[Win] Unable to move tracks from Rekordbox to Rekord Buddy and Serato database

[pimw]

My Rekord Buddy Version: v2.2b4

My OS Version: Windows 10 Pro (1903)
Resolution: 1920 * 1080

Steps required to reproduce the problem:

1. From the main screen, open your Rekordbox collection
2. Within the Rekordbox collection, go to “All tracks”
3. Select a single track and drop it from Rekordbox “All tracks” onto Rekord Buddy “All tracks” (or onto Serato “All tracks”, same effect).

What I expected to happen:
The selected track to be listed in the Rekord Buddy “All tracks” section (or onto Serato “All tracks” when drag-dropping onto Serato).

What actually happens instead:
The selected track is not listed in the Rekord Buddy “All tracks” section (and Serato “All tracks”, same issue is happening when drag-drop onto Serato). Instead, it shows the message “Some of these tracks are not on the same volume as the destination collection.”

Background information:
All my tracks are stored and organized on my E-drive. This is also the drive from where the rekordbox xml file is loaded into Rekord Buddy and also the same drive where Rekord Buddy is installed. My Serato collection is completely empty (i am starting from scratch). Therefore, the Serato database is currently only available on my C-drive, not on the E-drive yet.

[rosgr100]

You need to create a new Rekord Buddy collection on your volumes…Read the Manual.

For serato, start it, an then load a track from the E drive and then close it (The Serato) and you will have a collection on this drive too afterwards.

By the way read the manual

[pimw]

Thank you, this worked for me. With a single music file, i am now able to transfer from rekordbox to Rekord Buddy and Serato.

I’ve read the manual extensively and watched the instruction videos before starting. That’s why I was wondering how I could miss this part of information. I now understand why: the headers in the manual were confusing to me: they are mentioning external drives, while i am not using an external drive but an internal drive. @Damien: is it maybe possible to change the header? From my new gained understanding, these steps need to be done in most use cases, not only with external drives.

[pimw]

I’ve transferred all my tracks succesfully to Rekord Buddy and Serato. Really, really awesome! I see the cue points, loops, playlists, etc. I also tried to add some cuepoints in Serato and sync them back into Rekordbox and Rekord Buddy, which also worked fine.

Coming week i’ll deepdive more to see if i can find unexpected behaviour (missing loops, shifted beat grids, etc). If i find such examples, i’ll create a topic for it and it will provide you with specific examples.

[damien]

Loving the progress.

So I agree that the term is confusing. Basically it means any other drive than the boot/home drive. I currently say external but that’s not the best term.

What do you guys think we should use? ‘other’ drives? ‘additional’ drives?

[pimw]

What about the following? “Creating a collection on another location than your main drive/partition (usually the C-drive)” ?

While thinking about it: my estimation is that for almost all users the above will be the case. Why not doing it the other way around? Mentioning more prominent in the first alineas that these steps need to be taken always, the only exception being that all your songs are stored on the C-drive? I think this would be much clearer and will generate much more attention to these essential steps.

[damien]

I don’t want to mention the C: drive because it is such a Windows thing but I like the general idea.

“Creating a collection on another location than your home drive/volume.” or something like that.

[pimw]

That makes sense. I have another unrelated suggestion for further improvement of the manual. It is the part about the Rekordbox xml.

What i really like about the manual, is how it describes how the xml is uncoupeld from the actual internal Rekordbox database. What could be improved, is describing how to utilize the xml in relation to Rekord Buddy. The part that was missing for me, is to explain how the underlying system is working. By looking at edit-timestamps of the different xml’s while performing actions in Rekord Buddy, i was able to backtrace the mechanism of action.

Default action:

1. Make an one-time export of your Rekordbox database into a xml file.
2. Import this one-time export xml file into Rekord Buddy
3. Attention: any changes made by the end-user in Rekord Buddy for the Rekordbox collection, are written back into another xml file. In other words: Rekord Buddy will from now onwards completely ignore the imported xml-file as described in step 1 and 2. Instead, Rekord Buddy is assuming that a second xml file is in the default folder of Rekordbox. Therefore, alwyas check that you Rekordbox settings are appointing to this default location. In this way, Rekordbox already has created such an “import” xml for the end-user.
4. Reimporting changes back into Rekordbox: Rekordbox is using the xml file in the default folder of Rekordbox, not the xml file used to make the one-time export in step 1.

The fact that Rekord Buddy is using two different xml files (one to import, one to export) made it very confusing for me to understand. It would help a lot if the default behaviour could be explained graphicaly in the manual.

Instead of using this confusing setup, i did it in another way. I am using only 1 xml file.

1. Make an export of your Rekordbox database into a xml file on any location you like.
2. Import this export xml file into Rekord Buddy, but in the alternative way: by drag-dropping it all the way in the bottom of the list (rekordbox user location). In this way, you are forcing Rekord Buddy to write any changes done by the end-user into the very same xml file
3. Within the Rekordbox application, change the settings: make sure that you are reading from the same xml file as the one you created in step 1 during the first export.
   The above alternative method is much more intuitive for me. For this alternative method, it would help a lot as well to explain it graphicaly in the manual.

I think by describing these mechanisms in a way that people really understand the mechanisms behind it, you could reduce the number of questions/tickets on the forums. I’m curious what your opinion on this topic is.

[damien]

You have a valid point. I think this could be better explained.

The second way of doing it, the one you’re describing, it perfectly valid. Some people prefer that one. It’s just that some people have a hard time making sure that rekordbox points to the right file so the ‘default’ path works better sometimes. That’s the one you get when you delete the path to the xml in rekordbox and then press enter.