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Differences between BallroomDJ 3 and BallroomDJ 4

As of 2023-1-23:

At this time the supported platforms for BallroomDJ 4 will be:

• 64-bit Windows 10, 11
• MacOS: Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, Tahoe
• 64-bit Linux

Features that will NOT be implemented in BallroomDJ 4:

• Synchronization between computers.
• Image display.
• Playlist: Marquee message.
• Player: Marquee message.
• Player: Changing the gap dynamically.
• Built-in Help
  Keeping two help sources up to date (built-in and wiki) is difficult. I prefer to only have one. Only the wiki will be be supported.
• Windows 7 will not be supported. The tools I use are dropping support for old versions of Windows.
• File Manager.
  This functionality has been moved into the song list/playlist/sequence editors and the starter user interface. Renaming playlists is much simpler.
• Raffle Games.
• New Years Countdown.
• Analog Clock.

Features that have changed in BallroomDJ 4:

• Playlist: Required Keywords
  Playlist Management has Tags and Tag Weight entry.
• Playlist: Stop In/At <time> pause/continue.
  BDJ4 only supports: Stop At <time> (playlist and music queue).
• Playlist: Stop After <song-count> pause/continue.
  BDJ4 only supports: Stop After <song-count> (playlist).
• Playlist: Pause after each song.
  BDJ4 has a pause each song switch in the music queue configuration.
• Fade Out: If a fade out time is set, the fade out is always applied.
• Auto Organization
  BDJ4 has no auto organization path editor. To add a new path, the configuration file (data/orgopt.txt) must be manually edited. (If the organization path you currently use is not already in the configuration file, it is automatically added during the BDJ3 to BDJ4 conversion process).
  BDJ4 drops the various artists flag and settings.
  BDJ4 drops the change spaces to underscores option.
  BDJ4 has a single auto organization path (rather than four). Some rules are applied to make it work nicely.
  • Composer and conductor groups will only be added if the genre is marked as classical.
  • The composer group will be omitted if the composer is the same as the album artist or the artist.
  • If the album artist is empty, the artist will be used.
  • If both the album artist and the artist are in the auto organization path and they are the same, the artist group is omitted.

Due to the changes in auto organization, the BDJ3 to BDJ4 conversion process will always turn off auto organization in the BDJ4 configuration.

I don't want anyone to accidentally run a reorganization in BDJ4 and then discover that their BallroomDJ 3 no longer works since the audio files have been renamed.

New Features:

• Player per music queue configuration (fade in time, fade out time, maximum play time, stop at time, play announcements, pause each song).
• Switch playback to the next music queue when the current music queue is empty.
• An optional side-by-side song list editing mode.
  The disadvantage being that it cannot show as much information on screen. It's easy to switch back and forth between the two modes.
• A favorite selection. This can be used to mark requests, songs that are good for teaching, etc.
• New installation Getting Started helper. A short walk through of the basic settings needed to get started. This starts up automatically when BDJ4 is started for new installations.
• Folders other than the music folder may be specified in the database update process. This allows multiple music folder locations.
• Writing audio file tags is no longer limited to FLAC, MP3 and Ogg-Vorbis. Currently supported for MP4 (.m4a), MP3, OGG/Vorbis, FLAC, OGG/Opus. Others may be added later.

Questions & Answers

Q: Is there any advantage to starting with a fresh install rather than using the BDJ3 to BDJ4 conversion process? (1)

A: No. The BDJ3 to BDJ4 conversion process is quite robust, and there are no issues with using it. The conversion process will convert all of your BallroomDJ 3 data files (warts and all). The only reason to do a fresh install would be if you want to change locales (e.g. English to Nederlands).

Q: Will installing BDJ4 affect my BallroomDJ 3 installation? (1)

A: No. BallroomDJ 4 is installed in a separate folder and the conversion process creates new files specifically for BDJ4. The only configuration options that could affect the audio files are "Auto Organization" and "Write BallroomDJ Tags" (the conversion process turns this off, and also the 'write BDJ3 compatible audio file tags' is turned on).

(1) No one actually asked this, but I thought you might like to know.

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(Updated 2025-10-11 10:08:15; BDJ4 version 4.17.2)