Why are my tracks exported to a flash drive being synced back to my Mac after I remove them?

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
1

Why does this keep happening/???

I exported all my playlists to an external and used it for a gig

went on my laptop (all files are on the internal drive) and I changed around a playlist and deleted the existing tracks from that playlist.

I plug the flash drive in and it removes the work I just did and syncs the tracks automatically from the flash drive playlist BACK to the playlist I just removed all the tracks from

here is a video showing it - https://youtu.be/5o4lfh9Xov0

as I remove a track from a playlist on the local library it automatically is removing from the flash drive too without me even running the sync too

2

Hi @brichi, I agree, it looks amiss. When you removed the tracks, did you highlight them, right-click and choose “Remove from Playlist” in the drop-down menu?

Also, open the “Directory” column. Check where the files placed back in the “Friday” playlist are being referenced. I agree, you did eject the performance drive, so they should have disappeared unless you did a reverse sync (obviously you didn’t).

3

yup, its a mess, the locals showed local and I removed from playlist, externals showed they were on the 1TB external, removed from the local playlist and plug the flash drive back in and all the tracks are put back in to the local playlist and lose the changes I made

another video with new library and 1 playlist to test - https://youtu.be/dBrtc110T2Q

4

same thing happens on pc, just tested at work with new database and formatted flash drive

could not talk in video because i’m at work but here is what’s going on

  1. created a playlist in ENGINE, added 7 tracks or so
  2. exported to flash drive
  3. you can see the tracks on flash drive are D drive and local playlist is C:
  4. i eject the drive to use on a job
  5. edit the local playlist for the next weekend by delete ing tacks
  6. plug back in flash drive and it puts all the tracks i removed from the local playlist BACK in to the playlist deleted any work i recently did.

It is auto syncing backwards for some reason by itself vs me clicking “sync to engine dj” in the sync manager

5

Following this post, I get exactly the same issue.

Finding it impossible to clean up my playlists as everything just keeps coming back.

Is there a bug report on this?

6

What happens if you delete the tracks, then go into the settings and use ‘run cleanup’ followed by ‘backup’ … then plug the drive in?

7

still no luck, recorded that step by step also so you can see, deleted tracks in “Sunday” playlists, ran cleanup and backup, plugged in flash drive and all the tracks are back in the playlist

8

hmmm, ill try and do some testing at my end tonight to see if it is the same for me.

Im in the habit of formatting the drive and doing a clean export now when I make changes, so dont really see this issue.

9

awesome, thank you, I tried on a few test pc’s at work and get the same results so I am sure you will to.

1 Like
10

Ive had chance to test this and can replicate the issue… create a playlist, sync to drive, eject from laptop, modify playlist, reconnect, tracks re-appear in playlist automatically.

1 Like
11

ok great!! hopefully the engineers can fix this one soon. thx for testing!

12

No probs, its definitely incorrect behaviour. Id like to say it has only started doing it recently (otherwise we would have seen it reported far earlier) but i dont personally do many playlist changes after the first load so i cant tell you for sure.

13

What Engine Desktop (and OS versions, I guess, too) are you all on?

14

whatever the one is for the rane system one, there is only 1 release and im on mac tahoe, latest update

15

The latest one for me.

16

Thanks @STU-C and @brichi. Ok, so I am on Engine 4.1 Desktop and OS. I quit using Desktop a year ago, precisely because the sync went awry. I use Lexicon DJ for all my management and sync with that to the USB OS performance drives (aka USB/OS drives) for my players. But, I do periodically sync the updated database from Lexicon DJ to the Engine Desktop.

As a test:

Therefore, this bug existed as far back as 4.1. (P.S., I first did this with the Acapella playlist, but didn’t take screenshots).

If you look closely, there is another Engine DJ anomaly! The desktop Acoustic playlist has three tracks showing in Engine Desktop (and Lexicon DJ). The USB/OS drive only shows two of the three (Cliche is missing) in Engine Desktop. Lexicon DJ did the sync correctly, because, all three of those tracks show when the USB/OS drive is plugged into the SC6000. Lucky for me, Engine OS is reading the playlists correctly on the players.

1 Like
17

I can confirm its not just a visual thing either, when you sync again it adds the tracks back to the playlist. Meaning the only way to remove tracks from a playlist is to do it when the drives are connected.

One other way to approach this is to format the drive and do a clean sync of the library after making changes, and if im being honest this has been my approach whenever ive replaced tracks or removed some unwanted ones etc.

18

I have been doing the same as far as editing the library with the drive plugged in, i have 60K tracks on the drive so formatting and exporting each time i really cant do due to time

I have been using MIXO to sync libraries and it works great but they dont export STEM files yet so i am still using Engine for now