It is so easy to totally destroy data in this system and I keep managing to accidentally make my life really hard. I’ve lost entire playlists because until recently I hadn’t noticed where new tracks were being added when I tried to populate my attached internal prime4+ internal storage. When I click on the drive, and then its collection, and drag tracks in there, why in the hell would it ever copy these files to my Macintosh HD storage? When I tried to delete a bunch of files off the Macintosh HD collection, I then deleted these off of my attached Prime4+ internal storage.
I’m not trying to maintain two collections. I’m just trying to put newly purchased music on the internal drive and failing gloriously.
Can someone please help me to understand how they are doing this reliably? It seems insane to me that it is so poorly implemented that making catastrophic mistakes can be so damn easy.
@STU-C is correct, add your music to your desktop computer and sync it to the Prime 4+. The one thing that is confusing is that Engine will show all files on any attached drive, so if you have the same files on your desktop and the
Prime 4+, which you will after syncing, they appear to be duplicated. You can use the Drives tab at the bottom left to filter which drives/files you see. The Drive and Directory columns will help clear up that confusion.
Also be aware that the synced files on the Prime 4+ will be reorganized in the /Engine Library/Music/ folder. The organization there is by artist and album, based on the ID3 metadata.
I thought I could keep all my music on my standlone unit and just use the Engine DJ to copy the files onto the device. I just don’t have enough free space to keep a full copy. But seeing that this is the prescribed workflow, I’ll set about getting it sorted out.
That’s the prescribed method. I know it would seem if you have a drive in the Prime 4+ you could manage there as it has all the tools. I think loading the music is the issue.
If there are others that manage directly in the Prime 4, maybe they will speak up.
Just pay attention to the Drives and Directory columns so you don’t get confused about duplicates.
My mac doesn’t have enough internal storage, and so I bought a 4TB USB SSD just to use for Engine DJ. Sadly, Engine DJ has no relocate features and doesn’t support Mac alias folders. I’m really sad this isn’t an option. EngineDJ is very limited.
I appreciate your patience with me. I know I sound a bit whiny. I work in the software biz and I get extra pissy about bad user experiences. I’m close to getting this worked out.
Hmm, i dont think they should appear duplicated in the main collection view. As they are synced, Engine knows it is the same track, so only shows one track.
If you add a file to both your lnternal drive and your external drive, they will show as 2 seperate files, as the main collection shows the sum of all the collections on your drives. If you go to the “drives” view, you will be able to choose which drive you specifically manage.
@STU-C: don’t you have your main collection on an external portable drive? Because the internal Prime drive is just the same thing…
True, but there are ways around this. If you make sure all your tracks are in playlists (maybe make a temporary master playlist with all tracks in it), you can sync everything to your external drive. Of course Engine will sort the files in its own folder structure, but really thats an okay structure…
You could also drag the Engine Library folder to your external drive, and copy the files telative to that path to your external drive. Advanced users have even created scripts for this, but in the end you are doing the same thing as the sync function.
Anyway, give the manual a good read. I think the most confusing thing you are hitting your head on is that Engine has a collection on each drive it encounters, on your internal (or C drive) this is in the Users folder, on other drives it is in the dives root. A file on drive D must be in the collection of drive D: in cannot be on another drive, unless you ofcourse copied the file ti that other drive. The main collection view shows the union of all drives, the drives view allows you to narrow your view down to 1 collection. When you add tracks to the main collection view they will by default be added to your internal drive. And sync allows you to copy tracks from one drive to another, with the advantage that Engine now knows they are the same track!
I have all the music backed up. So that wasn’t a risk. The biggest loss is the database meta data, but I also back that up.
All moot. I’m nearly done migrating to this attached drive.
It is pretty stupid that Engine DJ has no way to point to a specific volume to call that home base for all work. Like, what in the world are they thinking. Even iTunes/AM does this. I’m on Mac, so made a symlink to from the other drive and so far Engine DJ seems to think the connected storage is on my main boot drive.
Its also worth noting that I only use lossless audio flles (ALAC) and with thousands of them, space is a concern. I just bought a 4TB SSD Samsung T7, which should be large enough and fast enough.
I keep my files synced directly to the drive and don’t use Engine to transfer them.
I use Synchredible to sync any changes to the file structure from my main PC then manage the files from the drives section of Engine and touch wood no database issues so far.
You do need to back up the Engine Library folder yourself but it’s no biggie as it takes seconds.
If the sync manager actually worked properly for two way syncing then I probably would use that method but it’s widely reported it is a nightmare.
My MCX8000 does it the old way where Engine puts the files in to it’s own structure and I’m not a fan to be honest.
Same here, I sync my own folder structure to an external drive and then drag new tracks from the external drive into Engine DJ. Engine DJ stores the library directly on the external drive, so no need for Sync Manager.
I don’t even need to go to the Drives section, when I plug in the drive the playlists show up under Collection.
