inKey screen and showed matches on Results. Clean replaces both:

The CSV files earlier runs wrote are still where they were saved; CuePoint no longer lists them and does not import them, because they were matched against a playlist file rather than your library. An old bookmark or remembered page for inKey or Results opens Clean.

The command-line tool is unchanged. python main.py --xml … --playlist … still matches a playlist from an XML export and writes its CSV files, exactly as before.

See also

• Your library — importing, refreshing, Track details, writing tags to files and taking changes back
• The CuePoint window — the status strip, Activity and the keyboard
• Performance — measured timings at 50,000 tracks