Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

How to Get Serato Hot Cues to show on Denon Engine Prime and SC5000 media player

DJ Marv the Maverick 9:07 AM - 17 November, 2017
I am not impressed with the lack of clarity about how to get this done. Library migration should be the most important thing if we are going to be changing our riders. If there is no straight forward way to do this there is no way in hell anyone will migrate.

Its the one thing that’s keeping people from switching Software, not to talk about going hardware only.

Even if the Prime Series have a “make me an amazing dj button” it won’t be enough to drive the change.

So I spent last night working it out and these are my results entirely from trial and error with no guidance.

I’m a Mac user and my Serato tracks are on an external hard drive. My Serato hard drive and Music folders both have the “serato” folder.

1. I started fresh by formatting my DENONPRIME USB device/drive in FAT32 using Disk Utility. It’s a standard hard drive by WD. 500gb and USB 2.0.

2. I opened up Serato DJ and created new crates in Serato for the Files i want to move. eg if I already have a Crate in Serato called “hip hop bangers” , so I made a new one and gave it a name. I called it DENONPRIME HIPHOP BANGERs.
I dragged all the tracks or just the ones i want to use from from the Old Serato Hip Hop Crate to the new one i just made.

3. I did this for a few crates. HIPHOP, House, Afrobeats, Dance hall etc.

4. I quit Serato DJ
I launched the Engine Prime software.

5. I turned off Auto analyse. This is very important. If Engine Prime auto analyse you will loose you cue points from Serato.

6. I refreshed Serato Library in Engine. This will take a while if your Serato Library is massive. I have about 57k tracks in my Serato, both music and MP4 videos so it took close to an hour to refresh the library in Engine Prime.

7. Make sure you wait till it completes the Reading Tag information. That’s the longest bit of the process. I just left mine to run and went to bed.

8. Create CRATES or PLAYLIST in the Denon Prime USB (under Devices) using Engine Prime for the new Crates you made in Serato. You will see them included in your Serato Library tree in the Engine Prime. Serato Library is the 4th icon under the search box. It doesn’t have to be the same name as the ones in Serato.

9. Now Copy the tracks from your Engine Prime Serato crates - the one you made in step 1 - to the crates/playlist on the USB you made in step 10.

10. After the Crates are packed, DO NOT BATCH ANALYSE YOUR USB OR YOU WILL LOSE THE CUES.

11. To check if you were successful. Double click any of the PACKED tracks, it will load in the engine Prime software to play and it will show up the hot cues. When it’s loading up the track will also be analysed.

12. If you have the time maybe you can click each track individually and build the beatgrid. If you use the batch analysis you will loose your cues points from Serato. If track is analysed as you load it on the player, cue points remain.

13. You can also drag files into the COLLECTION on the USB stick.

14. Another alternative is to Make a new Crate in Serato with all your music instead of multiple crates. So make a Crate in Serato like MY ENTIRE LIBRARY or ALL MY SERATO. Then go to step 3.

15. Dont forget you must not batch analyse nor auto analyse the library you just made on the USB.

Initial Observations and Cons

You won’t have beat grid made, but the SC5000 Prime player will analyse and make them when you load up the track, or you can use the player in the Engine Prime software to achieve that too by just loading the track.

I will continue to explore ways to fine tune the process.

denondjforum.com
DJ Marv the Maverick 9:09 AM - 17 November, 2017
The first three paragraphs was directed to Denon support folks not Serato. Sheat your swords. 😁
DJ Marv the Maverick 10:20 AM - 19 November, 2017
After a bit more tinkering and solid advise from Mix Master G (developer of the Denon Conversion Utility), here is a definitive way to get Serato cues to show up.

I will address this from my own perspective - Engine Prime (EP), MacOS High Sierra, Serato DJ Library is entirely on 2TB Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt drive HFS formatted. I have both audio and videos on the drive. Good thing is that Denon SC5000 Prime plays MP4 like an audio file.

1. Make sure your Serato tracks hard drive (external in my case) is formatted in ex-FAT or FAT32.I couldn't use my Lacie but i have 3 clones of my Lacie and one was in exFAT (4TB Seagate USB 3 drive)

2. I connected the Seagate ex-FAT via USB.

3. When i refreshed/updated Serato library in EP, i waited for it to completely build Serato crates and read tags. Mixmaster G told me it wasn't necessary to wait till EP completes reading tags. I waited anyways. Took about 50 mins to do as i have approx 57k audio/videos on my Serato drive.

4. Collapse the "removable drive" window in EP you don't need it for any part of the process. that window is useful if you want to export a number of tracks to perhaps a thumb drive.

5. In EPs "Serato" tab, click on "collection", select/highlight all your tracks, now drag it to the main EP "Crates" collection (1st panel in EP). When you move "the drag" over to the Crates tab (1st panel), it opens up and you can drop on the "Collection". This is a quick step, took seconds, basically EP will just create its own database and links to your original files.

6. It doesn't duplicate or write to your files by the way. Its read only, if you make some changes in EP eg perhaps adding new cues or adjust beatgrid it doesn't reflect in Serato.

I think this is an excellent thing by Denon (credit where its due). If at a later date you refresh your serato library again i understand one will lose any adjustments you might have done in EP, eg if you originally had 3 cue points set on a track in Serato DJ and you then add another cue point in EP, following a Serato refresh it will revert to the original 3 cues from Serato. I will be doing all my tagging, cues and adjustment entirely in SDJ as thats what i use 99.9% of the time anyways.

7. Then i created a few Sub crates manually in the EP 1st column. To create crates, right click "collection" and you will see option to create crates. I made a few crates that are named like my original serato crates.

8. You can now start dragging and dropping files from your Serato crates (4th panel in EP) to the new crates you just made, it takes seconds to populate the crates.

9. when you are satisfied with your work eject and plug into SC5000 Prime, voila named cues and loops from your Serato library are available.

10. I did all this in EP, Serato DJ offline player was not used at all.

Just thought i'd share this, the first post post is not ideal.

What this means is that i have my entire library with me for both Serato and Engine.
MixMasterGnl 6:34 AM - 26 May, 2018
Just to update the info in this thread. The DJ Conversion Utility / Denon Conversion Utility combination now allows an existing Serato Collection to be converted to a USB that will work in the SC5000 and MCX8000 with the beta firmware on it.
All cues and loops are converted with their names and colors. The first beatmarker, bpm (=BEATGRID) and Camelot key are converted as well.
see this video tutorial:
youtu.be