ANSWER · DJ SOFTWARE & EXPORT
Do Embedded Cue Points Work in Serato DJ?
Yes. Serato DJ Pro and Serato DJ Lite read hot cues and the beat grid from Serato's own tag frames inside an MP3. If a file carries those frames, you drag it into the library and the cues, colours and grid are already there.
How Serato stores cues
Serato writes its data into the ID3 tag of an MP3 as GEOB (general encapsulated object) frames with descriptions such as "Serato Markers2" and "Serato BeatGrid". Markers2 holds the hot cues: each has a slot number, a position in milliseconds, a colour and a name. BeatGrid holds one or more markers giving a position and a BPM, which defines the grid. Because these live in the file, they travel with it between computers and between Serato users.
What Club Ready Music writes for Serato
When a track is generated in the Studio with "rekordbox / Serato tags" enabled, Club Ready Music writes:
- Hot cues: "intro end" (red), "first drop" (orange), "outro start" (blue), and "vocal in" (green) when the music model reports where the vocal starts. Up to eight cues can be written.
- Beat grid: a single fixed-tempo marker at the first beat with the track's BPM. Generated tracks have a hard start on bar one, so the first beat is at zero.
- Standard tags: title, artist, album, genre, BPM, musical key in the key frame, Camelot and Open Key in extra text frames, a comment listing the cues and cover art.
- BPM lock, so Serato does not re-analyse and move the grid.
The same tagged MP3 is inside the DJ pack zip. The README in the pack says it plainly: drag the MP3 into Serato and the cues and grid are embedded.
Steps
- Download the MP3 or the DJ pack from the track page.
- Open Serato DJ and drag the MP3 into a crate.
- Load it to a deck. The cue pads show intro end, first drop and outro start; the grid is locked to the BPM.
- If you want to adjust a cue, do it in Serato as usual. With "write tags to file" enabled in Serato's settings, your changes are saved back into the file.
DJ edits of uploaded songs
For DJ edits, Club Ready Music currently writes the standard tags and a comment with the intro-end and outro-start times. Use the Intro, Drop in and Outro buttons on the edit page to hear the points, then set them as hot cues in Serato in a few seconds.
Troubleshooting
- Cues missing: the file was in the library before tagging. Remove and re-add it, or use Serato's "reload tags" on the track.
- Grid off: Serato's own analysis ran before it read the grid. Lock the BPM, or re-add the file with analysis of new files turned off.
- Colours different: Serato maps colours to its nearest palette entry. Positions are unaffected.
Frequently asked
Why don't the cues show up in Serato?
Most often the file was already in the library before it was tagged and Serato cached the old state. Remove it from the library, then re-add the tagged file. Also check that the file is an MP3; Serato tags in other formats use different containers.
Will Serato overwrite the embedded cues?
If you edit cues in Serato with file writing enabled, it rewrites its frames in the file. That is normal and means the file now carries your edited cues.