MPC 3 Beta 3.4 Project File format changed (.xpj)

Hi,

Just noticed that the format of the Project files (.xpj) has changed in the new MPC Beta fw.

Previously in MPC 2.x, you could open these files with a text editor.
This allowed you to be able to read, modify & save them accordingly.

They now appear to be encrypted.

In MPC 2.x, Midi Mappings/learnings were saved/stored at the project level.

I had an Excel Macro that could update various Project files by quickly adding previously created Midi Mappings/learnings.
This allowed me to adjust Plugin parameters with my Novation LaunchControl XL, rather than via the Touch Screen or Qlinks.

Doesn't look like this will now be possible.

Any idea if there is (or will be) a way to mass import midi mappings/learnings in MPC 3 pls?

Thanks

Xpj are now gzipped, unzip and you’ll note get standard json rather than xml. Edit and recompress using gzip. Same with track files

Ah ok.
Cool thanks.

Never heard of Gzip or Json but do some reading.

Many thanks.

Huh. Why would they do that? I can understand the rational behind zipping, maybe, but why json over xml?

in modern day javascript programming their are a lot more utilities for json over xml. The corporate software that I support went from xml to json config files about 6 years ago

here are some other reasons:
https://www.sitepoint.com/json-vs-xml/

Firstly, JSON is generally faster and more efficient, making it a better choice for real-time applications. Secondly, JSON is easier to read and write, making it more developer-friendly. Thirdly, JSON integrates seamlessly with JavaScript, making it the preferred choice for web applications. Lastly, JSON uses less data overall, which can lead to significant cost savings in terms of bandwidth.

Out of interest.
Do we know how we can open and read MPC 2.x sequence files?

Bossredman wrote:Out of interest.
Do we know how we can open and read MPC 2.x sequence files?

I had a quick look and the first data chunk starts with 'MThd' which means it's a MIDI file. If you change the extension from sxq to mid it seems to be treated by the MPC as a standard MIDI file (you can drag it into the MPC Software and it loads it into the next unused sequence, all event and track data seems to be there).

I opened it in awave and while it recognises it as a MIDI file, note events don't appear to be read correctly. I imported into Ableton and while it recognises the tracks, none of the events show. Might be easy to reverse engineer if that's your kind of thing, but maybe not worth it considering all the changes to sequence handling in mpc3, seq data all handled in the XPJ as json.

In case anyone's interested in seeing the XPJ contents on Mac, you can rename the filename.XPJ file to a "filename.gz" file and use the Mac terminal command "gunzip filename.gz" then rename the resultant unzipped file to filename.txt to read it in text editor.. Maybe this little sequence was obvious to many but I had to sniff around a bit to find out that nugget.

The contents, as MPC-Tutor has mentioned, are JSON structures..

Thx for the responses.

I was hoping to possibly find a way to "manually" reorder the Sequences of an MPC 2.X project.... outside of the MPC itself.

As apparently there is no way to do within.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Xpj are now gzipped, unzip and you’ll note get standard json rather than xml. Edit and recompress using gzip. Same with track files

Thank you so much for this info. I registered just to say this.

Awesome for the insight! I actually had to re-read the OP thinking maybe I wrote it. This was exactly a question I had in the past few weeks.