Importing Session Data - Beginner's Question

[RichrdC]

Hello All,
So let's say I have a session, and I want to open a new session and import session data to the new one. I only want to import certain strips to the new session so I highlight those and hit the import..
I'm trying to think of the best way to backup my sessions. I've been pretty lax for quite awhile about cleaning up playlists and incomplete guitar tracts etc. , so I was thinking that if I just select what I want to import into a new session, I can then delete the original session, and probably end up with a third of the session data I started out with.. I guess my worry is that since I've imported certain data there's still a connection between the original and the new session, and when I delete the original, I'll end up deleting the strip from both the new and original sessions.. I'm wrong worrying about this, right?

[BobbyDazzler]

Personally I'd just clean the session edit and not bother exporting. Hard drives are cheap.

But if you really want to: do a Save As, then clean up the session and remove unused audio from the clips list (this gives you a way to back track if you make an error), then do Save Copy In... and tick the audio files option so it re-creates all the audio.
Trash the original but don't empty trash until you check your Save Copy to see that it is totally self contained and has what you need.

[JFreak]

Yea, as said if I wanted to clean up a session and start a new one based on it I'd do a Save Copy In to create a fresh session to mess up with.

On the other hand if I am building a new session from ground up and I know I have great preset tracks on some sessions, then I would just use Import Session (possibly multiple times on multiple sessions) just to build on what I have on my originally empty session.

Two different workflows.

[JFreak]

Oh, and just a reminder. Not all features of Import Session are available in standard software. In case you see a fancy youtube vid and wonder why you don't find it on your system... that's why.

[RichrdC]

Thanks for the insights... I'm going to get and do some work now..

[Rich Breen]

If you "link" instead of copying the original audio then you risk deleting audio that you need. A visit to the session browser (option-'o') will show you all the audio files used in the session, and sorting on "Path" will make clear any file that's NOT in the session folder. You can also see the same thing in the clip bin if you show full path, though it's much easier and clearer from the session browser. From the session browser you can then choose to "copy and relink" or "move and relink" any audio outside of your current working session folder.