Having trouble with crates, syncing to USB etc

Hey there,

I’m brand new to Prime and just purchased two SC5000s and an X1800. I am at a bit of a loss, and am extremely frustrated with engine prime. There must be something I am missing about how this software works, or at least how I am operating it.

I just spent hours beat gridding my music and putting every song in the library into a crates based on genre. I dragged the crates over to my USB stick and…all of a sudden every single track I put into a crate is gone. The crates are empty, the USB stick has nothing on it, nothing moved and all my work is gone. Is this s glitch? I have done this five times and every time its the same. All my work just vanishes, and I am going crazy.

Also, is there no way to move where the first beat of the track is? Can I reset what prime thinks is beat one to where I want it? This seems like the simplest thing to do for prepping music to DJ, but I can move the cur point but not what prime thinks is the first beat? Sometimes it makes bar sync useless unless I can move the first beat.

The crates is BY FAR my biggest issue. If I spend hours organizing my music, for it all to vanish, it’s inexcusable.

I’ve read some of this forum, and there appear to be A LOT of issues with the software, but I’m very close to either going back to Rekordbox or returning the whole rig if everything is going to be this frustrating. Even Traktor’s library operates better than this, and that’s saying something…

Use the CUE button to replace the 1st downbeat.

I take it your master collection is on another drive and you are making the crates on there, if so in the devices section make sure you select the correct drive, then drag them over. Each track that has been transfered should have a dot in the ‘packed’ column to tell you wether it’s transferred ok. You can also check the job monitor bottom right to see if it’s running correctly.

Your gridding, cue points etc such should still exist as part of your master collection, database is stored in your music folder.

  1. You can move the 1st downbeat to where ever you want.

In Engine Prime, load a track, open the grid menu, use the arrows to slide or move the grid in one beat increments. Once the red marker is where you want, irrespective of what number is written on it press the CUE button, it changes to 1.

  1. Regarding your inability to make crates.

Where is your music files? Internal or Ext

Did you add the files to your Engine Prime collection tab prior to editing grids and making crates?

Are you coming from another library e.g. Traktor or Serato?

Engine Prime isn’t at the same level yet as other software but it’s usable once you get familiar with it.

Hi.

Can you detail some more info please…….Is your software on pc latest version? all drives upto date? also is everything on C drive or are you using separate partition drives or external drives for your music library and if so all drives connected when making crates for export to the device/usb stick to play on the decks?

Any extra info may help

Regards

Pressing cue does not move what Prime thinks is the first beat of the bar. I have a few tracks where it thinks that the second beat is the first beat, frequently this happens with Drum & Bass. If I move the scrub marker to the first beat, I can set it to cue from there, but it still places the red #1 on the second beat.

This is what I have experienced. If I move the first downbeat to the left by holding and sliding (manual and time consuming compared to just setting the waveform and clicking a button like other library management software I’ve used, if the #1 moves past more than what prime thinks is the length of a measure, it disappears, and makes it so that bar sync will start from the second bar and not the first.

All music is on the same drive that prime is on.

Yes, I added them to collection prior to crates and gridding.

No I am not moving a full library over. I used this as an opportunity to be more selective in my library.

Yes, latest PC version. All my drives are fine, and all the music is on the same drive as prime, no partitions.

I am also confused why when I successfully move a song to a USB drive, which I have done one by one, I get a duplicate entry in my collection. Is there a way to have the collection only show the original copies on my hard disk? I don’t want to see two versions of everything I’ve moved to a USB when I’m trying to develop crates and play lists. It just creates clutter.

This all may be academic however, because the mixer has died on me in the first few days of use, and my faith in the quality is now so low that It’s highly likely I will just return the products.

A lot of people seem to use a separate drive for their collection to the software, but if your PC is not partitioned an external drives is the way to go for your collection/library, wise to do back ups anyways.

I do get duplicates showing when transferring to the drive I am going to plug back into one of my decks, but in theory as long as you have clicked back to collection in the far left column only those in your “C” drive music folder/library should show and no duplicates should then show on the prime screen. Unfortunately you will see duplicates while transferring to another Usb drive.

I don`t see why your tunes are disappearing after you have worked on them and transferred them, Denon should be giving you some advice on this as your having issues, It has not yet happened to me so hard to give practical advice.

I would say dont give up on them yet as Im sure you can get to grips with the issues, and they are great fun when performing as they should, looping, slices, roll all the features and effects are really quite good when a tunes grid/bpm are true and correct.

I was struggling to get the grids right too & have found sometimes a small gap of half second run in before the tune starts sorts my grid out on some tunes, if the mp3 file starts right on the start of sound that my grid just needs moving to the left one beat as prime has missed the true cue/grid point. wav files seem to have less issues for me and mostly I have MP3`s. The issue is most likely music file related, some music the algorithm for bpm/grid just struggles to detect.

I am using mixmeister and rekordbox on some tunes to get the right bpm when EP fails to get the correct bpm values.

I would ask support directly with your issue as lost work is so frustrating especially if time consuming as well.

I would like to hear how you get on.

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