How do you REALLY DELETE all unused files PLEASE HELP!

[MSY]

Thanks in advance for any help with this. Maybe I'm missing something but is there a way to delete ALL UNUSED FILES including the underlying takes on a playlist for any given track. This is how I have been doing it maybe its wrong. I consolidate the tracks giving new names for all. I select ALL of the used tracks in a session, and then in the regions list I hit "select unused regions". Then I completly delete all of those selected. I would have thought that doing that would include any unused takes in a playlist. Is it because when consolidating it is still only a reference to the original parts that made up the track and NOT a new and true audio file unto itself? I just want to slim the session down to ONLY the files referenced by the tracks actually showing in the edit window. Is this possible? What am I missing? Thanks for your help, Martin

[BaileyBass]

This has been well discussed here, recently. I did a search for "delete unused" and came up with all kinds of pertinent info. Give it a shot. Sb

[MSY]

I see that it has been covered but the answer to my question remains unanswered from what I have read. Maybe I have missed something but I don't see anywhere where it say how to delete unused takes in a playlist short of highlighting the takes on that playlist and deleting the regions used in that take, for every track on the playlist! wow! digidesign please step up an address this if you could, thank you

[KingFish]

No... make sure your "Comp Playlist" performance is on top, for ALL your tracks.

On any track, in the change playlist dialog - select "Delete Unused"

A pop up of all underlying playlists, on ALL tracks appears... select ALL (Tip** select 1st one, scroll to end, hold SHIFT while you select the last one"

Hit Delete.

THEN

in your audio regions - select unused - Clear Selected - Delete from disk - *another tip... hold Option down, (ALT on windows) when you click the "Delete" button, and you WON"T be prompted, the "Are you sure" dialog, for every region... in 1 clean swoop, all your unused audio will be gone... removed from disk.

[Ru_C]

No... make sure your "Comp Playlist" performance is on top, for ALL your tracks.

On any track, in the change playlist dialog - select "Delete Unused"

A pop up of all underlying playlists, on ALL tracks appears... select ALL (Tip** select 1st one, scroll to end, hold SHIFT while you select the last one"

Hit Delete.

THEN

in your audio regions - select unused - Clear Selected - Delete from disk - *another tip... hold Option down, (ALT on windows) when you click the "Delete" button, and you WON"T be prompted, the "Are you sure" dialog, for every region... in 1 clean swoop, all your unused audio will be gone... removed from disk.

..like the man says....however, if you don't 'alt-click' to delete them all at once...protools may *still* continue to tell you that you are about to delete important files forever, that are contained in the current song...even though they aren't......i find this somewhat disturbing.....Digi , what's the official take on this subject please ?

x

[Vinylizor]

However you look at it, it's an archaic and very user UN-friendly system.

I appreciate that the over all aim is to prevent the mistaken deletion of any audio thats needed.
However, the best way to this, is to make it totally obvious, to even the thickest operator exactly what's going on!

Most people skip the steps shown above, and just save the project to a new folder, and selecting to only copy used audio.

This is a valid method, but it's only become so polular because the simpler, and quicker method, of being able to simply delete unused audio files is so convoluted.

I've wanted to see this issue addressed for a long time.

[KingFish]

Hmm - it's really simple and quick to me...

- Select one track - Delete Unused Playlists
- Command Shift U (Select Unused Regions)
- Command Shift B (Clear Selected Regions)
- Alt + Click Delete

In under 2 seconds, I've completely cleaned an entire session, of months of audio, takes, overdubs, and unwanted Audio.

[Michael James]

KingFish's method works perfectly every time for me.

On a related note, yesterday I saw a related request go wrong. I removed (not deleted from disk) all unused files, tracks and playlists from a session, so that only the final consolidated audio files remained in the bin. Then I saved the session as (new name.) I Saved Copy In... to another drive, and all the audio files I successfully removed were copied to the new drive along with the consolidated files. Anybody ever seen this before? I do this regularly, without incident.

PT 7.3.4, OS 10.4.8

[KingFish]

Hmm... only thing I can think is that you may not have actually successfully removed the regions, and your preference in THAT session got changed to disable the "Show Auto Created Regions" Preference in the Regions List ???

[Kenny Gioia]

I've seen quite a few hiccups recently with this process.

Sometimes a few regions get stuck in the clipboard and Pro Tools considers them being used.

Sometimes the option to delete is greyed out even though I know some of the files are completely unused and can be deleted.

Try highlighting all your regions (in the edit window-with edit window selects region list turned on) after using "Delete all Unused" and you'll see that some regions are not selected yet they weren't deleted either.

Sometimes I'll reimport all the audio files in my audio folder and then do a "Delete all unused"

Another curveball can occur when you forget to show all regions (including auto-created). Pro Tools will only delete the selected regions (which won't include the auto-created ones) and so the audio files and those regions will remain. Even though you're not using them.