Two weird issues transferring tracks to Prime 4

Hello All,

First time poster here. I’m having two very weird things happening when trying to get my music on my prime4.

I have used the beta prme update and the lower 1.3 version, and it seems to happen across both.

Issue I:

For some reason, the Prime4 has the tags for my music playlists completely wrong. First they were coming from Traktor, then being imported as a playlist into the Prime software. This was working fine with most of my music. However, on the last few tries, the software kept corrupting the database, and I’d have to start over.

Eventually I decided to just copy the playlist tracks over using Traktor’s copy tracks feature to a USB stick. This essentially copies the original song files and the .nml file. However, you don’t have to use that .nml file for it to work. You can just copy and paste the tracks into an Engine playslist, and it should just be copying the tracks themselves without the .nml Traktor related cues, etc.

HOWEVER…When I copy the tracks to a USB stick, they look fine. Correct titles, BPM, etc. Yet when I go to load them in the Prime4 after copying the tracks over to the system, the tags are totally wrong. They aren’t even the same songs! For instance, a house track will end up being some ska track from a completely different playlist. So when I search for the house track in and out of the playlist, it shows up as having the correct title, but it’s the wrong track entirely.

What the heck is going on?

Issue II:

I decided I would delete the playlists from the Prime4 hardware while it was hooked up to the Engine database. I selected the Prime 4 SSD, then deleted the playlists. HOWEVER…When I close Prime and mount the SSD/Prime 4 as just a drive in computer mode, those songs are showing up still in the collection area. When I go back to standalone mode and search for them, though, the don’t show up.

I don’t want to have to keep copying and re-copying the same files over and over, since we are dealing with many GB of music here.

Do the tracks not get deleted off the prime 4 when you delete the playlist in Engine that you imported the tracks with?

How then will I successfully re import the correct tracks and remove the old ones?

Thanks for any help!

1 Like

Hi @6000man - Sorry to hear of the difficulty.

Issue I sounds like a corrupt database. I would suggest removing the Engine Library folder (Music/Engine Library) on your computer and your dive and starting fresh. If you are testing beta builds you will want to use separate libraries as betas may contain bugs. This is a suggested read prior to participating in the beta and outlined here: How to Backup Your Engine Library

Issue II is expected behavior. Tracks are not removed from the collection when playlists or crates are deleted. In order to delete tracks, you need to select them from the list, right-click and choose delete.

Here’s a good place to start for importing music from Traktor into Engine Prime.

I had the same issue at my club gig this past Saturday night. I recently transferred my entire Serato library (about 4,000 tracks) to my Prime 4, using Engine 1.3.3. Track titles, artists, BPM, etc all seem fine but it plays a totally different song. I had to switch to controller mode and run off Serato. Very frustrating.

Pardon me. How do you delete songs from the Prime 4? I have a ton of duplicates, triplicates, untagged junk on my SSD. From what screen do I click on the track? And where is a DELETE option?

Thank you. Been trying to delete the junk since January. Too much junk. I can’t even use my search function to find songs. I can only create new crates and pray that I can hide from the zombie files. Sure enough, they eat their way into my way & I fight them off at every gig.

Sorry to hear that. Have you used any of the Engine Prime or Engine OS beta builds?

It is not possible to delete tracks from the hardware. You need to connect the media device to a computer and use Engine Prime software to remove tracks.

No I haven’t used any of the Beta Builds of the Prime or Engine OS, figured I would try to play it safe. In the meantime I have reformatted my SSD and have slowing been adding music to the prime 4 to make sure everything that goes in will play correctly.

Thank you to all who replied.

I have to say that the experience with the software has been an absolute bloody nightmare. As one previous poster noted, the possibility of getting caught out with a crash like that (or wrong song info) can be deadly.

I really wish Denon would get their @#$! together with the software. The Prime 4 is an absolute state of the art piece of hardware. The software…not so much.