I'm about to start some collaboration with a friend where we'll each work at home, posting our updated archives back to my ftp when ready for the other person to take over and do some work. This will be done with some compression too, as my connection isn't too fast.
My point....I'm already beginning to wonder what hitches I'm likely to hit with us compressing the archives. If I chop up and arrange my friend's audio into various clips, I am working on the compressed ogg file. When I return this to my ftp for him to pick up he'll then have a project containing several ogg clips that no longer have a reference back to the original uncompressed file on his system......at which point the whole thing will fall apart.....
I may have missed something that prevents this from happening, and any input/experiences/boring anecdotes of Tracktion collaboration would be welcome. THat way I know what I'm letting myself in for.
Online Collaboration Experiences
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- KVRAF
- 1617 posts since 19 Mar, 2002 from Victoria, BC
One of the things I've done is to always create a unique copy of the edit (using the "save as" dialog) then delete everything except for tracks you've changed/new additions and save that as the Archive file. You're right that you'll lose reference to the original files, but your friend can change it back if he wants. He should only have to do it once for each file (not each clip), and that's only if you absolutely need to use the original .wav files. I use the 2:1 lossless compression most times, and by only archiving the changes/new additions file sizes stay pretty low.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 376 posts since 8 Apr, 2004 from Portland, OR
Thanks for the reply. I'm glad somebody else has tried doing this...
Sounds like a good idea, and keeps the sizes lower. Though I have no idea how you import tracks from one edit into another. Obviously, getting the audio files from one to another is fine, but then you will lose the track time/position of the audio file that it had in its original edit - not to mention if you have multiple audio files on the track.
Anyway, you will still have the problem though of neither of you having each others original files, yes? One person, the eventual mixer, will need these. If I was going to be the mixer, it seems like I could always hand off compressed archives to my friend and he would always have to hand back an archive of his additions that is *uncompressed*, meaning that I always have the master copies of each audio clip.
Sounds like a good idea, and keeps the sizes lower. Though I have no idea how you import tracks from one edit into another. Obviously, getting the audio files from one to another is fine, but then you will lose the track time/position of the audio file that it had in its original edit - not to mention if you have multiple audio files on the track.
Anyway, you will still have the problem though of neither of you having each others original files, yes? One person, the eventual mixer, will need these. If I was going to be the mixer, it seems like I could always hand off compressed archives to my friend and he would always have to hand back an archive of his additions that is *uncompressed*, meaning that I always have the master copies of each audio clip.
Correct me if I'm wrong......each clip is a pointer to a start and end point in a file (call it A). If I point a clip to a different file (call it B) then it will retain the same start and end points, but, obviously will be now pointing to a different source. You're saying that when you do this Tracktion looks for all other clips that are based on the A file and points them to the B file? I thought you would have had to manually change every one. This scenario is likely to occur where I might chop up my friend's guitar track into several clips, for example.glurgle wrote:He should only have to do it once for each file (not each clip)
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- KVRAF
- 12977 posts since 29 Sep, 2003 from Ottawa, Canada
If you both use the same directory tree, you should be able to 'fool' Tracktion about any 'missing' files in your edits. It's not actually trickery, because the files are still identical, but just on 2 separate machines.
For example, you BOTH start off with a basic song-- a drum, bass, and guitar. This'll take a while to transfer, but at least once it's done by FTP, it's done.
If you each unpack the archive into a new directory: E:\Tracktion Projects\Blues Collab\ then you'll end up with identical characteristics.
So, your friend John adds a guitar part. Rather than re-archiving the whole thing, I'd use offline compression (either .ogg or .flac) or no compression. If he pastes it together from more than one take, John should render the 'comped' guitar part to make one file for ease of transfer.
Then, he sends you the new edit, which you drag and drop into your project directory, and also the new guitar part. When you open the new edit, since you have identical directory trees, it should still work fine and point to the existing files that you already share. And since you've imported the new guitar audio as well, the new clip(s) will refer to the correct file.
Now, it's your job to hack things up and make them funky. So you take John's simple guitar part and you slice it up, re-arrange it, drop filters onto individual slices, or whatever, as long as it's non-destructive. (cutting and moving an audio file is non-destructive; Tracktion will warn you if you're about to do something destructive).
You save this new edit, and now you only have to e-mail him the edit. He already has the audio. That's about 2k!
Greg
For example, you BOTH start off with a basic song-- a drum, bass, and guitar. This'll take a while to transfer, but at least once it's done by FTP, it's done.
If you each unpack the archive into a new directory: E:\Tracktion Projects\Blues Collab\ then you'll end up with identical characteristics.
So, your friend John adds a guitar part. Rather than re-archiving the whole thing, I'd use offline compression (either .ogg or .flac) or no compression. If he pastes it together from more than one take, John should render the 'comped' guitar part to make one file for ease of transfer.
Then, he sends you the new edit, which you drag and drop into your project directory, and also the new guitar part. When you open the new edit, since you have identical directory trees, it should still work fine and point to the existing files that you already share. And since you've imported the new guitar audio as well, the new clip(s) will refer to the correct file.
Now, it's your job to hack things up and make them funky. So you take John's simple guitar part and you slice it up, re-arrange it, drop filters onto individual slices, or whatever, as long as it's non-destructive. (cutting and moving an audio file is non-destructive; Tracktion will warn you if you're about to do something destructive).
You save this new edit, and now you only have to e-mail him the edit. He already has the audio. That's about 2k!
Greg
