Cannot add MP3 files from a network share to the engine prime library

Hello, I plan to buy a PRIME 4 and currently I’m checking out the Engine Prime Software. I have the following issue: On my NAS there are 12.000 MP3 Files. When I try to add one or more to the Engine Prime Collection, the track will be analyzed but not being added to the library. If I copy the same MP3 to my local hard drive, everything works fine. Even if I change to the file-system browser of Engine Prime, I see all my Songs. I can right-click and choose “Add tracks to collection”, the track will by analyzed but reveals not in the Collection. I have Windows 10 on a PC with the latest Engine Prime (1.6.0).

The following is off-topic (would be a feature-request): Why is it not possible to add a cover picture with Engine Prime. It has to be in the MP3 or AAC file before importing. But I have thousands of MP3s without album-art and would like to add pictures with Engine Prime, like I can edit all other tags (Title, Artist, BPM). I can do so with rekordbox.

Thank you for any suggestions, what is wrong on my PC.

Regards Peter

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Hello @Dreamfish86 Welcome to the forum.

NAS is not supported. As it goes for cover art - this is something that still needs to be added.

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So far it is not possible to do this. The only solution is to use the free “MP3tag” software and import your covers into MP3 files: it works very well.

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Hello and thank you all for yours answers so far. As I’ve read after I posted my question, this is an issue since 2019. I cannot understand, why you cannot use files from a network share. I doesn’t understand this neither political nor technical.

I cannot believe that I am the only one, who maintains his music library on a NAS/Fileserver. And I am not willing to copy some 800 Gigbytes to my local hard drive only for Engine Prime to add my files to a collection.

If there is a political decision behind it, please let someone know my, to understand. Otherwise it would be very nice, if Denon can fix this in a upcoming release?

I’m very sad to say this, but this limitation is clearly a showstopper. I tried Rekordbox, Serato and Traktor. Non of these have such a limitation.

Perhaps someone knows an existing work-around? Is it possible to map a networkshare in a way that Prime “thinks” it’s a local drive? Any tips are welcome.

Peter

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This is a drawback but not hard to overcome. I would use only tracks that I need, for a certain playlist/evening. For full collection… hm…that is a problem in deed…

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Thank you. You are right. It makes more sense to add the pictures directly to the MP3 files. Most of my Song files I made by myself and many of them are more than a decade old. At the time I began, nobody thought of “cover art”, so they don’t have any. I tried MP3tag and this works well.

Peter

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“Cannot add MP3 files from a network share to the engine prime library”

same here; asked this months ago. all my files are on network shares (WHS2011) and i couldnt access them with engine prime. this was and is a “no-go” to me.

a year ago i liked to buy the sc5000 players, had them at home for a week but sent them back because of that. today i wiould like to buy the sc6000 but two options hardly need to be available:

1.) mapping network shares in engine prime softare and 2.) accessing the internal harddrive over LAN

in this case i could manage my music and sending the music directly to the player without any usb stick.

This is what a “Network Media Player” is all about!

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Hello Kelt, good that you bring this to our attention again. Using my music via the LAN server would be a godsend for me. Like many users today, I have a LAN server and I don’t have to tell you that using Denon can make DJ devices a lot more pleasant. I am in favor of extending Engine OS with LAN server functions in a future release.

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Hello NoiseRiser,

thank you again. I know that my “feature request” is born due to the nature of my kind of working. Sure, I don’t need the whole bunch of my music library in Engine Prime. But as you suggest, to copy the 100-200 files I need for a specific event to a folder on my local drive, I have to listen to them. So I need a tool like WinAmp for rehearsal, than copy, then import into Engine Prime, than check the Tags, than analyze and finally copy to USB or SD-Card. It would be great to save time and work and have one “swiss knife”-tool a.k.a. Engine Prime to accomplish all this. The reason why I’m so stubborn is, that - in my oppinion - it is an arbitrary decision of the developer of Engine Prime not to recognize files from networked drives and I cannot see any serious reason. So my hope is, that someone of Denon says, that this will be fixed/changed/added in a near future update.

Regards Peter

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Hey Peter,

The reason is not known to me as well, but I have a guess, what can be a obstacle here. Engine Prime creates a Data base on every local drive with music. NAS is not a local drive, and EP can’t make its database there, so can’t import the tracks. The logic behind the EP data base is, that it needs to be in the place with its music. Conclusion would be that EP, has limited network possibilities (so far only dropbox option, but still this needs a dropbox app installed on Your computer, so I think EP alone has still no network capability). There is already a feature request to support NAS that was raised by one of our friends here on the forum. I will make a search and add a link to it here as well.

Edit: Found it:

https://community.enginedj.com/t/ep-to-access-nas-cloud-network-locations/13791

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Serato can access NAS and it creates a database on it as well.

Appears so

EP has no network capability - here lies the problem.

Yes that’s correct.

Hello friends,

I would like to hear a statement from an official supporter of Denon. I mean solo networked drives, no cloudspace like Dropbox or so. A program does not have to have any capabilities to access a network share. The operating system does it all. If a program utililizes the standard systemcalls of the operating system to open and access files, there is no difference if it is a local or a network drive. So the simplest program (e.g. notepad or textedit) can access files anywhere. But I know, that a programmer can determine if the drive is local or networked. If (for whatever reason) he doesn’t want, he can check and if it’s not local refuse to use it. This might be the case of some copyprotection algorythms, which have to directly access and manipulate specific sectors on filesystems. For an ordinary program this is a limitation as if you nowadays write a program which cannot operated with a mouse. It makes absolutely no sense, it is boring and annoying. Despite the fact that all other programs (like Traktor, Serato, Rekordbox and (I think) really ANY other) work with network drives. This is not a cyber-feature. It is daily bread.

I am not able to try it on Apples because I only have Mavericks installed. Can someone tell me, if this strange behaviour is also present on the MacOS-Platform?

Regards Peter

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I use a macbook pro, and I can’t use my NAS with EP.

I am really very sad that the Denon Guys are ignoring me and many other users, who has requested this functionality. So I had to make a decision and as I mentioned in the beginning of that thread, the discussed flaw of the Engine Prime Software is a show-stopper. I spent a lot more money now, and bought to CDJ3000 and a DJM900NX2 and now I know: This was the right decision. Thank you Denon for pushing me in the right direction. You can close this thread and delete my account here, because I will not need it anymore.

Bye and always happy DJing :o)

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This was even my main reason I’ve sent back my sc5000 last year. Accessing network drives with engine prime on windows 10 OS.

it doesnt work because the filenames become mangled in the database and eventually corrupt the database with dead links… its an internal Engine Prime bug that’s never been looked into or officially acknowledged.

+1 for accessing your files on a network drive. The lack of this feature adds huge problems for anyone who wants to have a distributed music system and use denon dj products. Other music library management programs handle this without problems.

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Yes, but as this post is not in the section for formal “feature requests”, I believe it will never be considered (assuming the ones in the right section are considered :wink: :joy: :thinking:)