Hello, I saw a lot of people struggle to connect their network drivers with engine library.
As you might already know Engine doesn’t have straight connection of music coming from network source but there is an workaround with directory symbolic link for that.
For my case i use Win 10 and QNAP ts-251±2g as my NAS
After mapping head to the command line (win + r, type CMD) and enter “mklink /D Link Target” command. Link and target my vary depending where you want to create the link. (in my case - mklink /d \Users\marci\Music\engineTest “X:”)
ref. mklink | Microsoft Learn
You are all set! Now you can import folder and music to your collection from the linked folder
PS: directory symbolic link should also work with Mac and Linux.
WARNING UPDATE: Relocate missing files functionality introduced in 2.4 doesn’t work using workflow neither automatic nor manual
That’s awesome. Being on Linux I fired up a VM with win 10 just to run engine dj to find I cannot access the network drive with my music… I tried to link different ways to local folders without success but gonna try your way for sure. Thanks a lot for the detailed information. Cheers!
When I’ve tried symlinks before it either doesn’t add the track or it adds them and then they disappear from the library. Are we saying this definitely works now?
Thanks for this. I run the Engine Desktop in Linux under wine and although I do not use a NAS, I do use multiple external hard disks and have symbolic links all over the place. I indeed tried making the engine see a symbolic link; but no go. In fact it was worst than that. Engine Desktop bitterly complained and even shut down when it did not find the folder ‘music’ for the current user. It’s as if that is hardcoded into the software. So I recreated the music folder and have to copy my music over if I want to have Engine Desktop see the songs.
I get it most people run on windows and Mac, so, very king of you to include this tutorial on how to symlink. I only mention it because you mentioned Linux. Of course if someone got Engine Desktop running nicely in linux (I have issues with it) and found a way to symlink inside the music folder, I would love to be corrected!
Anything special you had to do to the VM when it comes to settings? I run on Linux too…tried it via VM, but Engine Desktop had issues rendering. Text would be all scrambled and not legible. What VM software did you use?
Hey @Nikdo - I am running EndeavourOS and got the same distorted graphics on virtual box. Using VM-Ware and all is okay…
Did you vote already for a native Linux client here: https://community.enginedj.com/t/native-linux-client-for-engine-dj/38614
Engine OS is basically built upon Linux and lots of open source software so it should be fairly easy to provide a Linux client for us.
Ahhhh. Damn, yes indeed, the distorted graphics were on VirtualBox. That is super duper weird that it works on VM-ware. This helps a lot; thank you. I am running it under wine, but there are issues.
Oh it was immediately clear to me the Engine OS runs under linux. What else would it run under. And indeed they use a lot of open source libraries, like QT framework. You are right, this would not be hard at all to port it to linux. I will go and vote on the request.
Glad to see other DJs on Linux. I ran a lot of distros, but now trying Manjaro with i3wm.
Hey,
thank your very much for this workflow.
I’ve try it, and it works.
Now i can feed my Prime from my Office to the living room , with Cat/usb extender.
Just tested symbolic links with mapped drive letters and also via smb paths. Neither worked for me with Windows 11. Frustrating beyond belief!
This software has all kinds of bells and whistles but basic stuff like relocating tracks and external file support isn’t even available. I shouldn’t have to poke around in the database! The frustrating thing is that it looks like it works and you can access the waveform, even play it. Once you add it to a collection… nothing.
UPDATE:
It seems that if you drag songs in externally from Explorer to a collection then it imports. If you browse for them using Engine DJ then it doesn’t work. This doesn’t work for mapped drives alone, you need to use the symbolic link trick.
It also works for me dragging and dropping from MediaMonkey where I have scanned the symbolic link folder. This is my preferred option until they properly support external storage properly.
I also tested running the entire database on the NAS via a symbolic link. That also worked.
I tried to do this on my mac but it doesn’t work. I’ve made many symbolic links to my music folders on a nas but Engine DJ won’t accept the files in its library. The files load correctly on the player, but playlists wont accept the file when I try to drag n drop it from the symbolic link folder.
Does anyone have a solution for mac? I’m on a m1 with monterey installed
I’ve been dealing with the same issue for 2 years now. It’s ridiculous that everything plays just fine in Apple Music and Rekordbox nodes of Engine but try adding those tracks to the Engine collection and…nothing.
