Prepare

Prepare is where you plan a set: the tracks in the order you will play them, divided into chapters, with the times you plan to bring each one in and out. CuePoint checks every transition and says what it finds, suggests what fits between any two tracks, plays the Set as the queue, and writes it out as a set list or into Rekordbox.

It works on the library you imported on the Library page, so import a collection first.

Chapters, planned times and notes stay in CuePoint. Rekordbox has nowhere to put them. An export to Rekordbox writes a Set as one ordinary playlist in its running order, and a set list file carries the times only in its text and CSV forms. See Taking a Set out of CuePoint.

Playback plays whole tracks. Playing a Set plays its entries in order through the ordinary player, each from its start to its end. The planned in and out times are your plan, not instructions to the player: nothing starts, stops or crossfades at them.

Sets

A Set is a running order. It sits in the same tree as your Collections, can be filed in folders beside them, and holds tracks in an order you choose. What it adds is everything a Collection does not have: chapters, planned times, notes, and checks on how each track leads into the next.

A track can be in a Set more than once — a reprise at the end, an intro used twice — and each time it plays is its own entry, with its own times and its own note. The table marks a track played again with ↻ beside its number, and its title says where else it plays.

A Set holds at most 1,000 entries. A Collection holds larger lists.

Making a Set

New Set, in the New Set ▾ menu in Prepare’s header (it works with a Set open) or the New Set button beside New Collection at the top of the Library’s Collections section, makes an empty Set in the folder you choose.
New Set from… copies the tracks of something you already have into a new Set, as its one chapter:
- a Collection, in its order and with any repeats;
- a Smart Collection, as the tracks it matches right now, in its saved order — later matches join the Smart Collection, not the Set;
- a Rekordbox playlist, in its order — refreshing from Rekordbox never changes the Set.
On the Prepare page, New Set ▾ → New Set from… asks what to copy first. In the Library, right-click a Collection, a Smart Collection or a Rekordbox playlist and choose New Set from….
New Set from these…, in the Library’s right-click menu and the selection bar’s Organize ▸, makes a Set of the tracks you selected, in the order the table shows them.
Duplicate, on a Set’s right-click menu in the Library, copies a Set whole — chapters, times, notes and accepted warnings — which is how last week’s plan becomes this week’s.

Every one of these is a copy. The Collection, playlist or selection it came from stays exactly as it was, and nothing links the two afterwards.

Opening a Set

The sidebar’s Prepare opens the Set you had open last. The picker at the top of the page opens any other, and a Set in the Library’s tree has Open in Prepare on its right-click menu. The Library’s Track details lists the Sets a track is in, and each opens there too.

Adding tracks

From the Library page: right-click a selection and choose Add to Set…, or drag it onto a Set in the Collections tree. Tracks are added at the end of the Set’s last chapter; tracks already in the Set are skipped and counted, as a Collection does.
On the Prepare page: from the panel beside the Set — see Suggestions and the Library tab.
A repeat: select an entry and choose Repeat after, or right-click it and choose Insert a repeat after.

Changing the running order

Drag an entry to a new place. Dropping on the top half of an entry puts it before that entry, the bottom half after it, and on a chapter’s heading at the start of that chapter.
Move up and Move down, on the buttons’ line under the header (also Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ while the table has focus, as in the queue), move the selected entries one place. At the edge of a chapter the entry crosses into the next one first. With several selected, they move together.
Remove, among the same buttons (also Delete), or Remove from Set on an entry’s right-click menu, removes the selected entries and nothing else. No track is ever deleted.

These buttons are always there. Until an entry is selected they are disabled and say “Select an entry”; one that cannot act says why (“Already first in the Set”). Drag and right-click work as before.

Selecting a Set in the Library’s tree shows its tracks in the table there, each once, in the order it first plays; the Library says so above the table. The running order with its repeats is the Prepare page’s.

The page

The header’s picker names the Set open. Beside it are New Set ▾, Play Set and Export ▾. Under them, one line says how many entries the Set has, its planned running time (“No times planned yet” until you type one), how many warnings its checks found and how many you accepted, and — when it applies — “Files not checked” with Check now, which starts the same check as Check every file on the Clean page, and “3 without key” with Match tracks…, which opens Clean’s match window on those entries’ tracks (hover for the whole sentence). A missing key is not a warning: those entries are simply not checked for key. The counts shorten to fit (hover them for the whole line); these two never do. On a line of their own below are the buttons for the selected entries, in words: Move up, Move down, Start a chapter here, Repeat after and Remove. Notes holds notes for the whole Set: the venue, the set times, anything you want to remember; it reads Notes (1) once the Set has some. View ▾ shows or hides the tempo and key lanes and the transition strip, and chooses the table’s columns.

The Set’s table has one row per entry: its number, when it Starts at, the Mix in and Mix out times you plan, how long it Plays for, the track, its BPM and key, the Transition into it, and its note. Hover a heading for what it means. Each chapter has a heading row that states the chapter’s facts under the same columns. Nothing sorts: the order is the Set. A chapter’s heading carries its own buttons: Edit, ↑, ↓ (move the chapter) and × (delete it).

Beside the Set is the panel you add tracks from. Drag the divider between them, or move it with the arrow keys; the width you choose is remembered.

Selecting an entry adds In this Set to Track details on the right: the entry’s times, note and chapter, and what the checks found about it.

Chapters

A chapter is a part of the Set, such as a warm-up, a peak or a close, with its own target length and tempo range. Every entry belongs to exactly one chapter, and a chapter’s entries are always together in the running order.

Start a chapter here, on the line under the header or on an entry’s right-click menu, splits the Set there (the first entry, with several selected): that track begins a new chapter.
A chapter’s heading row has Edit (or double-click the heading, or choose Rename, targets and notes… on its right-click menu), ↑ and ↓ to move the chapter — its entries move with it — and × (Delete chapter…), which says which chapter its entries join first. A Set always keeps one chapter, so the last cannot be deleted.
A Set with a single unnamed chapter shows no heading at all: it is simply a list.

A chapter can carry a target length and a BPM range. The heading shows the chapter’s planned time against its target (“9:00 of 8:00”) and its range, and the checks say when the chapter runs over or under its target or holds a track outside its range. Suggestions for a gap inside the chapter keep to its range.

Planned times

Each entry can carry a planned mix in time and mix out time: where in the track you plan to bring it in and take it out. Type them straight into the table’s Mix in and Mix out cells, or under In this Set in Track details, as m:ss or h:mm:ss — 0:30, 4:30, 1:02:00. In the table, click the cell (or press Enter or F2 on the selected entry); Enter or Tab saves and moves to the next cell (Shift+Tab goes back), Esc drops what you typed, and leaving the cell saves it. Double-clicking an entry still plays it. In Track details, press Enter or leave the field. The table’s columns beyond the title may need a sideways scroll in a narrow window. A blank Mix in means the start of the track; a blank field clears a time. A time that cannot be read, an out time before the in time, or an out time past the end of the track is refused with the reason, which the line under the header says, the reason first and the entry’s name last (“Not saved: … (Warm One)”), while the cell stays open to correct.

An entry is timed when it has an out time. It plays for its out time less its in time, which the Plays for column shows.
The running time counts timed entries only, and says how many it did not count: “9:00 planned · 4 without times”, or “No times planned yet” while none is typed. Times are optional. It never guesses how long an entry without an out time will play.
Starts at is when each entry begins, counted from the Set’s start. It stops at the first entry without an out time: that entry’s start is known, and every one after it is left blank rather than showing a time that would be wrong.

Each entry can also carry a note — “loop the break”, “let it run” — typed in the Track details and shown in the table’s Note column.

Warnings

CuePoint checks every transition, every entry and every chapter, and explains each thing it finds. A warning never stops anything: you can play, save and export a Set with every warning still open.

Into each entry: a tempo jump outside the window Similar tracks uses, with half and double time counted as fitting; a key clash, two keys with no relation on the Camelot wheel; and a track with no BPM to compare. Keys are Beatport’s (or yours): a track with no key is left out of the key checks without a warning, and the line under the header says once how many entries have none.
On each entry: a file that was missing or unreadable when files were last checked, and a planned time past the end of the track.
On each chapter: over or under its target, and tracks outside its BPM range.

The Transition column shows the warnings into each entry in a few words, and its tooltip gives each one in full. The header’s count names every kind it counted. A Set whose files were never checked says so rather than claiming none are missing; choose Check now beside “Files not checked” in the header’s line, or run Check every file on the Clean page.

Accepting a transition warning. Select the entry, and in In this Set, or beside the warning in the transition strip, choose Accept once you have heard the mix work. It stays visible, muted and marked accepted, and Undo accept takes the acceptance back. An accepted warning comes back on its own when either track, or the value it compared, changes — a different track in the slot, a corrected BPM or key — because what you accepted is no longer what is there. A key clash accepted under one pair of keys comes back when Beatport’s key replaces Rekordbox’s and the new pair still clashes.

Suggestions and the Library tab

The panel beside the Set fills it from two places, on two tabs:

Suggestions: what fits the gap you are looking at.
Library: a search over your library, as the Library page’s search box searches.

The insertion point is where a track from either tab goes: the gap after the entry selected in the Set, between it and the next one — or the end of the Set with nothing selected. A line at the top of the panel, above the tabs, names it: “Inserting: between “Warm Two” and “Warm One”, in Warm-up”. A track inserted there joins the chapter of the entry before it.

From chooses where both tabs look: your whole library, a Rekordbox playlist or folder, a Collection, a Smart Collection or a Set. The page remembers the choice.

Suggestions are scored against both neighbors. A suggestion must fit the track before the gap and the track after it, and each side’s reasons are shown in their own column, Fits after (how well the track follows the one before the gap) and Fits before (how well it leads into the one after): the tempo, the key’s relation on the wheel (“Same key”, “Next key”, “Relative key”), and a shared genre, label or artist. Fit is out of 100, “72/100”; with a track on each side it is the mean of the two. It uses the same rule as the warnings, so a track suggested for a gap never has a tempo warning there. Key only adds points, so a suggestion can still clash in key, and its reasons say so. A track already in the Set is marked: “Already in this Set once: inserting it plays it again”. The same library gives the same list every time.

When nothing fits both sides, the panel says so: “Nothing fits between “Build” and “Peak Jump””, with each track’s BPM, how far apart they are, that no tempo is close to both, and how their keys relate. It then offers Fit after “Build” and Fit before “Peak Jump”, each side’s own list. The rule is never loosened to fill a gap.

An empty Set has nothing to fit against, so Suggestions starts once it has its first track; add that one from the Library tab.

Putting a track in. Select one or more rows and choose Insert here (Insert 3 here for three; it reads Pick tracks until you select one, and clicking it takes you to the table), or drag them into the Set where you want them. Double-click a row to hear it; its right-click menu also queues it, and opens its Similar tracks and its artist’s or label’s page.

The tempo and key lanes

View ▾ → Show tempo and key lanes draws the Set’s shape above its table:

Tempo: each entry’s BPM as a mark, stepping from one to the next, so a jump is a step you can see.
Key (Camelot): each entry’s place on the Camelot wheel, where neighbors mix well, joined to the next by a line that says how the two keys relate — solid for the same key or one step, dashed for the relative key, dotted for a clash.

A track with no BPM or key is a gap in its lane, never a zero. Keys are Beatport’s, or your own correction; a track that has not been matched has none. A line across both lanes marks where a chapter starts. Clicking a column selects its entry, which moves the insertion point there. The lanes are a picture of what the table says in words; they add no fact of their own.

The transition strip

View ▾ → Show transition strip shows the entry you select beside the one after it, so you can see how one track ends and the next begins:

A row of titles: each entry’s track and its planned times, “In 0:16 · Out 5:42”, or “No out time” for one without an out time, then its loudness, “−8.4 LUFS” (how loud the track measures), once it is measured.
Two waveforms, each the whole track with its cue points, the part before its planned in and after its planned out dimmed. A track whose waveform has not been made yet says so in place, with how far the analysis has got (“Not made yet — 312 of 4,000”; hover for the whole sentence), and See progress under the words opens Settings at Waveforms.
Between them, a caption in words: the keys, how they relate, the tempos, and how the one goes out and the next comes in: “8A → 9A · next key up · 124 → 126 BPM (+1.6%) · Out 5:30 → In 0:45”. The key words are the ones Similar tracks uses (“same key”, “next key up” or “down”, “relative key”, “keys clash”; not said twice when the warning below says it). When either track has no Beatport key it says “No Beatport key: key not checked” instead. “No out time” stands for an out time not typed yet, and “no times” for a next entry with none planned at all. When both tracks have a loudness, the caption ends with how much louder or quieter the next one is: “… · +2.1 LU”, which means the next track is 2.1 dB louder (hover the words for this). CuePoint changes neither track’s volume; see Loudness.
A warning on that transition is a few words at the end of the caption (“Tempo jump”, “Keys clash”; hover for the sentence), with Accept beside it (“Undo accept” once accepted). The strip is no taller for it.

With nothing selected the strip says to select an entry; with the last entry selected, its second half reads End of Set. Clicking a half selects that entry, so clicking the second one walks the Set one transition at a time. Both tracks are put first in the waveform analysis if they are still waiting for it. See Waveforms.

The lanes and the strip start hidden, because each takes about three of the Set’s rows at the default window size, and each is remembered once you open it. However crowded the window, the Set keeps two whole rows under them: if the window is too short for that, the page scrolls instead.

Playing a Set

Play Set plays the Set from its first entry. Double-clicking an entry plays the Set from that entry (Enter on a selected entry types its Mix in instead); Play Set from here on its right-click menu does the same. The entries go to the player’s queue in order, repeats included, and play through the ordinary player — whole tracks, start to finish, as described above. Play next and Add to queue put entries in the queue without interrupting what is playing.

Taking a Set out of CuePoint

Set lists

Export ▾ → Save set list… writes the Set as a file, to the place you choose in the save dialog. The file’s extension chooses the form:

Text (.txt): the Set’s name and running time, then each chapter as a heading and each entry as 01. [0:00] Artist – Title, with its planned times where it has them.
CSV (.csv): one row per entry, with its position, chapter, start, in, out and planned times, artist, title, remixer, BPM, key, length, file, file status and note. Spreadsheet programs open it directly; times are written as h:mm:ss so a spreadsheet does not read 3:45 as hours.
M3U8 (.m3u8): a playlist other players open, in running order with repeats, with each chapter as a comment line. It carries no times.

Export ▾ → Copy set list puts the text form on the clipboard, for a message or a post. A missing file is listed, and counted, never left out. Each save is recorded in Activity. The Library’s right-click menu on a Set has both too.

Rekordbox

Export ▾ → Export to Rekordbox… opens the export with the Set ticked. The Set is written as one playlist, in its running order with its repeats, under the export’s CuePoint folder at the folder path it has in CuePoint. Its chapters, times, notes and accepted warnings are not written: the playlist is the running order and nothing else. Everything else about the export is as Exporting to Rekordbox describes.

Refreshing, and what a refresh does to a Set

A refresh that removes tracks from your library removes their entries from every Set too. The refresh preview counts the Sets affected on their own — “1 in 1 Set” — beside the Collections, before anything happens. A Set a refresh emptied says so when you open it.

Where Sets live

In the same database as the rest of your library, which CuePoint backs up on launch. Those backups are the only copy of a Set’s plan. A Set’s tracks can be exported, but its chapters, times, notes and accepted warnings exist nowhere else. Restoring a backup brings all of it back together with the Collections beside it.