Okay,
That track is only a placeholder that is in every playlist folder in a template folder inside LXN that i duplicate each time on my main prep desktop each week. I have that in there so an empty crate doesn’t get deleted in Serato.
Anyway, on my main desktop it is at C:/Users/Marc/Music/MASTER DJ MUSIC/SERATO MUSIC/01. marqaproductions.com - HOOPS 1 Year party Tag.mp3 just like all the other music. The Music folder is actually a symbolic link to Dropbox where the files live so they can be synced over to my other gig laptops.
On the gig laptops, the files also live inside Dropbox but it is not symbolically linked, I use “Local Path Mappings” that point to the same folder… which when i right click on a song and open folder points to d:/dropbox/music/master dj music/serato music/01. marqaproductions.com - hoops 1 year party tag.mp3
Could be an issue?
It’s strange that you are only seeing that placeholder file mismatched and not everything because all the files on all three computers are coming from the same place but all live in their own dedicated local drive. Dropbox is only used for syncing music files between all three computers and then I use Local Path Mappings in LXN on the 2 gig laptops which is not done on my main prep desktop where I can create new playlists or change them in Serato if I like and import those fine into LXN.
Sorry if this is confusing.
Maybe it’s how Serato handles symlinks? I’m not sure how Serato does that, but with Lexicon I can detect symlinks and resolve them. Maybe Serato does something similar.
I really can’t say I have any experience in Serato with symlinks though.
Maybe try using a hard link instead? Serato won’t be able to see any difference between a hard link and a normal file so maybe this problem disappears. It’s not exactly the same as a symlink though
I’m ready to give up.
After todays update, I do my regular cloud backup and then update my two DJ laptops to bring the backup down onto and now every single tracks beatgrids have shifted again even the locked ones I’ve been manually beat gridding trying to get everything back in order for months. Grids and cues. I have a wedding tomorrow and one on Saturday and I guess my lights will all be flashing out of time. This sucks.
What exactly happened? In the last update there was no beatshift change for normal imports (only merge imports had a bug fixed)
I have no idea. I had already done my prep for the weekend and synced and everything was normal but then I heard from one of the gigs grooms and he mentioned a bunch of other artists and tracks so I went back in and added them and that’s when I saw the update so I updated, then re synced. When my Dropbox folder synced it synced a whole load of tracks I hadn’t touched this week and when it got to zero, all done, it did it again, like 2000 files. When I went back to Serato to check everything as I always do, pretty much every tracks grid and cue points have shifted.
I’m hoping I didn’t over write the previous backup and I’m going to see if I roll back to that one it will all go back to the way it was minus the 10 or so tracks I added after talking to the groom. I have no idea what happened but I’ve been fixing all my grids all year and tonight and yesterday, every track I loaded I had to delete the first cue and re set it so I could at least trigger from where ever I wanted that to be.
I’ll check if I can find anything beatshift related in Serato
So… I rolled back to my database backup from the previous sync before adding the new track requests from the groom to their playlist and re-syncing. I then manually added those tracks again and synced back to serato again which also made my Dropbox sync because that’s where my music lives and it went through a whole bunch of tracks again, more than what i was dealing with, good, I was hoping for that.
I opened Serato and everything seems to have shifted back into place. I am so happy about that because it seemed that over 2000 tracks grids had shifted before.
Something I did before the issue was run the beatshift utility because it’s my understanding that I need to run that when ever I add new tracks to my library, is that correct? So, by rolling back to the previous sync where I hadn’t used the utility yet, I seem to have undone the issue. So now, I should just stay away from using the beatshift utility I guess? I add new music every week.
Also, you said there were no beatshift changes made in the last update but in the release notes it says “Made a small change in the Serato exporter where the beatgrid BPM was slightly off”. This is what made me think it was probably something to do with that. But, reading that again, I think this is only to do with BPM and not the grid.
I’m releasing an update today that has one change to the beatshift problem that I found. It was for tracks from Serato that were converted to Rekordbox. Not all tracks, but only those with a specific beatshift problem (there are different problems). Maybe your tracks fall into that category so try with the new release please. Important to do a new import from Serato without merge. Backup first, of course!
I updated Lexicon with todays update and imported Serato with Merge off and then synced back to Serato. I opened Serato to check but now things were put back half normal from earlier when I rolled back so I’m not sure what’s working and what it not but right now my cues have been put back in place but there is still something that has happened and probably undoable without going back in a manually fixing. No idea when this happened but here is my process over the past season…
I’ve been trying to get my grids sorted out and locked in Serato so as each gig comes, I build the list in LXN and sync to Serato. Open Serato to beatgrid and lock the beatgrid. Import that playlist back into LXN and I’m ready to create a database backup to grab on my DJ laptop inside LXN and then sync to Serato on there, same with the backup DJ laptop.
Anyway, I’m happy that my cues seem to have moved back into place as well as the grid for the first part of every track but as we move further into the tracks the grid is off, even on a track where the grid has been locked in Serato. I have only gone in and added beat markers in Serato for older tracks that aren’t constant, newer track are usually fine or I just shift the whole grid so the one is in the right place and then lock the Grid.
I assume you know the red line is a beat marker.
Both screenshots are from the same track Stevie Wonder - Superstition.
Others with transitions are atrocious. lol
I like to grid in Serato because I can have a controller hooked up and rewind back and forth quickly as needed and also when I tried gridding in LXN and place a beat marker the rest of the grid disappears.
Is there an article somewhere for beat gridding properly in LXN?
I forgot to mention that after the LXN update and syncing back to Serato, this is what I saw so back in LXN I let the beatshift utility run and synced back to Serato again…same results except LXN came back telling me it has saved beatshift information for 30000+ tracks. I’ve now rolled back to before the beatshift utility run after the update to LXN today.
All of these locked tracks in Serato where perfect as I’ve been double and triple checking every week after painstakingly gridding these tracks and then locking them week in and week out since April.
If the beatgrid starts right but goes off after a while then it’s not a grid problem but a BPM problem. When LXC shifts a track on purpose, then all markers and cues are shifted exactly the same. So if the grid drifts after a while, the BPM isn’t exactly right.
As for adding beatgrid markers, it’s simple in LXC. Just press the plus + button to add a marker at the current position and you’ll see the grid re-start there with the current BPM. Change the BPM to whatever you like.
My grids were all locked in Serato and they were correct all the way through, does LXN overwrite that? The reason I have gone in and done this is because lots of the tracks are older music with live instruments where the BPM would not be exact, how does LXN deal with this if I only set a marker on the first beat and then tell it the BPM?
Grid lock in Serato only works inside Serato. Lexicon doesn’t have a grid lock so that lock is ignored.
If you set one marker on a live track, it will most likely drift after a while. You can set a new marker on each point where it drifts too much to restart the grid there.
So LXN has over written my locked grids that have multiple beat markers all over them, locking the BPM over the whole track correctly all done inside Serato.
I might as well unlock all my grids and start again adding multiple beat markers to tracks inside LXN and then sync back to Serato? This is a shit ton of work all over again.
How can I get back to where it was correct?
Do you have a backup of your music? Your music files contain Serato data (cues, grids).
Or if you have a LXC backup, that will contain your grids too.
I have all my music in one folder in Dropbox on my prep desktop which syncs to both my DJ laptops, so they are the same files. Each week I add new music, I send them to the cloud in LXN after gridding in Serato and importing back to LXN.
But where is Serato reading the grid from right now because I have different things happening.
This track has BPM changes
Matches
Matches
Later in the track where the BPM changes again does not match
If I go and bring Serato info back into LXN and then sync back is LXN not going to get the Serato data?
I would not recommend using Dropbox for this purpose because Serato changes the music file when you change a cue, grid or any field. Serato saves all tracks data inside your music files. So when LXC syncs to your Serato and writes your data to all your music files, then Dropbox will need to sync all music files that had changes. That can lead to sync conflicts.
That’s unrelated to the current problem, just a warning.
I think what you’re experiencing might be the same thing another user said on Discord a few weeks ago, regarding Serato warp markers. Not sure if something changed there or if LXC didn’t do it properly in the first place but that is something I need to look into and see where the problem lies.
If you want to read more about that, check this thread on Discord and see if that might be the same thing.
Dropbox is fine, I’ve got that sorted and each time I make a change either in Serato and then close or from syncing LXN to Serato, I always watch my Dropbox icon and check to make sure everything is synced first before carrying on.
Thanks for the link to the other article. Similar yes, when I mention beat markers in Serato, I’m referring to red warp markers which is how I’ve been getting inconsistent BPM/beatgrids locked in for the past year.
I’m definitely not new to Serato or DJing. I started DJing in 1986 at 14 and went digital with Serato in 2007. The grids were not that important to me for years because I wasn’t using SoundSwitch for lighting but now they need to be on. Sequenced music is of course not an issue and Serato and LXN analyze those grids pretty well but I am manually gridding tracks where the band hasn’t been sequenced or recorded to a click track.
I don’t know what to do here now. Over the past year I have probably gridded and locked a few thousand tracks but it’s all gone wrong now in the last week and I use these tracks every single week.
I just tested my theory of bringing serato tracks back into LXN with a backup only using one track and that track that was off in Serato but correct in LXN is now also off in LXN which makes sense so I wouldn’t be able to just grab all my music and send it back to serato and LXN. Is there another article somewhere about Restore files? and how would that even work? Something that was sent to cloud storage 3 months ago will have what information attached to it? Probably not newer cue point info I’ve added or tags or anything like that.
Maybe there is an older Lexicon backup? Check your Documents/Lexicon/Backups folder
I’m looking into the warp marker thing this week, so if I can solve that then your LXC backup will give you correct markers in Serato
Anything in the cloud will have the tags/cues/grids from the moment you uploaded them, they haven’t changed since
What about if I’ve made changes to a grid or cues, can that replace a cloud track somehow if I wanted it too?
If I find an older LXN backup, I’ll be losing any playlist built since then no?
I threw a bunch of tracks into a test playlist to work on and I’m having other things happening now that is going to get in the way of my workflow. I can change the way I grid and start doing that in LXN and when I sync to Serato, all is good except for the one track in there that has different BPMs so needs warping, hopefully you can figure that out but the other thing is… if I import that playlist back into LXN from Serato, the grid is off again in LXN now which also means when I do a full sync again, anything that has been imported from Serato is going to be off again in Serato grid wise when it gets synced back.
No, you can’t replace cloud tracks. Once uploaded they are permanent
And yes, but what you can do is take the old backup and sync to Serato (once we know warp markers work well) and then restore a new backup (from right now) again. Then import (merge enabled) one playlist with all your tracks from Serato and that will result in your new backup with old grids.