minimize Projekt file size

[kartmanne]

HI,
I'm new to traktion. May be I didn't find the answer of my question because of that
Appreciate your help.

I'm recording typically the whole practice time of our band (3h to 4h). But there are only a few interessting parts, new song interpretation, some special licks and fills. So, we need to store about 15 to 30 min of 4h for later mixing. If I delete the unused parts in tracktion, the project folder size does not reduce it's size. It doesn't make sense to store the unused data.
How can project file size be reduced to the "used" part?

CU
Manfred

[fde101]

WARNING: I *think* this is what you need to do, but I haven't tested the process so I might have missed something - approach with caution (work on a copy or a separate test project created for the purpose) or wait for others to confirm:

1. Select all the clips in your project
2. From the (expanded) properties panel at the bottom, click Render Clips -> Render the selected clips and replace them
3. Save the edit
4. On the Projects tab, with the project selected, click Search for Unused Files (along the bottom)
5. Select the files (list along the right) which were identified as no longer being used and click Delete Item (along the bottom)


NOTE: this is almost certain to mess up any project backups made before step 2 above, since they will still be referring to the clips you just deleted. Thus step 3 is critical where it is, since if something goes wrong after you delete the files and before you save the edit (you lose power or the DAW crashes) you could effectively lose the entire project.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Caveat - and always test something like this before deleting anything !

Be aware that slicing chunks out of a larger audio clip does not make a COPY of those portions, but merely creates pointers to that original audio clip(s). If you subsequently delete the original large audio portion, then all of your "cut" sections then no longer have the original to refer to.

Rendering the clip presumably makes a copy of the necessary portions, after which the original huge "master" copy can be deleted.

[fde101]

Also, if you have 50 copies of the same section of the same clip, they all refer to the same audio file, so no additional copies. If you then render them out using this method I would expect you to have 50 copies of that portion of the audio file.

[kartmanne]

HI,
thanks guys. 1) to 5) sounds good to me an doesn't need too much effort. I understand, I may create for each sound snippet or song part I want to save, I shall create an EDIT. At least I'll have may be 4 EDITs (different songs, i.e.). Then I do 1) to 3) for each EDIT in that project. After that I do 4) and 5). The result ist, that there are 4 EDITs and no unused data.
Then I can mix each EDIT to get good sounding.
Am I right?

Additional questions:
Rendering includes all FX and other "manupulatioins". So to have a native track/section/EDIT no manipulations shall be done before starting with 1) to 5). Right?

Does rendering reduce the sound quality?

CU
Manfred

[Peter Widdicombe]

Consider that rendering with FX has consequences. It will reduce processing time on those clips in future, but the alterations are now "permanent" so any reverb, delay, EQ, distortion... will be permanent on the rendered clips.

The alternative is to bypass the processing (at least for FX you may want to alter in the future) when rendering, and place those effects again on the rendered tracks so you can "reprocess" if needed in future.

(Same idea as recording guitar... if you record the raw as well as processed guitar signal, you can then later switch to the raw track and try an alternative distortion or cabinet emulation....)

[fde101]

Again, I haven't tested this myself (at least not yet - but now I am getting curious), but the option to render and replace a clip might be used on a single clip on a track with multiple clips. Wouldn't it render the FX that are applied directly to the clip, but exclude those on the track?

[Peter Widdicombe]

I guess a question back to kartmanne - have you got the entire original 4 hours as a single combined clip, or have you got it broken down as a single audio clip per instrument (i.e. fed from a mixing board with a multi-channel audio interface)?

[kartmanne]

HI,
typically the entire log is one clip without any break. I just start recording and stop it at the end of practise time. Handling the recorder during practise time made me struggle from time to time