Importing audio without copying?

[gafyn]

Hi,

Is there a way of importing / streaming audio in to the Pro tools project without copying them in to the audio folder?

I have WAVs from a live event on a seperate hard drive, I would like to just use this to save space on my project hard drive and time with the copy.

Thanks guys

Gaf

[robo6675]

Assuming your session is at the same bit depth and sample rate as the audio file you want to use, while using the "import audio" function, select "add" instead of "copy". That way the audio shows up in the session but the audio file still lives only in its original location.

I caution you on this practice though. You'll always need to have that drive connected for the session to function properly. I usually play it safe and keep my sessions self contained, in one place.

[gafyn]

Hi, Thanks for the reply.

Yes everything is of the same sample rate and bit depth.
I've just realised that it's the stereo tracks that convert and not the mono ones.

Everything is copied over in to one of my internal hard drives, I just didn't want them twice, thanks for the caution though.

So does my project file have to be in the same place as the audio files then? that is curently what I have done but I would prefere it not to be.

Thank you.

[CME]

I'm assuming the stereo files are interleaved? If that's the case make sure you have interleaved selected in the session settings and it add those files instead of copying.

And you can keep the session file and audio files in different places. I do what you're talking about all the time, but keep the session file on the external drive with the audio files. You need both for the session to work, so you might as well keep them together. At least IMO.

[gafyn]

Hi thanks for the reply,

I don't seem to have the option to select interleaved in my sessions settings, I am runing PT 8 - so this may probably be the reason.

Thank you very much

Gaf

[CME]

Sorry. That isn't an option in 8. Don't remember if it was first available in 9 or 10. But somewhere along the way we've been given that option.

[solidwalnut]

You can always just 'drag and drop'. This is a shortcut which will import the audio and convert it to the parameters of the session.

Steve

[albee1952]

You can UNcheck the boxes(in Preferences) for automatically copy files on import. Do what make the most sense for you. As for me, I would rather have 6 copies of the audio instead of archiving and discovering months later that some audio is not where I thought it was(or maybe not found at all). Once bitten.......