Removing Tracks from USB

Legacy Products Engine PRIME
1

I have invested in a 128gb Rage Elite USB (supposedly fastest and most reliable) for use with my prime players.

I have transferred 2017/ 2018/ 2019 and 2020’s crates to the USB and there are 7000 tracks on there and its almost full… so I have decided to remove the 2017 crate and subcrates from the USB to free up space.

I right click on the crate and remove, however ALL the tracks remain, how do I get all those tracks removed from the USB please? I cant see an option in the software… what am I missing please?

thank you

2

Try using the “cleanup” command found in the “Library → System” (Library optimization) menu at the bottom.

3

Thank you, Ive pressed that and now says its optimising…does this process take a while, just says “dont turn off computer or close prime”

4

Did you try “remove from collection” when you highlight the tracks in the device panel?

5

No, I just wanted to remove the crate and the subcrates with everything inside…so right clicked and pressed remove…

edit : To be honest, Ive killed the program to stop the “optimisation” and realise its going to be quicker to format the USB and just copy the last 18/ 19 and 20 crates onto the fresh drive…

6

I hope that by making this drastic choice, you have not destroyed the Engine Prime DB. Will you tell us … :astonished: :astonished:

7

well, I’ve restarted the program and now its copying the music over, seems fine…

I hate this software and database so much, never seems intuitive.

8

Yes, but avoid “killing” the application while working on the DB, you could get big problems. As I have already written in other posts: you have to treat Engine Prime and the console, with velvet gloves, because problems related to corrupt DBs often occur for strange operations like you did.

9

Removing a crate only removes the crate, not the files associated with it. This is a standard behaviour.

Crates and playlists are just links to files, not real folders containing real files.

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10

Why is there no hint/ tip which says “would you like to remove the files too”

11

Because people are expected to read the manual and know how the software works. :smile:

Is this the first time you have ever used DJ software or music librarian software? They all work in a similar way.

12

It’s to protect libraries. Same with most libraries and even itunes when dealing with crates and playlist.

The first delete is usually to remove from the list then you can either go to the collection list to delete from the drive or specify that when deleting from the crates instead.

There will be uproar if deleting from crates also resulted in removal of the actual files itself.

Fun fact: Engine Prime will not remove the actual files. That ability is not present yet. If you intend to permanently delete the file you have to delete from engine first then head to your collection drive folders to finish.

If you remove the files from engine prime main collection the original file is still safe on your HD.

This is for the main collection though, not sure if EP treats destination drives differently when it comes to “remove from collection” action.

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13

I think @Slater wants to delete the tracks ONLY from the target (Engine Prime Target, i.e. from his USB stick). This would make sense, because only the tracks on the remote drive would be erased, not in the collection on the PC. I was amazed that this does not happen automatically: so far I have never had to delete tracks from my SDXC, but I was convinced that when I deleted them from the remote DB, they were also physically deleted (i.e. delete the MP3 file from the SDXC).

14

traktor has that and in serato you can hit ctrl + shift + del to physically delete the associated files. so yeah, would be a nice addition to engine prime.

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15

I did some testing, and the end result is that unused tracks are automatically removed from the remote drive (USB stick), so it works as it should.

But be careful, because if you later use the SYNC MANAGER you will still find that track deleted.

Example: if I delete a track from a crate in the remote unit, if that track is used only in that crate, then the MP3 file will also be deleted (only in the remote unit). But if the same crate is present in the library collection on the PC and if it is flagged to be synchronized with SYNC MANAGER, obviously the first time I execute this function I will find the track in its place again.

Therefore you should consider the crates in the library of the PC and the remote drive, as if they were actually the crates that we moved in the 90s, so you see them as crates that must be the same. So if you want to delete tracks from your remote unit, you can use SYNC MANAGER, de-flag the crates you don’t want to have on the remote unit and then start this function. Doing so will remain the crate at home (ie in the PC library) but will be deleted from the remote drive, including MP3 files and you free up the space.

I hope I was clear. Otherwise ask.

2 Likes
16

Thanks for the clarification @DjAj :+1:

17

HI,

I like what you are suggesting. I face this frustration too when I did up my first stick for all the songs I want to play but overtime, started to edited away what I did not like to have anymore.

I have all my original songs backup on 2 another HDDs just like my digital photos to ensure I never lose or erase them by accident. Incidentally are not compatible with Engine Prime as they are on a different file allocation table format.

I love to edit my songs or choice of songs from Engine Prime for one main things which I have not been able to find a software that does it to organise my songs. The ability to INSTANTLY preview the songs. I hate having to click a song which open a play to play it and have to drag to various portion to hear the song before deciding to shortlist it for playback. Unless one of the folks here can point me to a PC compatible one that does that.

Anyway, the preview help me decide on the song to keep and I just wish when I click remove from collection, will also erase the song from the STICK. It still keeps the actual song ion the STICK. I checked.

And also if I just remove the song and use OPTIMISE option, it does not remove the song. If I were to erase manually the song, the collection will still see the song but indicate in RED. Which is fine as it tells me the song is no longer in the STICK since I erased it manually. Clicking OPTIMISE again will not remove the song title in RED (in collection) but have to manually right click REMOVE from Collection.

It would be great to have some form of keyboard stroke to allow a selected song or batch of songs to be removed from the STICK when I simply click REMOVE from Collection. Its more than double work at this point for me to remove like a few hundred of songs have to take a few actions for each one of them heheh… I understand they have not implemented this for one reason, NON-SAVVY tech DJs who might accidentally erase their song and have no backup and might demand Denon DJ replace their missing song but this is 2020. Any sane person will know what is backing up to more than one HDD to ensure fail safe practices.

I hope one day they might have that option built-in. The coding is not hard to do but maybe the legal implication is what stopped Denon DJ from doing so.

I just love the super quick preview option so much since finding it after many years of searching. I have only one s/w that does that but that is part of a software I bought to help me bulk search for file duplicates. LOL. And if it was not use to search for duplicates, that quick function does not work :(.

Anyway, that’s my two cents and wishful thinking… Sop keeping my finger’s cross. Getting too old in my 50s to remember all the songs and I have 500K of songs. Titles I can not remember all but when I hear it, I know the song. Just want a software like Engine Prime to sort it all out. The STICK so far as not failed on me so I am happy with that.

Cheers.

18

Within Serato DJ you can either remove a track from your library or delete it from your drive all together. iTunes does this as well. Adding a full delete would be a great enhancement to EP.

19

Doesn’t remove from collection do this? Sure I’ve tied to find tracks I’ve done this with and they aren’t on my drive anymore. I’ll try that again tomorrow.

20

No it doesn’t, it only removes from the collection but not from hard drive. If you readd the hard drive files, those previously deleted files will return.

We need that advanced library manager sooner rather than later.

Duplicate finder (with duplicate sensitivity settings), Relocate, Delete missing files

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