As a former Rekordbox user, I purchased Rekordbuddy to convert my data to Serato so that I would be able to import that info into Engine Prime. It took a bit of trial and error working, but the solution ended up being pretty simple. There is one crucial step (step 5) that will ultimately be the cause of many of you having problems.
Also, for those of you who don’t use Serato (myself included) you can download a free trial and you will have access to offline mode, that let’s you setup the Library for this process to work.
The Steps
If using Rekordbuddy, follow the directions on their website to get everything set. Close Rekordbuddy.
Open Serato, refresh the Library. Close Serato.
Open Engine Prime>Settings. Disable Auto-Analysis.
In Engine Prime, refresh iTunes Library then click on the Serato icon in Engine Prime, refresh Serato Library.
This is the most important step. Do not drag the songs from Serato List to the Engine Collection. Instead, click on the Playlist icon and create a playlist , name it Music or All Tracks (or whatever you want).
Click the Serato icon in Engine to bring up tracks. CTRL/CMD+A to select all. Now, drag the selection to the Playlist icon to reveal your “All Music” playlist created in the previous step and drop the songs in there.
Celebrate.
What I found is that when dragging the tunes from the Serato list to Engine Prime from within the software caused the Hot Cues to not show up (at least for me) and the songs were analyzed by Prime. When I created an Engine Prime playlist and then dragged the music from the Serato List to my Engine Prime playlist, the Serato stuff was in tact. Whether this was intentional, bug or happy accident is beyond me. Regardless, hopefully this will help some of you out.
I found a few times that grids weren’t properly aligned. The fix was relatively easy by clicking on the “left” button (in the GUI found revealed under the Beatgrid options) to shift the grid to its appropriate starting position. The other downside is that user-defined loops from Rekordbox/Serato do not carry over. Hopefully RekordBuddy will be updated sooner than later to rectify this. I digress.
If you import your music from Rekordbox through Rekordbuddy you will need to open and analyze the tracks in Serato first. This step writes the hotcues to the ID3 tag allowing Engine to read them.
Sorry to hear this. A couple questions/suggestions:
Mac or PC? What OS version?
Are you using Rekordbuddy 2 in conjunction with Serato or just Serato?
Have you checked the Library folder on your hard drive to ensure it’s named Serato and not SeratoLive?
Check your under the Advanced tab in iTunes preferences to ensure that the option for sharing XML was enabled?
If using a Mac, check to see that file permission have read/write access enabled.
Question (because I’ve only ever used Serato for Rekordbuddy/Engine Prime import): is there a difference between analyze and refresh in Serato–and if they’re one in the same, apologies in advance. The only reason I ask is whichever I used read all 8000+ of my tunes was fairly fast. Is this normal or just a byproduct of Serato/Rekordbuddy? I just remember from my days of using Traktor analyzing tracks took ages to complete. Just want to make sure I’m clear on everything moving forward to I’m not handing out less than adequate advice.
i am on a mac os 10.11.4 el capitan
yes i am using rekordbuddy2 and just using serato for converting
i am an long time traktor user but took the dive
i just checked to see how the serato folder is named and it shows
_ serato _ with the underscores .
maybe this is the problem ?
how do i check file permission ? don’t know how to do that
thnx in advance for taking the time to help me
I’ve tried it all, and your steps and still no luck, some cues show and some don’t, seems the ones I create in Serato come over but the rekordbuddy ones don’t. I rescanned id3 tags in Serato also, the hot cues are in there but 99/100 don’t come over to Engine.
Your specs seem to be on point and that’s the right name for the serato folder. To check permissions, right click on the “serato” folder and choose "Get Info. Scroll to the bottom on the Get Info box and see if Write Access is enabled. As much as I love Macs, they’re not without their quirks–the file permissions being one of them. If that checks out fine then we’ll move on.
Sorry for the redundant questions, it’s just so we can be sure we’ve covered all our bases:
Have you updated Rekordbox and Rekordbuddy?
Have you checked your settings/prefs in Rekordbox, iTunes (XML Sharing) and RekordBuddy so they match what’s shown in the Rekordbuddy tutorial video?
Closed Rekordbuddy and Rescanned collection in Serato prior to updating tags in Engine Prime?
Have you updated Rekordbox and Rekordbuddy? yes, both on latest
Have you checked your settings/prefs in Rekordbox, iTunes (XML Sharing) and RekordBuddy so they match what’s shown in the Rekordbuddy tutorial video? I don’t use iTunes at all but yes that setting is checked off when I used to test for Rekordbox
Closed Rekordbuddy and Rescanned collection in Serato prior to updating tags in Engine Prime? yes
also rekordbox is my main library being I never use Serato, I only installed Serato to do this
Also worth mentioning that Rekordbuddy posted on Facebook yesterday that the forthcoming update will have Engine Prime support. So it may be worth holding off for a few day…especially if you have a ton of loops you don’t want to have to go back and set.
no I did not, they are analyzed in rekordbox and then rekorbuddy brought the info into Serato and tested that the cue points are there, which they are. , from there I just opened engine and updated the Serato area to pull the info yet the sub crates and cues do not come in, only the tracks and regular crates
Yes rekordbuddy is the latest version , just bought it today to convert my traktor collection
Everything is up to date ,
The one thing i did NOT do is analyse everything in serato , so i tried with a single crate in serato , i analysed it ,cllosed serato and opened engine prime and refreshed the serato folder -->nothing , it was there without cue’s and loops and in random order.
I read elsewhere here on the forum that a possible solution was to make a second crate in serato of a playlist , for instance if you have a "house"crate make it “house 2” or something , drag the contents of house into house 2 and close serato
Then open engine prime and refresh the serato tab , let it do is thing and open house 2 crate
The cue’s ARE there but the all have n.n. As a name , no numbers , is this normal ?
And the order you originally set in traktor to play , wich was copied perfect to serato is still messed up , they are in random order
But were getting closer
Yeah, the crates are a bit of a show…and the lack of ability for Prime Playlists to have Folders/Sub Groups has turned my iTunes playlists into a jumbled mess. I’m not stressing, as such things come with territory with regards to 1.0 software. The most important thing is that it’s accomplishing the task at hand–prepping tracks for SC5000 performance madness.
I use Serato and I have years of cue points in my Serato Library.
How do I get Serato cues to show up in Engine Prime without having to do it all again?
I use a USB HD for Prime. Engine Prime sees my Serato Library. My Serato DJ Library lives on an external hard drive. it’s 2TB.
I didn’t add my entire Serato songs to Engine Prime collection as I don’t need all the tunes. I did export a few tracks (less than a 1000) to the Engine Prime USB external drive (500gb FAT32 USB 2.0) by dragging a few Serato crates to new playlists I created on the USB drive in engine Prime.
After the tracks copied over I analysed the USB inside engine Prime (packed and grid icon showed up), but when using the USB drive on the SC5000 I don’t see my Serato Cues neither do I see them in Engine Prime.
Can Engine Prime read and copy Serato cues in its current version?
Whether this was intentional, bug or happy accident is beyond me. Regardless, hopefully this will help some of you out.