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Topic: Can you use PC as Primary and MAC as secondary or vice versa and use same drive, playlists, history folder etc.?

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karz10PRO InfinityMember since 2010
I may have a need to set up a MAC as a secondary machine temporarily and need to understand how that would work if I had one PC and one Laptop each with Virtual DJ installed on them and using the same drive (or duplicate mirror drive) as the music source, so I would want all database files synced, with history and playlists etc. Will that work, and if so, how do you ensure it's all set up right? I know the PC and MAC store some data differently like the location of the database files etc., at least I think they do.
 

Posted Tue 10 Oct 17 @ 2:15 am
History and Playlists may don't work "right out of the box" on some cases.
Everything else will, provided the fact that you'll use an external drive.

An important note: If you use an external drive you must make sure that both PC and MAC can write data to it.
Therefore you'll either have to reformat your hard drive to a filesystem supported by both OS (Like ExFAT), or use a third party application on your MAC (like Paragon NTFS) in order to enable your MAC to write data on NTFS formatted drives.
 

Posted Tue 10 Oct 17 @ 6:05 am
karz10PRO InfinityMember since 2010
PhantomDeejay wrote :
History and Playlists may don't work "right out of the box" on some cases.
Everything else will, provided the fact that you'll use an external drive.

An important note: If you use an external drive you must make sure that both PC and MAC can write data to it.
Therefore you'll either have to reformat your hard drive to a filesystem supported by both OS (Like ExFAT), or use a third party application on your MAC (like Paragon NTFS) in order to enable your MAC to write data on NTFS formatted drives.


I have a series of SeaGate NFTS drives that are running Raid 0 for very fast speed on both PC and MAC, but yes, you have to have a file from the drive installed on the MAC. I did not want to slow down the drive going to a lower common denominator, but know I have to install a file on the MAC.

I wonder if anyone has any tips on how to make history and playlists work? Play lists being the big thing, I need to be able to make a playlist on one to use on the other. At some point I planned to create new Serato crates that VDJ also recognizes, that way I could play off the drive in different software and when working with others they could play off my drive if need be in their preferred environment. But right now, I haven't finished organizing my drive the way I want to yet, and still rely on VDJ playlists for some of he open format events I'm doing which span eras and genres sometimes for long events like car shows for example, where we have other obligations besides selecting each track on the fly.
 

Posted Tue 10 Oct 17 @ 7:16 am
Playlists generally, DO work. I highlighted that they might don't work on SOME cases.

If you want a complete interchangeable system then you could convert your playlists to Virtual Folders.
However keep in mind that Virtual Folders don't have a default order (they behave as folders) so it's not possible to save a "set" with the order you would like to play it.
If you use your playlists just in order to select songs, then Virtual Folders are better for this purpose.

 

Posted Tue 10 Oct 17 @ 8:52 am
karz10PRO InfinityMember since 2010
Ok, but I do need the playlists for some things. How is that stored? Are the playlists on my PC laptop in a database that I have to copy over to the MAC somehow? Or are they on an NTFS drive and theoretically automatically read by VDJ on the MAC once the drive is connected?

I kind of thought they were on the PC Laptop and therefore I wasn't sure how to get that on the MAC. Like when I set up a duplicate PC, I make sure I use the same external drive/duplicate drive, and I copy over any of the VDJ files from one machine's Documents folder to the other. But I'm not sure anymore what's still kept by default in the computers drive that would need to be copied to the Mac, and with different file structures if I would have to change or modify anything or where I would put said files on the Mac.

Any idea anybody? Thanks.
 

Posted Wed 11 Oct 17 @ 10:22 pm
If by "Playlists" you mean the special folder named "Playlists" on the browser tree, then yes these files are still stored inside your internal hard drive and you need to copy them over to your MAC.
If you mean playlist files in general (like m3u files that you have stored on your external drive) then those files don't need to be copied/modified for them to be accessible on both platforms.
 

Posted Wed 11 Oct 17 @ 11:38 pm
karz10PRO InfinityMember since 2010
Ok so I just made a new playlist, saved it on my primary machine version of VDJ. I looked in the 'My Documents' folder of the PC, it shows a new M3U file named the same thing as my new playlist. I do not see any similar folder or file on my external where the music is.

So how do I get any needed database files, and folders like this playlist folder that is storing these m3u files on my machine, onto a MAC where they'll work? I've never installed VDJ on a Mac, so I don't know where it's going to keep the files, all I know is Mac's file system is different and I can't just slap these files into the normal Windows My Documents folder. Does that question make sense?

Normally I would just take the whole Virtual DJ Folder on my primary PC and paste it onto a flash drive, and then paste it into the My Documents folder of the other PC. I need to do the equivalent of that onto a Mac I guess.
 

Posted Thu 12 Oct 17 @ 5:53 am
It's the same on MAC as well. VirtualDj saves it's files inside "Documents" folder.
However you should not paste the entire windows "VirtualDj" folder there (mainly because of third party fx)
You should just paste the "Folders", "History" and "Playlists" folders.
 

Posted Thu 12 Oct 17 @ 9:24 am
karz10PRO InfinityMember since 2010
PhantomDeejay wrote :
It's the same on MAC as well. VirtualDj saves it's files inside "Documents" folder.
However you should not paste the entire windows "VirtualDj" folder there (mainly because of third party fx)
You should just paste the "Folders", "History" and "Playlists" folders.


Ok I will try that when I get a chance, thanks
 

Posted Tue 17 Oct 17 @ 3:09 am


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