Best way to save part of session to new session?

[dbrunell]

I'm using PTLE 6.1.1 and an 002. I sometimes record a band rehearsal, or gig, as one big session. I have a need to carve up these big sessions into smaller ones, so that each song has its own session. I've been doing it a certain way, but this is cumbersome! There must be a better way to save a part of a session as a new session, with only the audio regions and audio files needed for that part.

What I've been doing is:
1. Separate each song in the session into its own set of regions.
2. Use "Save Session Copy In" (without saving the audio files) to save the session parameters & plug-in settings to a new session. I don't save the audio files, because why save the audio files from the entire session (huge), when I only need a few regions?
3. Use group 'All' to select all tracks for the particular song I want to create a new session for, and go to the Audio Regions List, and use "Export Selected As Files". I create an "Audio Files" folder in the new session's root directory, and export the audio regions as files into this directory.
4. Close the original session, open up the new session, and re-do the disk allocation to point to the new audio files folder for this session.
5. Delete all the other audio regions (for the other tunes in the session).
6. Remove (not delete) all the unused audio regions. This sometimes takes a while, because there might be over a hundred audio regions in the whole session, and the program makes you delete them one at a time! Remove any memory location pointers, etc..
7. Use "Import Audio" from the audio regions list, and import files I exported earlier.
8. Drag each region file from the bin into its proper track in the session.

Like I said, there's gotta be a better way! There should be a way to select part of a session, and create a new session from that, with all the same plug-in settings, with only the audio regions and files needed for that selection. The new session should be complete in itself, with new disk allocations to reflect the location of the copied/exported audio regions. Something I can throw on a CD-R and give to somebody to open up in their own PTLE (after they've copied to a local disk, of course).

Doug

[Chris R]

Hey Doug,

You might want to try this...

1. Separate each song in the session into its own set of regions.
2. Select the regions you want to keep. Then either consolidate them or duplicate them. Remove the unwanted regions from the edit window.
3. In the regions bin, choose the command "select unused regions". This will highlight everything except the newly created files.
4. In the regions bin, choose the command "remove selected files from the session". Do not delete the files, just remove them from the session. You should now only have the files you created.
5. Save a Session copy. Choose to copy the audio files as well as any other parameters you want to keep. Your new session should now have only the regions you created (they will also be the files in the audio files folder).

A couple notes:
Don't save over the original session or you will loose the original information.
You can repeat the above steps to separate each song/set into smaller sessions. Once you have what you want, you can then delete the original (huge) session and regain the disc space.

Hope this helps,

-Chris

BTW- It's always a good idea to experiment with the file management procedures before you delete anything from the original. You can always take away. but it's almost impossible to bring it back.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

See my reply in this thread.

Rail