Well, it's been a couple-a weeks since we got TurnTubelist out the door! Now that we're starting to see a bunch of people making TurnTubelist a part of their getting-ready-to-go-out-on-a-Saturday-night routine, I thought it would be good to expose some of the advanced features that lurk under the covers.
Do note: these are current as of March, 2009... but much is set to change - so hopefully in the near future the "hidden" features will become "obvious" features.
- Auto Play mode
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Publish and load your sets
- Load YouTube playlists
- Stored track volumes
- Set/Cue Points
- Import/Export tracks
- Clear the playlists
- The awesome cross-fader
- Other Pro-Tips
Auto Play Mode
The most useful feature of TurnTubelist by far - a feature you will come to love (unless you have some kind of anti-streaming policy at your workplace).
Auto Play Mode does the cross-fading for you, so you can relax and boogie while DJ Revolves It (the TurnTubelist resident DJ) spins your favourite tunes. To start Auto Play Mode, just load up a track and set it in motion. Then just check the "Auto play mode" box, and that's it. It loads up tracks, plays them and cross-fades them. More amazing than a player piano!
Keyboard shortcuts
Yes, yes... everyone knows that if you want to master a program, then you need to know the keyboard shortcuts inside-out. These are particularly handy when you need to execute those tricky mixes:
- The cross-fader: f,g,h,j and k
- Play/pause: y and u
- Rewind: t and i
- Cue (see below): d and l
- Secret demo mode: z
Publish and load your sets
I love this. Once you've got a killer set under your belt you don't want to lose it! And until we give you guys log-ins - this is the best you can do!
Publishing a set will make it available from a URL that you can send to your friend, or have printed on a t-shirt. Just hit the publish this set button, and give your set an appropriate name. Liiiike, "Good gosh, this is some pumpin' zydeco". Or something. Once you give the all-clear to publish, it will be saved and display the URL for you to note down in your copybooks. Here's my current favourite: www.turntubelist.com/set/themes_from_stuff
If it's extra good, it might even end up on the Featured Playlist hall-of-fame.
Load YouTube playlists
This is a bit half-arsed at the moment, but it is possible to load existing YouTube playlists into TurnTubelist. To do so, you need to get the playlist's ID. If you search for playlists on YouTube you will see the URL looks something like:
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8408F393783E277A&v=fApXQ0efyo0
Simply take that string of characters after p= and append it to the URL: www.turntubelist.com/playlist/. So in our example above, you'd have this handy URL: www.turntubelist.com/playlist/8408F393783E277A.
Clicking on this link will take you to TurnTubelist, and load up the YouTube playlist placing every even track in the left playlist, and every odd track in the right playlist. Ready for you to mix.
Stored track volumes
This one is important if you're going to publish some top notch listenable sets: Because the volume levels vary so much on YouTube videos, we have included individual track volume sliders.
By default a track will load with it's volume at 50%. Avoid the temptation to just push this to 11! It's set in the middle, so that you can adjust the track volumes up and down for each track to achieve consistent overall set volume.
If a video is too quiet, bump it up... if it's too loud, pull it back. When you reload the song next time, it will remember the volume you chose and automatically adjust it. This way you can publish your sets in a way that won't require user interaction as Rick Ashley suddenly screams out many decibels louder than your previous selection.
Set/Cue Points
Set/Cue - this is a bit of a wacky feature. It is implemented on a lot of mixers, so might make sense if you are a DJ by trade. The idea of the cue point is to mark some spot in the track that you want to come back to quickly.
As a track is playing, you click the red Set button. It will change to a green Cue button: and anytime you click Cue it will instantly jump back to the cue point - enabling some nice st-st-stutter rap effects and help to cue videos which have lots of nonsense at the beginning.
To re-set the cue point, click on the green light at the top of the button. This will change it back to the red Set button, ready to go again.
An issue with this feature is that YouTube only lets you jump to a keyframe within an FLV movie: which means the Cue point will only be approximate to the point you set. Have a play - you'll see what I mean.
Import/Export tracks
Your playlists are just stored as cookies so we can reload them when you come back: So if you go show playlist options then click the Import/Export option you can get your cookies in and out.
It's just a work around until we get the real playlist management happening.
Clear the playlists
I just added this one to get the advanced features up to 10. Though it IS very useful, and it IS pretty hidden... Click on the "show playlist options" again, under your track list. Click "Clear Playlist". Click "Yes". All your songs a gone (from that playlist). Much easier than individually deleting all the tracks!
The awesome cross-fader
Turns out that a cross-fader algorithm is actually quite complex. Most cross-faders people code just have the volume of each track based on a linear scale: like, 50% loudness on each video if it's in the middle, 75% loudness for one, 25% loudness for the other if the fader is three-quarters the way across etc.
But that's not how cross-faders work: in fact they all work differently and have different "response curves" depending if they are for scratch djs, or music djs etc - and you can switch out the cross-faders on most mixers to suit your needs.
The Turntubelist cross-fader uses a pretty simple algorithm that goes like-so: 1+cos(x*x*pi)/2
Where x is the fader position. That gives the right volume. 1-x for the left volume. Something like that. At any rate, it gives a nice smooth curve, where the maximum volume for each track is around the centre:
Other Pro-Tips
This isn't a feature, but it's fun to do: Select a track and load it up. Then drag it across to the other playlist and load it up on the other channel. Now you have the same track loaded on both channels. Press play on one track and wait a second or two. Now press play on the other track. Both tracks will be playing, but slightly out of time.
Using the keyboard shortcuts for the cross-fader (or the mouse, if you really love it), switch between the tracks. If you do it carefully (try using the set/cue to make it easier) you can achieve some pretty snazzy beat-juggling effects. Kind of.
That's it
Stay hard.
22 Comments
DJ Revolves It is the greatest on the wheels of steel.
Auto play is cool! It just needs pitch control now ;)
i think the import thing doesn’t import.
Hmmm… You are correct sir.
Thank’s for that – I’ll add that to the bug list!
Perfect site! You could now start a race championship for disabled drivers, they could all race using hand controls, but it would have to be for male drivers only kennel Excellent work terrier
oxygen, puppy garden, terrier
trade, terrier
, Shrug.
[Note from Mr Speaker: I had to keep this spam (minus link)… how weird is it?!!]
Just to let everyone know:The ‘publish playlist’ doesn’t work! I wasted 3 hours using the normalizing feature on each track, only to find that the link to my playlist set never saved! I have since tried again many times and it still doesn’t work! Any idea as to why? Do you know when this bug will be fixed? Any info will be appreciated.Thank you.
Hmmm, I tried it then and it still works… Is this your set? http://www.turntubelist.com/set/electro_set_4
(though I can’t see any normalisation saved in that set – I’ll check that out)
Now you are overseas, in Brazil… I register the domain and pointed to your website…
congractulations, very nice tool…
best wishies Rodrigo Callegari
Brazil
Great website!!
what does the sign up do? and how can i login? and what can i do more once i logged in?
perhaps let us choose an interval that says how much seconds from the end/beginning the autoplay switches between the channels, because alot of videos end or begin with a few seconds of silence..
keep up the good work!
it needs a proper pitch control or it cant be compared to djin , its not the same . good fun though
fun as it is i could with some more features pitch would be good as would some effects and as u find with most vinyl and cds they all play at various volumes good for a laugh 2/10 i.m.h.o dades peace
great idea, only found this site a couple of days ago having played ‘youtube dj’ for some time now and wondering whether something like this program would ever transpire, so thanks for coming up with it
although, having spent ages playing around the with mix volumes and the cross fader to line the tracks up.. i see that the site doesnt store whatever and whenever i manipulate for me to then send the link to
any idea when you guys will be releasing the ability for us to do that?
thanks
great and awesome approach. some more ideas to improve this service:
1. it would be great to have the possibility to just load tracks by pasting their URL – if i have my tracks ready and don’t want to use search.
2. another idea is to let users access their youtube-account through your site (yeah, serious privacy issues on that one, but – just an idea) so they can load their favs or playlists.
as you can see, idea 2 is just one step further than idea 1.
greetz.
oh and something more… why can’t i scroll my playlists? tracks disappear after the 15th or so. very un-usable. ;)
Hi,
are you sure that the cross-fade equation 1+cos(x*x*pi)/2 is right?
Shouldn’t it be (1+cos(x*x*pi))/2 ?
NILS…. best comment ever.
I had to go check the code, and indeed you (and I, thankfully), are correct: (1+cos(x*x*pi))/2
This thing is awsome! I’m a amature DJ and i tried one doing this with regular youtube. I created 2 windows and tried to mix. Sadly, it didnt work out well. This is a whole other story. Now if Traktor integrated youtube into there software?
Turntubelist is a great idea…
Just one that does not seem to work right now?
It was working yesterday…
But every time I try to use it since,
in every browser,
with multiple re-boots,
cookie and cache clearing,
turntubelist keeps failing at video loads,
saying I have to watch the video on youtube,
NO VIDEOS LOAD ANYMORE,
or if they do,
I get to load a video on channel 1 and 2,
then at the next mix ANY VIDEO LOAD ON 1 OR 2 FAILS,
it either never loads the videos (NONE ANYMORE even the first two that worked),
and/or says I have to watch them on youtube..
is turntubelist in trouble with youtube
or is it a bug?
Too bad its not working…?
(cannot signup either…it never goes to next screen when after I enter DJ name and email address)?
“Sorry, This video can only be viewed at YouTube.com”
Videos that worked before and any others I try to select ALL give this message now.
Tried everything…I give up.
are the greedy record companies blocking video access outside youtube directly now?
I LOVE THIS, but….Is this project defunct or ‘on hold’? It would seem that the login features are not working. Please advise.
Hi , I like what you have done, However, I need to tell you that the next day after I used your web site and clicked on your links “”Beta! Sign up, Login, or send us feedback.””
my email has been spoofed.. ! a disaster.. Please let me know if there is any information you have that could help to eliminate the spoofers. thanks,
What is the capacity of exporting songs from a Youtube playlist? It seems that Turntubelist only take about 15 songs on each side and not the entire export list. HELP!
Thank you!
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[…] Damit könnte man mehr machen, das haben sich wohl auch die Macher von TurnTubelist, Mr Speaker & Hank, gedacht und sich was nettes gebaut. Mit ein bisschen Javascript wurde ein nettes DJ-Setup kreiert mit welchem man links und rechts je eine Playlist von YouTube-Videos zusammen stellen und dann per Fader, wie bei einem Mischpult, mixen kann. Die Geschwindigkeiten lassen sich nicht anpassen, aber muss auch nicht sein. Es geht nicht darum hier eine Website für DJs zusammen zu schrauben, sondern um den Spass. Sind die Playlists dann definiert, dann kann man getrost die Autoplay Funktion aktivieren und das Abspielen, wie auch das “Abmischen” übernimmt dann TurnTubelist. Die Macher selber sprechen schon von neuen Features, aber die Zeit fehlte bis an hin um den Dienst noch besser hinzukriegen. Für die Zwischenzeit gibt es schon mal Tipps und Tricks welche mehr oder weniger versteckt sind. […]