When is a track "packed"?

[graviongr]

Hello all,

New here to this great community, I tried posting this once, but the moderators did not let it through, maybe it was too long - please forgive my long post!

I picked up a SC5000 pair and the X1800 during the sale (long time Denon fan, still own and use a MC3000 and a MC7000). But I am having issue with the crate system.

I have a file folder system on my laptop hard drive, I have a backup USB drive with an identical file folder structure. I excitedly plugged in my USB into the SC5000 to test it out and it analysed the files on the fly and worked great, but I quickly saw the need to have all the tracks pre-analyzed.

So I tried to manually create crates in Engine Prime that was set up identical to my file folder structure for my main library, and this seemed to work fine. (Nevermind the fact that I could not just simply drag and drop my file folders into engine prime and just have it create crates like my file structure.)

Here is where the problems started, I tried to drag this over to the USB and it then duplicated all the tracks until space ran out. I reformatted the drive and tried again to drag my main library crates onto the now blank USB, however it copied all the tracks into one mega create, but not the sub crate structure.

I started over and formatted the USB a third time, I created the USB again in a file folder structure and thought I was clever and copied over the Engine Library folder from my computer HDD onto the USB drive - SUCCESS, but only sort of. You see the waveform and BPM info now shows up in the SC5000 prime players, but it doesn’t seem “real” - that is, the player still seems to be analyzing the files, although you can’t tell because the waveform is already loaded, but the SC5000 will sometimes pause the audio or act erratically until 20 or so seconds pass (which is about how long it takes to analyze a file on the fly).

So, the track is on the USB, the waveform and BPM data is on the USB albeit it is copied from the computer HDD, but the track does not show the little packed dot in Engine Prime for the USB.

What is the trick to keep the USB in a file folder structure that I prefer, and then get crates on the USB that is set up the way the file structure is?

For example: USB Root F:/Music/Big Room/Tiesto

If I drag a crate onto the USB now, it again tries to duplicate the tracks.

I had a New Years Eve gig and I decided to leave the Primes at home and bring the laptop and MC7000.

Any insights are greatly appreciated, thank you!

[yeltsin]

I do mine in a slightly different way, but had the same problem so it may help.

I use a program to move everything from my native drive to a portable drive, but still readable in iTunes. When I was copying over, I had the same duplicate problem, but eventually figured it out.

Firstly, are you creating the crates in the right hand column (devices) or on the left? It needs to be inside devices that you create the folders. You then need to navigate to the folder where you have the files, highlight, then click to show the new file structure but DON’T click on the folder (the highlighted files should still be visible). Drag them across - because they are already on the stick, all it does is create a pathway, it doesn’t create a new copy of the file. The issue comes when it is putting large lists and you are running low on space on the pen (it must create a temporary write file). You simply have to reduce the number of files you are trying to copy in one go - I’ve had to get down to 10 at a time.

Try that, hopefully that will work for you.

[Djscottyb]

Denon, pretty-please be making some tutorials to help people with Engine Prime.

: )

[StereoHead]

@graviongr

What is the trick to keep the USB in a file folder structure that I prefer, and then get crates on the USB that is set up the way the file structure is?

its weird and unintuitive isn’t it! i am not surprised that it lowered your confidence to the point where you avoided using it at a gig.

from what i understand they are working on changing the sync/import process to make it a better user experience

[StereoHead]

@yeltsin

Firstly, are you creating the crates in the right hand column (devices) or on the left? It needs to be inside devices that you create the folders. You then need to navigate to the folder where you have the files, highlight, then click to show the new file structure but DON’T click on the folder (the highlighted files should still be visible). Drag them across - because they are already on the stick, all it does is create a pathway, it doesn’t create a new copy of the file. The issue comes when it is putting large lists and you are running low on space on the pen (it must create a temporary write file). You simply have to reduce the number of files you are trying to copy in one go - I’ve had to get down to 10 at a time.

this is a perfect example of why they need to improve the software

[Chloe_DENONDJ]

Digital DJ tips did a tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpZCK_YYAAU But I will pass on your suggestions to our Engine Prime team and hopefully they’ll do an updated video this year

[cesarvog]

@Chloe_DENONDJ, You do understand that the video you referenced does not answer the question raised by the OP, don’t you? We do not want EP to create the folder structure based on artist/album/song in the flash drive. We want it to respect our own folder structure.