Where are your music files? Are they stored on the C: drive or are they external? If external, is that drive connected correctly? in the right format? No drive errors?
Have you properly formatted the USB? is it the root where you’re attempting to sync to?
What is ‘night watch’? And does it have any playlists in it?
I might be wrong but it also looks like you somehow have 2 D: drives mounted at once? Shouldn’t you re-mount one of those with a different prefix? Is your music stored on one of those D: drives? If so, it’s entirely possible the software is getting messed up because of that.
Edit: I just grabbed a spare USB that had music on it, formatted it as ExFat (using Mac OS Sonoma) with master boot record selected. I then fired up Engine and added 2 small playlists to it and it worked with no issue. All my music is on the internal hard drive of the computer and never moves.
Can you share one of the file paths associated to one of those Ska tracks in the desktop software please? so we can see if it matches the actual file path of the drives on your computer.
If you look at 16 seconds there is a drive with a picture of a music note that’s designated D:\ and the nightwatch drive is also assigned D:
I don’t know enough about Windows file systems to know if that’s an issue or not, but it looks wrong to me?
I know from work that if we ever map any network drives we always go right up the alphabet to like Y or X so we aren’t interfering with any auto allocated drive names lower down the order.
Edit: the first one might just be a name and not a file path, maybe doesn’t matter.
First one is a shortcut, just like the Downloads folder. I agree that it looks a little weird. It’s how the drives are named in Engine that’s looks off to me but I’ve never used it on Windows either.
I think the playlist isn’t being loaded because it can’t find the source music files, they would only show red if you try to play or analyse it wouldn’t they?
That C: drive in Engine certainly looks strange with no name against.
Nightwatch is my D: drive where the music files/ are located.
The USB/Thumb drive is my F: where I am trying to sync to.
If you look at the video I formatted the Thumb drive to fat32 I also tried to a brand new Thumb drive formatted to efat.
Neither Thumb drive synced playlists but both synced the music files.
All the music files have been checked for corruption so it is not the music.
Can you show the file path of the music from the software? It should be an option when you right click one of the column headers.
Also after you have synced and ejected the USB drive, is there an engine folder on there with a DB? If not, is there another drive connected that you have synced to previously that might have the Engine folder and DB in it?
If the music is being added to the collection but no playlist is showing, it could be that it’s writing the playlist data elsewhere.
A couple of other things, this drive your music is on is formatted as NTFS? have you read the manual to see if that is recommended? How is the drive connected to your PC, is it with a cable or is it network storage?
Another strange looking thing, why does the USB drive say 230.1gb available? What size USB is it? That’s a weird number to be shown on an empty drive.
To me, something is blocking the playlist creation and that points to some kind of DB contention, it must be writing that data somewhere after syncing, perhaps to some other place where you have synced previously.
On the second sync, I don’t see the files on the usb drive either.
Can you show us the files on the usb stick outside off Engine after a sync ?
Another test worth trying, format the usb, connect to your prime device. Create the playlist with your prime device then sync with Engine desktop from desktop to USB
Nightwatch drive is my music storage drive thus it is readable for music files which are added to Engine.
The Thumb drive/ USB stick was formatted fat 32 I also tried efat just encase something odd was going on with Engine a long shot i admit but hay i had nothing to loose.
So the problem you have, if there was some kind of coding bug in Engine (that requires attention from the Devs) we would all be seeing it, code packages aren’t sent out in different forms to different people.
You’re one of a few people to have issues with no playlists appearing, this points to something in your workflow somewhere that is causing this.
We are trying to help by pointing out potential issues that may be causing it, based on noticing things in your video above.
My final suggestion would be to completely wipe your engine database and start again, without altering any of your drive locations or connections. The playlists clearly aren’t loading due to some issue with how your database files are being updated.
I completely have uninstalled Engine including removed all the recent backup library’s.
So it will be interesting to see if Engine writes playlists.
I will test syncing one playlist to a USB to see if it works.
Then I will try and use a backup library file from early Feb.
My problem is how can this happen? during syncing. If a Thumb drive/ USB effect the PCs playlists.
I understand that Thumb drive can get corrupted but that corruption should not be able to be transported to the master playlist within Engine
A small update the problem has not been resolved on the laptop, I installed the latest version 3.4.0 which also did not sync playlists.
I have a video which I may post in the near future I have sent the dev’s my Engine Library database twice but have not had any feedback from them or even an acknowledgement that they have received my email.
As you can imagine I am less than impressed with this.
I am not the only person to get this problem which has been on going for a couple of years.
One comment said it dose not happen to me, well it did not happen to me until September 2023.
Before that Engine was sort of fine.
Check C drive to see if there is any folder by the name ENGINE LIBRARY. You may find this in the subfolder C>Music but check thoroughly, it may be elsewhere.
Check D drive to see if there is any folder by the name ENGINE LIBRARY. You may find it in the root directory ie D>Engine Library but check thoroughly, it may be elsewhere
Now rename both Engine Library folders.
Start up Engine DJ, it should be empty,
add your tracks from D drive to it.
Try exporting a playlist to the thumb then.
TIP: If you havent already, you should consider changing your default Windows music folder to the D drive permanently. If you do this engine will not create a db in C (except you add music to engine from C).
C drive will house your system files and is the start up drive
D drive will house your user files eg docs, movies, music etc
I have aways had my playlists on my D:(Nightwatch)
I did not even consider Engine would crate an Engine Library on my C: drive which I found.
I had been running Engine for months why would it do that? could this have happened when the software updated?
I have a backup of my original Engine Library backup folder from February but it does not seem to restore my playlists.
The missing track auto search dose not seem to work.
One last thing is it possible to copy playlists back to Engine Library from a USB? is there a tool I can use.
yes you can use the ‘sync to Engine DJ’ option in the sync manager to load any playlists you created on the DJ device back to the software. I tend to do this before i sync any new tracks to my drive as it then stores any cue, loop and beat grids that ive created during a gig back to the software.
I have tried sync manager it see’s the usb stick but does not copy the playlist to the PC or Laptop.
All sync manager wants to do is sync from the PC/ Laptop to the USB.
I have to say i’m sick and tired of these basic functions glitching out it’s a complete joke.
On rekordbox i would have had this sorted in minutes.
Rekordbox has a backup function that will backup the database and music together which then can be imported to and system with Rekordbox on it.
I have rescued playlists and music from a dead macbook to a new windows laptop.
These sort of simple functions should be there in Engine it’s a complete joke I have sent weeks trying to solve this rubbish!
