Missing Audio Files

[daeron80]

Turn off Round Robin.

[amagras]

Originally Posted by daeron80

Turn off Round Robin.

Money's here ^

[Cayce]

Thanks to everyone helping with this.

Have a look at the attached image to see an example of this problem. The project shown had all clips stored in the Audio Files folder of the project. I closed the project, and made an archive copy of the project folder. The next time I opened the project, I was met with an alert saying 23 audio files were missing.

Here are some possibly critical points and answers to questions asked by members here:

— Yes: I clone project folders that have constructs I’d need to recreate for the new project, from which I’ll delete existing, unneeded clips.
— Yes: I do have my own template project folders I copy and use for similarly constructed projects, meaning that each new project will have similarly named tracks, resulting in clips with similar names as in other projects.
— No: My audio files for any given project are NOT stored in a folder common to other projects. That would be dumb, and I try not to do dumb things, though I often fail in the attempt.
— No: I don’t use the Save as Template function, because it’s easier to copy my own template folder, or clone a folder that has everything I currently need for the next project.
— No: I’m not using an external drive that’s backing up, overwriting files, other than my normal backup scheme.

Hopefully these clues will help.

Thanks again.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Cayce

Thanks to everyone helping with this.

Have a look at the attached image to see an example of this problem. The project shown had all clips stored in the Audio Files folder of the project. I closed the project, and made an archive copy of the project folder. The next time I opened the project, I was met with an alert saying 23 audio files were missing.

Here are some possibly critical points and answers to questions asked by members here:

— Yes: I clone project folders that have constructs I’d need to recreate for the new project, from which I’ll delete existing, unneeded clips.
— Yes: I do have my own template project folders I copy and use for similarly constructed projects, meaning that each new project will have similarly named tracks, resulting in clips with similar names as in other projects.
— No: My audio files for any given project are NOT stored in a folder common to other projects. That would be dumb, and I try not to do dumb things, though I often fail in the attempt.
— No: I don’t use the Save as Template function, because it’s easier to copy my own template folder, or clone a folder that has everything I currently need for the next project.
— No: I’m not using an external drive that’s backing up, overwriting files, other than my normal backup scheme.

Hopefully these clues will help.

Thanks again.

You keep using the word "Project". Project audio is usually stored in the cloud and not on your local computer. Just need to be specific on this

One other thing; you said you "copy from your on template folder". Can you describe each and every step on how this is done?(I know you are asking why, and its because, many folks used to save a "template" session and when they wanted to create a new session, they would open the template session and then save it as their new song, and maybe even save it to a separate recording drive. The problem there was that audio files for the new session would actually be saved to the template session's audio files folder Most all of us here have made silly goofs in our early days with PT(its plenty easy to do). Just try to be analytical about troubleshooting and don't beat yourself up if you goof up

[arche3]

Get a new record drive and try that after you make sure all the "sessions" settings are correct. I'm leaning towards operator error 1st and intermittent drive errors 2nd.

Def possible its hardware record drive issue.

Has this ever happened in the past? Or are you new to using protools?

[arche3]

Originally Posted by Cayce

— Yes: I clone project folders that have constructs I’d need to recreate for the new project, from which I’ll delete existing, unneeded clips.

—



Thanks again.

My guess is this. Some sort of operator error. Try it without deleting unneeded clips. And proceed with new song.

[arche3]

I have also had a old spinner drive failure where some audio files were said missing. But the next time I turn the drive on and mount it they were there. So hardware issue also describes the issue from personal experience.

[its2loud]

Here's an idea. Just look at the full disk path of the missing files. This might narrow down some of the mystery here. In the clips list, click on "show full disk path" or something like that in the drop down menu list at the top. This will show you where PT thinks the files should be and might determine why they're not there anymore.

[arche3]

Originally Posted by its2loud

Here's an idea. Just look at the full disk path of the missing files. This might narrow down some of the mystery here. In the clips list, click on "show full disk path" or something like that in the drop down menu list at the top. This will show you where PT thinks the files should be and might determine why they're not there anymore.

This

[Cayce]

Originally Posted by albee1952

You keep using the word "Project".

Thanks, Albee (curious about the "1952" ... could we possibly have that in common?)

Yeah, I'm a bit old-school when it coms to vocabulary. "Project", in the world I've inhabited for the past six-plus decades, means (borrowing from Mirriam-Webster), "...an enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim". I tend to call something I'm working on a Project. Perhaps Pro Tools is endeavoring to rewrite the dictionary so that a pursuit not involving the "Cloud" needs to be called something else, but the normal world—where I'm from— still calls a thing being worked on a Project. A Session is not a project and shouldn't be misidentified as such. Again, borrowing from the dictionary, a Session is "a period of time devoted to a particular activity". Calling a recording project a Session is, by definition, wrong. A segment of time spent on the recording project is called a session.

Furthermore—while we're on the subject of Pro Tools misappropriating the English language—you know that thing we do where we record the artist for a short segment of time, creating a clip? That's called a Take, not a Playlist. A Take is defined as, "a scene or sequence of sound or vision photographed or recorded continuously at one time." A Playlist is something we'd create in iTunes. We would never hear an artist or engineer in a studio say, "that was great, but can we do just one more playlist?”, if for no other reason than Take is singular, whereas Playlist is plural.

These are only a couple of the many things convincing me that no one authoring the Pro Tools software has ever spent time in an actual studio.

So, yes: my Project is on my local drive.

As for the bit about copying my own template folder: I have a folder that has all the various tracks & sub/aux tracks that I find to be common across any project I start. No clips, just tracks and track assignments setup. When I start a new project, I copy that folder, named Record Template, give the folder and PTX file a new name, and get busy.

It was mentioned by Arche32 that it might be operator error: I wish it was. I'd own that in a heartbeat. But I'm at a loss as to how an operator could selectively delete 23 audio files from a folder that wasn't accessed between the time it was last closed and later reopened.

Arche3 also asked if I'm new to PT. No, I'm not. I used it from 2008 to 2010 and ditched it because it was so unstable. I just started using it again about 6 months ago because I intend to take my "projects" into a pro studio for polishing and want them to be in what will likely be the most broadly recognized files.

Thanks.