I’ve got a studio computer which I typically use to buy new music and back it up. I have Engine DJ here and I’d love to use it to prep tracks and make playlists. I also have a computer in another part of my house where I have the Prime 4+. I’m primarily using Prime 4+ stand alone, but would like use both of my computers to prep tracks and would love to use any prep work I’ve done on the Prime 4+ to add hot cues & markers, beat grid adjustments, and have it update on the computers. I have a separate USB storage I have attached to Prime 4+ and store my tracks on iCloud Drive which is sync’d across both my studio and DJ computer.
Ok, I hope I’ve explained it well enough. I’m looking for a process to make sure my hard work on making playlists, meta data etc is distributed across my 3 systems.
In trying to keep all this straight I’ve also accidentally added the same songs multiple times out of confusion. I’m surprised that Engine DJ lets identical files get copied into the system. They have the same checksum and file name… they should be ignored when accidentally added.
Oh, I should mention too that I pay for Drop Box as well but I’m not sure I’d like to have all may tracks on Drop Box since it would mean quite a lot of storage. I have almost 100GB from this past 12 months alone.
There’s a button in engine desktop when you plug a drive in where you can ‘sync to desktop’ and it will take any changes you made on the device and add them back to your core library.
You could rsync your mp3 folder and your Engine Library folder, but that requires a lot of discipline and I suggest you make daily backups of the Engine Library folder too: once you open Engine on both computers you might get into big “corrupted library” trouble
Thank you all! So, sounds like I might explore something like:
Use the sync feature to merge changes made from Prime 4+ and attached storage into one of my computer setups. Since iCloud Drive is mirroring on both systems, then rsync isn’t really required there. I could set up a chron job to rsync the library to my NAS. That might be a good way to prevent catastrophic loss.
What about deleting tracks from the collection on Prime 4+. Does using the sync feature also remove these from my desktop system? I’d really like a way to keep all 3 in perfect sync.
No, when you remove a track from a playlist on either Engine OS or Engine DJ, this track will just be re added to the playlist when you plug your USB stick into the computer. This defeats the purpose of being able to delete tracks from a playlist on a Prime device, and possible is a good way too lose lots of work, but it just isnt implemented. I think there is a feature request about it somewhere…
So the best way to sync all of your metadata and tracks across multiple devices is to use “lexicon DJ”. Create a back to it (from engine master) and then you can pull that down to any other engine library on another computer, and/ or sync that version back to lexicon (from another computer) and you will keep a rolling “master” within lexicon. Lexicon allows you to create a back up within their systems too, and you can also pay for cloud storage for all of your tracks too (if you need it). I recently converted from Windows to MacBook (with my engine profile) and it worked brilliantly.
I can see why something so simple would be frustrating.
I really just want a simple way to keep the system efficiently in sync. It is odd to learn that there’s so much fussy behavior here. I hope the PMs/Engineers are keeping up on forum posts and keep track of what we want.
Is it possible to use something like Drop Box just for the library sync and let the related files sync separately?
The problem is, 99.9% of people dont want to manage their library on 2 computers, they will just use one, usually a laptop because its portable and can be moved around with ease.
So whilst the ‘PMs/Engineers’ may or may not be keeping up on forum posts (in general they are), just how much weight do you think this request holds in the wider community?
I would go as far as saying, i cant think of another software that has put any kind of forethought into this particular feature.
The best way to have identical libraries across 2 computers would be to use a 3rd party network folder sync app, set it to manage the ‘music’ folder on both your PCs then whichever computer you have made updates to you can sync the ‘Engine’ folders across to the other one and it will update all your Engine DB files.
Once done you can then use sync manager to update any changes.
Its messy, but honestly it feels like a mess of your own making, by wanting an extra point of contact in the sync process by way of a 2nd PC.
The track delete from playlist though is another thing: why you would make it possible to delete a track from a playlist on Engine OS, without Sync Manager supporting this action, is beyond me. Its even quite dangerous when you clean up the bloat from your playlists, and some months later find an old USB stick with the old “bloated” version of those playlists on it: if you dare to insert this into Engine DJ, you are back with your initial bloated playlists on your laptop, without warning… If I really told my honest opinion about this, you probably would be blaming me of bashing InMusic Or you implement a feature all the way, or you don’t, but this is half work.
So, now I’m paying for Lexicon DJ. I had to because somehow syncing several times just kept making multiple copies of files which is so frustrating. I even has used Rsync to ensure only one copy was present when I updates the files. I’m real confused about why this system is so bad.
I feel like I’m doing it wrong. Any videos that you all enjoy which discusses best practices for managing 2 computers and a primary storage device?
The thing is, by using 2 computers managing the main collection, you are in unsupported territory. You can devise a lot of ways to sync the files involved, but a lot of unexpected things can happen. On top of that you are syncing back changes from the Prime 4, which is supported, but of coursem like everything in life, has its limits.
Maybe you should try to use one computer for a while, and make sure you fully understand and know to use Sync Manager, to sync changes back and forth to your USB drive you use for your Prime 4. If that works, and you understand what it can and wont do, then you can try to devise a way to sync both computers?
