I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Denon’s Engine Prime (EP) software works. I own over 43,000 music files I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ve used iTunes to store and organize, and distribute my music; however, I’ve decided to take another approach (several reasons for this). I have since take all of my music files (mp3 and m4a), cleaned them up, and consolidated them into a single folder. I then went into the EP software and in settings, turned OFF iTunes.
My next thought was I was going to import all of my music into EP; however, there is no way I see to import my music. Plus, all of the songs listed in playlists are now in red, showing that they cannot be found. Totally understandable since I have deleted my iTunes music folder, and placed my music in my DropBox folder.
How do I get EP to recognize my music library? How do I get EP to find all of the files for the songs listed in my playlists? And how do I preserve my playlists? I’ve spent a bunch of time working on getting my music library cleaned up. Now I’ve come to this point only to find out that EP cannot locate my music. I’m a bit confused here. Would someone be willing to spend a bit of time going through this with me? Thanks in advance :-).
You mean you’d like Engine Prime/Desktop to ‘see’ the music in some location? As far as I know, you still can’t just right click on the location of your music to build a database and/or start analyzing. As far as I can tell, you still have to use the OS browsing and drag the drive, folder, or files into the proper location inside the Engine window. Then you’ll see at the bottom of the screen it starts building the database. If you have analysis checked in the settings, it will do that, too. If someone knows a better way to do it, I’d like to know.
Then how does Denon account for this? I mean, how do they expect a DJ to rectify this in the real world? This is a pretty fundamental and common issue is it not? Or is this just a weakness of the Denon EP OS that we have to come to accept? If the developers / designers know this, can’t imagine they wouldn’t address it. I just don’t get it.
Another fundamental flaw in the Denon OS? Is there a work-around? Very frustrating if there is not.
After looking at a couple of your other posts, I decided to rename my EP library folder. I then dragged my music media folder (containing approx 43,000 song files) into the Engine Library Collection. That was last night. It has now been almost 24 hours. It looks like the software stopped after importing 4509 song files (see attached photo). You will also notice that there are “no jobs running;” however, when I go to quit the application, I receive a message stating that Engine Prime is still performing tasks (see other attached photo)… Even 1 day later. Which is weird. I know 43,000 files is a lot of files, but you would think that either the Job Monitor would either show me that songs are being imported, or they would’ve been imported by now. Any suggestions?
Thank you for your input Mufasa. This is actually really helpul! But can you explain in a bit more depth how Lexicon (or other 3rd party) is used to locate missing files in Denon OS?
Also, How does Serato avoid this issue? I’m not following.
When I export a crate to Serato the track shows completely blank… Not in red or anything, just completely and totally blank. The playlist has reserved a spot for the song, but the the row where the info is listed is completely empty. For example, I exported a crate to an upcoming wedding, “Elisa and Mike’s Wedding Playlist,” (see screenshot attachment). When I export it to Serato, it’s a ghost (see screenshot attachment). As a result, Denon EP cannot see it as well. How do I fix this?
Also, if I have a missing playlist file in Serato, and use the “relocate missing file” function to locate it, will the playlist data reflect this change? What I mean by this is will the playlist carry the new path of the file so that Denon EP will also “see” the new path of the file once Serato has relocated it?
SPECIAL NOTE: Even though the track in the playlist is a “ghost track,” you will notice that Serato “sees” that it is located in the correct file (see screenshot attachment). In other words, the file is where is should be.
SPECIAL NOTE 2: The playlist was imported from Crate Hackers. Not sure if that makes a difference but I thought I’d mention it.
SPECIAL NOTE 3: After relentless scrolling (I have 34k+ music files) in Serato’s file library, I was able to locate the missing file, and drag and drop it into the playlist. now there is a copy of the song that Serato “sees,” but you’ll note that the file path is the exact same as the ghosted file in the playlist. What accounts for this?
Possibly the chineseish lettering at end of name. Its known thay engine DOESNT like anything other than english throughout… edit the name AND the tags.
Also may have something to do with it being m4a.
That’s what I thought at first, but I have other tracks in the playlist that are ghosted, but do not contain any Chinese characters. For example, track #21 is, " Anna Kendrick - Cups (Pitch Perfect’s “When I’m Gone”) - Pop Version" and as you can see that is ghosted too.
Also, I was able to manually add the track with Chinese characters into the playlist so Serato does “see it,” … Just not when it’s been exported from Crate Hackers.
Mmmmm weird one. Have you checked the tags and extended tags as well. There was a case the other week where two accents above letters caused prime to crash.
Maybe worth a look. Sometimes there in some very weird stuff in tags especially the comment tag.
Correct. Thats the purpose of the relocate file function. Serato will search your computer for the missing tracks and update the file path accordingly if the exact file is located in a different folder/location.
You do not need to scroll endlessly to find the yellow tracks, click on the very first column to sort your library by “missing files”
All the missing files will have a ? (question mark icon) and will be grouped together at the top or bottom.
it will not fix missing files in engine dj directly. my solution is to delete my engine library folder, if i have done a lot of file management and do a fresh serato library import into engine. not ideal but hey
That is not how missing files are typically shown in serato. A missing file in Serato will have all the necessary fields populated with information but show as yellow and with a question mark
