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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Playlist Woes

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I've just spent 3 hours repairing my playlists, all 70 of them! I know, I need to delete a few lol. Dunno what happened, I opened VDJ8 to work on my playlists as I have 28 gigs in December. I found to my horror there were loads of tracks with a red cross over them. They had lost the link to where the track is stored, right clicking on them gave the option to 'relocate missing track'. When looking through the list of the window presented the Mac cooling fans started working overtime. When I closed the window VDJ was displaying the word 'renaming....' in the feedback area above the browser window. I've no idea what it was renaming so I tried to close the program and it wouldn't close. CMD ALT + ESC showed that VDJ was unresponsive and I had to force close it. I re-opened the program and ended up with the same results and had to crash out of the program several times. I was using VDJ 8.2 b4002 early access build when all this happened. I reverted back the latest public build b3994 just in case it was the early access build causing the problem.

As I have a bootcamped Mac I had been checking out and updating the PC version of VDJ only a month ago and luckily had copied the playlists onto the PC side. I copied many of them individually back to the Mac side just to make sure they were correct. It was quicker than trying to relocate the missing tracks. The tracks were there with all their analysed data if I entered them in the search box, it just seems to be the playlists that lost the links.

I ran a quick drive test with my WD Drive Utilities and it has not shown any problems with the drive. I'm gonna run the full drive test overnight to check for errors. It's a WD Passport Ultra 2Tb HD and is still under warranty.

Cheers
Les

Mid 2010 MBP i7, High Sierra, 512gb SSD bootcamped with Windows 7 64bit, external WD Passport Ultra 2Tb HD containing Music, Video & Karaoke databases.
 
Posted Fri 01 Dec 17 @ 2:06 am
VDJ RonPRO InfinityMember since 2010
Boot camped?
I suppose that's dual booting like I once used to do with linux and windows. I had many a crash and gave up on the idea. Swapping hdd is the method I now use should it be needed. However I never dual booted a "working dj" computer.
Hm..and I don't trust external hdd.

Maybe it's time to relegate the apple to backup? What do you use as a backup now? I've got a couple of old core 2 duo's which do video suprisingly well.

Note: I've got an i5 2.8ghz 3 gen cpu 8gb ram1tb hdd with intel onboard graphics which does video in vdj great, however it chokes using Serato dj.
 
Posted Fri 01 Dec 17 @ 8:27 am
DJSoulman wrote :
...it just seems to be the playlists that lost the links.


The playlists are placed in the "\Documents\VirtualDJ\Playlists" folder (or something close to it on Mac), and can be opened and read in a text editor

So in a situation like this you can open them and usually identify the problem

They could be
- empty
- have empty paths
- be pointing to a folder that is missing (probably because something in the path has been changed/renamed)
- be pointing at track files that are no longer there (moved, deleted)

So like I said, the general problem usually becomes pretty easy to identify if you open the playlist in a text editor
 
Posted Fri 01 Dec 17 @ 9:04 am
No, there was something strange going on Klaus. The feedback window above the browser was showing 'renaming......' and the program was locking up. I've no idea why, I didn't do anything to cause the 'renaming.....'. The files were still there and their data still intact and could be found by searching. It was just the playlists had lost the links, I did notice that quite often it was the same songs in different playlists. In some playlists it was maybe 5% had gone bad, in others a lot more. One or two playlists had lost all their links completely.

Also, when I first tried 'locate missing file' the window that opened up seemed to trigger the 'renaming.....', not sure. I also had trouble with the computer mouse in that window where it was becoming unresponsive. It was a struggle to get off the window and that's why I tried to shut VDJ down, but it wouldn't, VDJ had become unresponsive.

Everything was absolutely fine the day before.

I stepped back to the public build b3994 and after restoring my playlist from the PC side to the Mac side everything seems to be OK. My WD Utilities drive test has been checking the external hard drive all night and it's at 90% now.

Cheers
Les

P.S. The drive test has just completed after running all night. No errors or faults to report.
 
Posted Fri 01 Dec 17 @ 9:35 am
Can't believe this has happened again!

I did 28 gigs in December and two in January with no problems. Tonight I switched to the PC side and played a music video, just afterwards I noticed the 'renaming.....' in the feedback window and had to force close VDJ to stop it. When I reopened VDJ all of my tunes had a green star attached as if they were new files. I use an external hard drive and luckily I have an identical backup hard drive and restored the virtualdj folder. I still had to re-analyse the new tunes added since the last backup, only 13 new tunes luckily.

It's very annoying that this is happening, last time it was the Mac side, this time it was the PC side. Not sure what version it was on the PC side, but, last time on the Mac side it was b4002. I'm fairly sure it was the same b4002. I've updated the PC side to the current b4032 the same as the Mac side.

The external WD Passport Ultra was checked last time and did not show any problems.

Cheers
Les

Mid 2010 MBP i7, High Sierra, 512gb SSD bootcamped with Windows 7 64bit, external WD Passport Ultra 2Tb HD containing Music, Video & Karaoke databases.
 
Posted Sun 14 Jan 18 @ 1:03 am
It has took 4 hours to repair the damage! Not impressed. Replaced playlists from backups, some worked others didn't. I have one playlist with 220 songs in it with no connection to them. With builds b4002 and b4032 if I start to 'relocate the missing files' the Mac fan starts up because the temperature increases as well as the word 'renaming.....' is shown in the feedback window in the centre of the screen. I'm unable to shut down VDJ as it's 'not responding'. The only way is to force close the program.

I have returned to the last Public Build b3994 as that worked fine on 30 gigs since the beginning of December. With this build after 'relocate missing file.....' the fan slows down as expected and no 'renaming.....' in the feedback window.

I've looked at the playlists with a text editor and found some of the files like this, the first three I relocated, but, the rest are not connected even though they are pointing to the correct folders;

#EXTVDJ:<filesize>86638048</filesize>
/Volumes/My Passport Ultra/Video Database/2015/Oct/Diplo & Sleepy Tom - Be Right There.mp4
#EXTVDJ:<filesize>43572732</filesize>
/Volumes/My Passport Ultra/Video Database/2015/July/Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love.mp4
#EXTVDJ:<filesize>68974169</filesize>
/Volumes/My Passport Ultra/Video Database/2015/Oct/Philip George & Anton Powers - Alone No More.mp4
/Volumes/My Passport/Video Database/2014/Dec/Philip George - Wish You Were Mine (Original Mix).mp4
/Volumes/My Passport/Video Database/2015/Sept/Sigala - Easy Love.mp4
/Volumes/My Passport/Video Database/2015/Nov/Sigala - Sweet Lovin'.mp4
/Volumes/My Passport/Video Database/2015/Jun/The Weeknd - The Hills.mp4
/Volumes/My Passport/Video Database/2015/Mar/Major Lazer x DJ Snake ft. MØ - Lean On.mp4

Cheers
Les

Mid 2010 MBP i7, High Sierra, 512gb SSD bootcamped with Windows 7 64bit, external WD Passport Ultra 2Tb HD containing Music, Video & Karaoke databases.
 
Posted Sun 14 Jan 18 @ 5:24 am
I think we need Adion to comment here.

(posting his nickname so that he finds the thread!)
 
Posted Sun 14 Jan 18 @ 9:57 am
Some further info;

My Mac is updated to the latest High Sierra 10.13.2 it is bootcamped with Windows 7 (very rarely use the Windows side for anything now).
I used VDJ on the PC side for over 5 years when I did video in nightclubs.
I have now used the Mac version of VDJ for over 2 years, I don't use video although I use the music sound from the videos as all new music in the last 10 years was mainly videos from Promo Only.

My external Hard Drives are formatted NTFS
I've used my WD Passport Ultra 2Tb for around 2 years and it has a 3 year warranty.
Last December I bought a WD Passport 2Tb for backup, it also has a 3 year warranty

My Mac has the latest version of Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 installed (allowing read/write of NTFS partitions)
I've had Paragon NTFS for Mac installed since the computer was new in 2010.

Mid 2010 MBP i7, High Sierra, 512gb SSD bootcamped with Windows 7 64bit, external WD Passport Ultra 2Tb HD containing Music, Video & Karaoke databases.
 
Posted Sun 14 Jan 18 @ 12:04 pm
Hunting through various backups I've found the last playlist as above that needed replaced.

Finally everything is back to normal, using b3994 and have earlyAccessUpdates disabled.

Also, props to rrrichieXL for the Applescript 'BackupVDJ' utility in the download tools section.

This is something I've been banging on about for a long time, an automatic backup facility should be built into the program. Not every user can recover from the disaster that I've experienced yesterday and last November/December.
 
Posted Sun 14 Jan 18 @ 1:59 pm
I am using the same b3994 - i was having the same problem on my other laptop so i switched to my backup which has the same same version b3994 you are using - now I'm not having those problems with the renaming needing to be shut down manually - i was also having a skipping problem in the audio especially if i went to go online. I havent fixed the problem yet since i just switched over to my back up laptop that runs the b3994 version - i also have an external wd 4tb.
My fan would also go crazy.
 
Posted Tue 10 Apr 18 @ 1:46 am
I'm using b4204 and no longer have the "renaming" issue, it was fixed.
 
Posted Tue 10 Apr 18 @ 2:18 am


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