Session File Size - how to reduce?

[Growlyman]

Hey all,

I upgraded to PTLE 8 a few weeks back and love it. Love all the new changes. It's been a smart acquisition, as I needed a stronger platform to mixdown a CD I'm working on.

I immediately noticed that the session file sizes are bigger. But now I've got a session file size that seems to be too big, and is therefore slowing down loading, saving, etc etc etc.

My session size for this project (a live CD from transferred ADATs - three shows worth) has gone from 800kb in PTLE 5x to 3mb in 8x. At least it was, and it was running very smooth.

But now, my session file size is 293mb. With the 57gb of audio information to load (3 shows of ADATS plus TONS of overdubs), the loading and saving has really slowed down. Also causing my 003 controller to display weird alien characters when loading (when it does this, not all the faders snap to their correct positions . . . but I guess that's a separate post).

The only thing that I did different to cause my session to go from 3 to 293mb is some TCE trims on one of the vocal tracks, on one song (out of the 30). I mention this because I read someone else's post that they have a 2gb file size due to elastic audio usage. However, I'm not even sure if this is the issue I'm having.

Can anyone help me reduce my session file size? Does anyone know what might be the cause, and how I can correct it? Do I have some sort of "new" feature activated (that wasn't in PTLE5x) that is making my session size huge? Something I can turn off?

Please help.

Thanks friends.
Chris

[dougied]

Originally Posted by Growlyman

Hey all,

I upgraded to PTLE 8 a few weeks back and love it. Love all the new changes. It's been a smart acquisition, as I needed a stronger platform to mixdown a CD I'm working on.

I immediately noticed that the session file sizes are bigger. But now I've got a session file size that seems to be too big, and is therefore slowing down loading, saving, etc etc etc.

My session size for this project (a live CD from transferred ADATs - three shows worth) has gone from 800kb in PTLE 5x to 3mb in 8x. At least it was, and it was running very smooth.

But now, my session file size is 293mb. With the 57gb of audio information to load (3 shows of ADATS plus TONS of overdubs), the loading and saving has really slowed down. Also causing my 003 controller to display weird alien characters when loading (when it does this, not all the faders snap to their correct positions . . . but I guess that's a separate post).

The only thing that I did different to cause my session to go from 3 to 293mb is some TCE trims on one of the vocal tracks, on one song (out of the 30). I mention this because I read someone else's post that they have a 2gb file size due to elastic audio usage. However, I'm not even sure if this is the issue I'm having.

Can anyone help me reduce my session file size? Does anyone know what might be the cause, and how I can correct it? Do I have some sort of "new" feature activated (that wasn't in PTLE5x) that is making my session size huge? Something I can turn off?

Please help.

Thanks friends.
Chris

What's happening is that every time you make a change in the region whether it be a cut, TCE trim, elastic time or a fade what have you, it will save that change in your audio folder and regions bin. What I learned to minimize this impact was to make sure that I was absolutely fine with the changes I have made to the audio region and then I would consolidate that region or regions if you will, to make a new/ full region with all of the changes in it.

After that, I would go to my regions bin, and right click on the regions title and choose 'select unused regions' from the list. Right click on selected unused region(s) and click 'Clear'. It will ask you if you want to permanently delete them forever or just to remove them from your regions bin. I choose delete them forever from disk and 'Wallah!!' smaller session sizes and audio folders.

Here's the thing though... you have to absolutely make certain you want them gone because they will be gone for good unless you have a back-up somewhere.

One of my first true sessions came out to be over 70GB and after this little trick of consolidating and deleting the session was at a mere 7GB. WoW!!! I was super stoked to be able to put those sessions on a DvD and free up more HD space.

Hope this helps bro!!

-Doug