I keep my music very organized in folders on my laptop.
What I love about Engine Dj is that it allows me to drag the root music folder from the hard drive straight into Engine Dj, and it will create the same structure using crates.
But:
Whenever I download new music to my folders, to add them in Engine I have to first delete the “Music” crate that contains all the sub-crates/sub-folders, and then drag the folder again so it updates with the new folders and tracks I’ve added.
The only small problem with this method is that it seems to create a lot of duplicates of the songs in the history section.
It would be cool to create a “Live crate” with the option to scan/rescan a particular folder and automatically import the folder structure + new songs inside Engine Dj.
This feature could run automatically at start-up (similar to how Traktor does it) or manually by right-clicking the “Live crate” and selecting “Rescan”
Remember a request is only a request regardless of how many votes it gets. It’ll your workflow cannot continue ti function if smart crates don’t get added then you might want to read up on some the the smart crate topics which search will find for you, and see that lexicon DJ , which is compatible with Engine, can create smart crates for Engine.
I do use Lexicon DJ to create smart crates and sync them with Engine. And I’m all for smart crates being implemented in Engine DJ at some point.
But my idea is a bit different, it’s more like an updating “Mirror Crate” which mirrors the folder structure.
The idea is already half-implemented since in the current version of Engine dragging a root music folder inside the software will create the same structure. All it’s missing is an option to rescan and make updates.
If you organise your folders on your HDD in a way where they are identically reflected in your playlists, this would be a great feature to add. I’d take a “refresh source folder” option.
If I remember, this was something offered by Scratch Tools for Serato Scratch Live around 15 years ago.
It would have a monitored folder and auto scan and import that folder on start up so any new music in your HDD folder structure would get imported to the mirrored playlist structure. You just worried about adding your music to your HDD how you wanted it and Scratch Tools would import it to your playlists.
What you want is a watched folder which can “refresh” upon opening the software. This would be pretty good as I mirror my HDD folders and crates/playlists.
An option that basically states “If the particular folder is dragged and dropped into Engine DJ as a playlist, have Engine DJ watch that folder upon startup of Engine DJ and update it’s imported playlist for any freshly added media”.
