Moving files within folders?

Hey, i have a following problem and do not know what to do with it. Still pretty new to engine dj. I have my primary collection of music in one folder and created one collection within engine DJ. I recently bought a lot of new music and created a sub folder called “TO GRID”. Also i created a new collection within engine dj and i only moved the new music there to make beatgrids, hotcues etc… I also had all the new music in one folder/collection only which was pretty good for me to play the new tracks only. But today i bought a lot of new music again and here comes the issue. I wanted to move the “old” batch of music into my primary folder and also move it from the collection “TO GRID” to the primary collection. When i move the files within prime dj from collection to a collection, its ok, but when i move the files physicaly as well and delete the from the “TO GRID” folder, it all appears as red in engine DJ. How do i do this??? Thanks a lot for any recommendation

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That is the problem. You can´t move the files once they are analyzed. If you move the files by yourself, engine dj´s database doesn´t find the files. So my attemp is:

Do a folder with name: egg date (22042020) there you put all tracks from that date. Then when you start engine dj, drag this folder to your playlist. It than creates a new playlist with that name, and sets the path to your folder.

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How stupid is that? Sounds like some free entry level free software for “play for fun” djs… Anyway, thanks for reply

Lol thats basicly because engine is free.

Or did i pay 2 grand for engine and got a prime4 free i cant remember​:grin::grin::grin:

Honestly this is a gripe I have with the software as well, especially because there’s no way that I’ve found to quickly remove all the red songs in Engine DJ. click click click click…

My setup is like this right now to help with the limitations:

Folder/File structure

  • Music
    • 1-Playlists
      • Your Mom’s House
        • Songs in this mix
      • Mix Name In Progress
        • Songs in this mix
    • G-Electro Future Punk
      • Artist folder (optional)
        • Songs by said artist (optional)
      • Dump of songs
    • Additional G- Genre Folders…
    • Z-Incoming

Incoming Folder (Z-)

When you sit down to work on your library, just carelessly drop things into the Incoming folder. You can drop this folder into Engine DJ if you want, but know that it’s messy. It’s riddled with red songs probably. Most of the songs don’t have cues, loops, whatever. Play here when you just wanna play.

Genre Folders (G-)

Once you’ve listened to your songs, sort them into genre folders.

These can be a go to for a certain vibe, and is where the majority of your songs live for the most part. Don’t remove things from these folders, or at least remove them less frequently.

Playlist Folders (1-)

When you find a track you really like from a genre folder copy it to a playlist folder. Yes drive space blah blah. A 1TB drive is like $120 and that would fit ~30k, 30MB flac files. A 500GB flash drive is $80. You can worry about it in the future, but for now we’re all just learning :slight_smile:

Now that a song is here, it will never ever leave. You can add all the cues and loops you want, and you’ll never have to worry about accidentally deleting the one that had all your metadata on it.

Consider giving it 5 stars or something that will make it stand out against the copy you have in a genre folder.

Engine DJ Structure

Create Collections for genre folders and playlist folders and drag the folder into the Collection. If you ever add songs, just drag the whole folder again and it will update the differences only.

Final Notes and ways to improve the software

Setting it up this way makes dealing with the reds less aggravating, but wastes drive space and still isn’t perfect. Here’s some suggestions for the devs:

NOTE: I’m saying all this knowing nothing about how Engine DJ was created, or the limitations of the software. I also don’t know whether the devs check the forums, but know I appreciate you all for building something cool and would just like to see the product improve into the future

  1. Make the software open source. We’d love to help out :wink:
  2. Add some key/ID to the file’s metadata that would link the Engine DJ analysis to that file only. Then if the file moved around, scan known folders to check for that file’s key and link it back.
  3. Add an option to the right click context menu to “Locate File”. Then pop up the browse dialog where we can pick the new location for the file.

Or maybe I’m just dumb and there’s a simple way to do it I haven’t figured out yet :person_shrugging:

/rant :heavy_heart_exclamation:

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It’ll always be amateur until they finally add a relink feature, something that’s been missing from the software since day one.

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Seriousluy this IS BS i have the same issue every time i make changes to my master file I have toi complketly delete my whole engine library and re-analyze the whole master file. judging from the coments here it seems they want us all to label our master files by date? ■■■ who does that. im sorry my master file is organizedf the way i see fit and whenm i make changes to it… it should be reflected in my engine libray. why is it so hard? im about to return this ■■■■

It’s June 2023, Engine DJ 3.1 was released and this nonsense is still not fixed. I spent the last 2 hours messing around with moving files / resyncing drive / worrying I lost all my loops & cue points / fiddling with the “auto relocate all” that does absolutely nothing

Denon, come on!

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