MegaSeg is the premiere DJ music player for the Macintosh that allows you to consolidate all your music on the hard drive of your computer, and then segue or beat mix between them for a professional DJ presentation without the need for extra CD players or mixers. Load your CD tracks into MegaSeg, and with the built-in database and search engine, you'll be playing requests faster than ever! MegaSeg can also play MP3 and QuickTime files downloaded from the internet.
Sections in this document:
Ñ About Version 2.1 Beta 1
Ñ About the Demo
Ñ System Requirements
Ñ Known Problems, and Soltuions
Ñ About the MegaSeg Library Database
Ñ Removing Many Files from the Library
Ñ Things new to MegaSeg 2.0 (since version 1.4.1)
About Version 2.1 Beta
The MegaSeg 2.1 Beta brings many new features, some of which are listed below. For the full list, visit
http://www.megaseg.com/version.html
Ñ MegaSeg 2.1 runs native on OS X!
Ñ Display fonts can be customized.
Ñ New VU displays for setting levels.
Ñ Manual resize and Full Screen mode.
Ñ Drag-n-Drop support.
Ñ Improved Mixer controls.
Ñ Automatic Gain Control.
Ñ Increased Library size.
Ñ Easy iPod and iTunes imports
Ñ And more... visit http://www.megaseg.com/version.html
Make sure you have CarbonLib 1.4 or better when running on OS 9. You can use the Software Update control panel on OS 9, or download the latest version from Apple. Below is a link for CarbonLib 1.4 (although it might change):
The MegaSeg demo is a full functional version, but a pop-up window stops the music every 15 minutes, reminding you it's a demo.
System Requirements
A Mac OS computer. Recommended: G3 233 Mhz or faster processor, Mac OS 9.1+, QuickTime 5 "Full Install", CarbonLib 1.4 or better. (A 10GB drive can hold around 1000 IMA 4:1 quality songs, and over 2000 MP3 quality songs. VBR MP3's are not recommened, see below). Download the latest QuickTime version for free from http://www.apple.com/quicktime
Known Problems, and Solutions
Ñ Some older PowerBooks and iBooks have special power savings modes in the Energy Saver control panel. "Processor Cycling" is one option that should be turned off when running MegaSeg. Note the Energy Saver settings change modes when you are plugged in vs. running off a battery. Also for best performance, the hard drive should be set to never spin-down (sleep). If it spins down, there may be a delay while the drive spins back up. This is especially true when playing music from external hard drives, because the internal drive will more likely spin down.
Ñ VBR MP3 files may cause audio pauses and drop out problems. VBR MP3 file's duration must be calculated by QuickTime when opened. This takes a few seconds when the computer can not do anything else. The slower the computer, the more of a problem this can be. When a VBR MP3 is moved into the NEXT position, it is opened before being played, and can cause the current song to stop playing for a second with slower hard drives.
Ñ USB hard drives are supported and function, but are much slower than FireWire or built-in hard drives. Basic audio playback is normally fine, but beat mixing and FF/REW may not function as well. Also VBR MP3 files are extremely slow to open, and cause problems when played or imported from USB drives (see above). Importing is also very slow with VBR files from USB drives. Avoid using VBR MP3 files with USB hard drives.
Ñ USB audio devices are supported with Mac OS 9.0.4 or later, but have slight buffer delays that can cause problems with beat mixing when using the normal "Program/Cue channel" method. (Preview functions work fine). For beat mixing with USB or other large buffer audio devices, use the Discrete Output Mode option, in the Outputs window. This treats two outputs both as "program audio", requiring an external mixer to bring them together, but solving the delay problems. For the "Program/Cue" mixing mode, we recommend the VXPocket PCIMIA card from DigiGram.com for PowerBooks, or PCI based solutions for PowerMac systems.
Ñ MP2 audio files have performance problems with MegaSeg, including volume control. Avoid using MP2 format files, and instead use MP3 files or other QuickTime supported formats.
Please read the F.A.Q. at the end of the Manual for more trouble shooting, or on the web at http://www.megaseg.com/faq.html
About the MegaSeg Library Database
MegaSeg imports files from any folder on any hard drive and allow multiple folders imported into the Library. For exmaple, you can keep your 5000 MP3 files in 5 folders of 1000 files each. You can also import media folders from external hard drives. MegaSeg keeps track of your files by pathname, if you rename any folder or the hard drive, you will get a missing file error in MegaSeg, however this is not a major problem, since you can find the first missing file, and the other files will be found automatically in the same folder. You can also use the "Scan for Missing Files" command from the Library menu. If it finds one, choose "Find" and locate the file.
Removing Many Files from the Library
If you want to mass remove files from the Library, there's a fast way to do it. Let's say you want to remove everything that's in a particular folder. Just move that folder to a different location (like the desktop) and choose "Scan for Missing Files" from the Flie menu. MegaSeg will say there are missing files. Choose "Remove All" and all the files in that folder will be removed from the Library. Then move the folder back where it was. An alternative method is renaming the folder before scanning for missing files.
Things new to MegaSeg 2.0 (since version 1.4.1)
Hot New Features:
* New MegaSeg Mixer for beat mixing. Here's the basic rundown:
+ The Mixer button next to the "NEXT" song position activates the mixer panel. It resembles the controls found on pro CD players, but also incorporates a cross-fader.
+ The Memory and Return buttons can be used to store and retrieve a saved position in a song.
+ The Pitch control operates +/- 12%, with fine tune arrow buttons.
+ Shift key and Control key option clicks to Mixer's pitch bend buttons. Shift-Click is +/- 4%, Control-Click is +/- 1%, default is +/- 2%.
+ The equals button (=) is used for auto matching of the BPMs from the previous playing song you are attempting to match. You must then fine tune the pitch for a perfect match using the pitch control and +/- buttons as on a standard Pro-CD player.
+ The Cue button on the bottom allows you to use the left channel as a "cue" channel, and the right channel as a "program" channel. (also multiple sound cards are supported.)
+ The cross-fader allows you to blend in the next song, while fading out the "last song". When in the middle, it's 100% volume on both songs.
+ Once the mix is complete, the Advance button advances the Playlist without disrupting the program audio, unlike the Segue button, which will re-cue the song from the beginning and auto-crossfade.
+ Volume boost controls for the Current and Next are to the left and right of the cross-fader.
+ Keyboard shortcuts for the Mixer window:
Spacebar -- Start/Stop
/ -- Play/Pause (stutter)
Return -- Stop
< -- Cue Back
> -- Cue Forward
Option-< -- Rewind
Option-> -- Fast Forward
Up Arrow -- Pitch Dip
Down Arrow -- Pitch Bump
Left Arrow -- Pitch Shift Down
Right Arrow -- Pitch Shift Up
Option-Up -- Pitch Shift Down
Option-Down -- Pitch Shift Up
= -- Match BPM
C -- Cue Output Toggle
M -- Memory Store
R -- Memory Return
1 -- Fade-Cut
2 -- Cross-Fade
3 -- Slam-Fade
* New Multi-sound card support! The Mixer now has a "Set Outputs" button, which allows you to choose any Sound Manager supported output device as the "Cue/Preview" channel, and a second output device as "Program/Playlist" audio. Supported audio cards are not fully known at this time, but should include FireWire DV audio, USB sound cards such as the Roland UA-30, and the VXPocket PowerBook card. Please report compatibility with other cards.
* New 800x600 screen size! MegaSeg has broken out of it's 640x480 shell, and into a much roomier 800x600 resolution living space. You can now see 10 tracks at a time in the Library and Playlist, as well as adding Album information to the displays. Also note the Playlist numbers are on the upper right hand side of each track display, out of the way. The "In Playlist" Library display marks are now a light blue square in the upper left corner of each track display, instead of a thin red line as before.
* Added a Requests and Note Request button to the Library which notes and displays requests for later use by the DJ. Keyboard shortcuts: Command-N to note request, and Command-B to display requests.
* Added a "Mic On/Off Switch" which turns the Mac's "Play-thru" on and off as well as ducks the music for voice-overs. If you have a mic plugged into the Mac's sound-in, and the Mac's System Input Select set to "Sound-In" or "External Mic", this new switch will turn the input audio on or off, allowing an easy way to mix your live mic with MegaSeg.
* Added a Skip To button which allows you to skip to the selected song in the Playlist. Useful when loading large playlists, such as a day's music log for a radio broadcast, and you want to skip to a particular time in the Playlist.
* Added a Jump playlist button, which jumps the selected Playlist song to the top of the Playlist in the NEXT position.
* Added a Clear Playlist button to the Playlist side. (Same as the menu command, Command-K).
* Added a general MegaSeg preferences window, with features for switching screen resolution on launch, scanning for missing files on launch, and disabling the "are you sure" type dialog windows from popping up.
* Added a 'scan sub folders' option to the Import Folder and Refresh Library import commands. When check marked, MegaSeg will import from any folders found inside the main folder selected to import, or when using Refresh Library, will find new folders inside already imported folders.
* Added a log file called "NowPlaying" to the Logs folder, which is a text file which contains the current playing song information. Handy for online radio station broadcasting, in which the file can be automatically uploaded to a server for display of the current playing song on a website.
* Added a "Next" button to the center interface, which is a simple one click way to add a song from the Library into the Next position of the Playlist.
* Added a swap button to the Edit window that quickly swaps the Title and Artist fields. No need to copy and paste between fields.
* Added a "Seg & Set" button to the bottom of the Segue button when in Administration mode. This serves the same function as Option-Click Segue, which allows you to set segue times on the fly.
* Added an "Uncategorized" view option after "All Categories" in the popup selector. This gives you a list of songs not currently in any category.
Revisions and other improvements:
* MegaSeg has a new location for the Database, Playlist and Log folders, now located in the documents folder. This makes it much easier to upgrade to new versions in the future, so you won't need to move these important files anymore.
Easy Upgrade from MegaSeg 1.4.x instructions:
Step 1: Rename the your "Database" folder to "MegaSeg User Data".
Step 2: Move both your "Playlist" and "Logs" folders into the "MegaSeg User Data" folder.
Step 3: Move the "MegaSeg User Data" folder into your Documents folder (on the same drive as MegaSeg. If no Documents folder exists, create it.)
Step 4: Launch MegaSeg .
Future MegaSeg upgrades will require no swapping of folders.
* A year old "wish list" item surfaces: you can now Preview, Edit, and Delete songs from the Playlist side without needing to look up the song in the Library. You can even click the Playing arrow to edit the playing song.
* The Preview window now stays open when the main interface is clicked on. In fact Preview is no longer a separate window at all, it's now part of the main interface. This allows you to continue using MegaSeg while you preview a song without loosing the Preview controls.
* Preview now displays the title and artist of the song being previewed.
* Edit Categories (Command-Y) now allows you to change the category of any selected song in the Library or Playlist without using the Edit window.
* MegaSeg now uses Navigation Services for all open and save dialogs. Also when finding a missing file, it displays the missing file's name in the Open dialog.
* The Save Playlist window now has a checkbox option to save the entire Playlist (including media already played), or normally from the NEXT position down.
* Current song display now shows the Album name and BPM of the playing track.
* You can now delete files from the 'Now Playing' position. It will stop the current playing song automatically before trying to delete the file.
* Moved the 'current song pitch' control from the Playlist Settings window to the Mixer window.
* Reduced the length of time for checking if an Audio CD has mounted when using Import CD Tracks.
* MegaSeg now remembers the last master volume setting before last quit.
* Category pop-up window can now be navigated using the up and down arrow keys, and dismissed with the Return key. Added keyboard shortcut for Show Category; Command-J.
* Rearranged the menu items and cleaned up their names, consolidating the File and Library menus into one File menu.
* Removed the PlayLog and NotePad menu items. The Log file is still kept up to date in the Logs folder by date. Use any text editor or word processor to view them. Use Apple's NotePad in the Apple Menu for notes. (The new Request feature replaces the Notepad menu command.)
* 'Option-Click Add' function now inserts selected media into the NEXT position. It works with Option-Double Click in Library as well. This makes it very easy to add songs from the Library to the top of a full Playlist.
* Renamed the "Refresh Folders" import button to "Refresh Library". Revised the Import window text a bit.
* Faster sort before importing a folder or refreshing the Library.
* Changed 'Segue Next Song' menu name to "Segue Advance", since MegaSeg plays more than just songs. It's name now matches the Mixer's 'Advance' button, which doesn't perform a segue, but still advances the Playlist to the next track for the user to manually mix.
* Increased delay time which clears the search textbox to 10 seconds.
* Import CD Tracks progress bars are now appearance manager savvy.
* Changed the "Import Folder:" text in the import CD tracks window to "Save Files To Folder:".
* Sorting before the Import Folder and Refresh Folders commands is much faster.
* Sorting Library is faster.
* Loading the database at launch is a tad faster.
* Search results are now displayed using the previously selected sort order.
* The Playlist position buttons have been renamed to "Cue Position".
* After performing a full search, the Playlist auto selects the first displayed song by default.
* After typing in the Find textbox to jump to a song without doing a full search, the closest match displayed at the top is automatically selected.
* Removing songs from the Playlist is much more responsive while a "VBR" format MP3 is in the "NEXT" position. (VBR format is not recommended in general).
* Using display navigation buttons are much faster when held down.
* The Autoseg button doesn't flash anymore. (Some users have questioned the flashing, uncertain if it's indicating a problem or error.)
* The "Now Playing" Album/BPM text line now shows the Year of the album if available.
* Register window now strips out spaces in the serial number field. Helpful if someone copies and pastes their serial number and accidentally includes a space or two before or after the number.
* The Remove Media command doesn't reset the display mode each time. You can now delete files from the search results display without it resetting to view all.
* Maximum number of categories has been increased from 50 to 100.
* Demo mode no longer quits MegaSeg every 15 minutes. It now only pauses the music and displays a dialog box for a few seconds every 15 minutes.
Bug Fixes:
* MegaSeg no longer has a conflict with the SoundJam and iTunes extensions. MegaSeg's CD Importing will now work with these extensions loaded.
* Search was combining the title and artist, without a space between, so searching for "spear" would find "last kisS PEARl jam". This is now fixed.
* Fixed bug that would cause the current song pitch to revert to 100% when the Fast Forward, Rewind and Play Ending buttons were used.
* Import routine now filters out ".DS_Store" hidden files.
* Fixed a sort bug which could cause a crash during library sorting of some users databases.
* Fixed a bug in the "Remove File From Library" dialog window. When the user checked the 'Delete File' checkbox, it would not delete the file if the user then pressed the Return key instead of clicking the OK button to proceed.
* Fix a bug with the Voice Over (Fade Override) Edit window option. It now correctly overrides the fade-in option.
* In the Edit/Select Categories window, the Delete category button now updates each track in the Library, just like the Rename button does.
* Fixed bug when importing files already tagged with MegaSeg tag information, if the user picked an overall category which is the same as one already in a file, it would amend the overall category causing a duplicate category listing.
* Artist sort now sorts songs without artists at the top of the list, instead of mixing them throughout the artist list by title.
* After merging categories in the Edit Categories dialog, the popup categories window now doesn't show 2 of the same categories.
* "Missing Playlist Media Report" would only show up when using the Load Playlist button, but not the 'Add' Playlist button. It now displays a full report of missing media for both 'Load' and 'Add' options.
Things new to 2.0.1 update:
* The MegaSeg Playlog screen is back (Command-L), which now quickly shows the last 20 songs played, starting from the most recent.
* The 'Add 5 Random' command now correctly marks tracks in the Library as being in the playlist.
* Preview button is now a toggle with a highlighted button state.
* Optimized the Library and Playlist text displays.
* Selected display list and song is now highlighted in white to better distinguish what song is selected.
* Missing files in a Playlist during playback no longer stop the playlist with a "Missing File" dialog. It now displays a log window listing each missing file as encountered. This is much better for automated radio broadcast situations.
* You can now clear the Requests list using the clear button on the right when the Requests list is displayed and highlighted.
* Implemented Standard File open/save/choose folder dialog windows as the default, with the user's option to use Navigation Services in the preferences window.
* Edit screen's Cue-In Set button now resets the cue-in time to zero if Preview audio is stopped.
* MegaSeg now prevents the user from naming a playlist filename longer than 31 characters, which without warning caused it not to save.
* Fixed a bug that could cause an error if the Mic On/Off button was press twice in quick succession.
* Fixed a bug in the category pop-up selector when using the arrow keys that caused the category list to shift up by one.
* Fixed a bug for songs that would not auto-segue when their segue time was set to the absolute end of the file.
* The "Save Library" menu item no longer becomes enabled after any dialog box appears, regardless if the Library had been edited or not.
* Fixed a bug that prevented the Edit window's preview play button from being reset on certain occasions.
* Fixed a bug that caused an error when using the Mixer's Memory and Return buttons without a song in the NEXT position.
* Fixed a bug that caused an error when using the Command-Up/Down Arrow keyboard shortcuts extensively (auto repeat) to move songs in the Playlist.
* Fixed bug in pop-up category menu that prevented it from displaying the last category when the list did not have a scrollbar.
* Preview text displays long titles correctly.
* Revised Library's sort order button graphic.
Things new to 2.0.2 update:
* Fixed a bug in the Multiple Sound Outputs window. It now remembers the set output device even after the computer restarts, preventing a potential lockup in previous versions if it lost track of a device and replaced it with a "phantom" device.
* Added an AutoSeg Trim feature to the Playlist Settings. If no custom Segue time is set for a song, a warning graphic is displayed, and it will automatically trim the song by the amount of AutoSeg Trim seconds set in the Playlist Settings.
* Simplified the wording on the user welcome screen (when no database is present), and Choose Existing Library dialogs.
* New External Preference File. When loading a new version of MegaSeg, you'll never have to enter your registration info again.
* When in manual mode, the timer displays keep visible after the countdown reaches 0:00. The PlayEnding button now works to jump to the end of the actual sound file once past the preset segue time. If still under the preset segue time, it jumps to the last 15 seconds of the preset segue time as before.
* When saving the Edit window, once finished it refreshes the select boxes and display more smoothly.
* Fixed bug with Load Playlist that allowed it to mixup similar titles, for example "Music / Madonna" and "Music (remix) / Madonna".
* All "knob" controls (Volume, Pan, Pitch, etc) display correctly when accessed through Network Assistant remote administration tool.
* Added our toll-free number to Help screen and demo dialog popup.
* Added a 'Test' button for the Intro time countdown on the Edit window.
* The 'Test' buttons on the Edit window now toggle to 'Stop' after being pressed.
* Fixed a problem with certain MP3 files preventing the playlist from advancing when their segue time is set to the duration of the file.
* If the Segue time is set longer than the duration of the media file in the Edit window, when attempting to Save changes, it now alerts the user and automatically resets the segue time to the duration of the file.
* When saving the Edit window while the Playlist is running, there is less risk of audio drop-outs. Saving speed is also improved.
* Edit window's Cue-In textbox now has arrow controls to assist in setting the cue-in with audible feedback similar to the Mixer.
* Fixed a bug with the Cue Position feature which caused Edit, Edit Category, Remove, Preview and BPM Match of the 'Current' playing song to use the incorrect song if the user changed the Cue Position since the last Segue.
* AutoCrossfade mixer buttons operate more smoothly and consistently. They also switch the Cue mode off if active.
* The "NowPlaying" log file is now HTML based with a meta-refresh for easy serving via a local running webserver.
* Using the 'Jump Search' feature when sorted by artist, it now correctly ignores the records without artist info (listed at top of the artist sort list).
* Seg & Set now properly saves all MegaSeg tag info in the file (not just the new Segue time) so it will be recognized by the Import commands on another MegaSeg system.