File Modification Date Altered

[Tweakhead]

This one has been driving me psycho today...

I work with a client who has Pro Tools sessions going back a decade. I am talking about hundreds and hundreds of hard drives.

When I open any old session in Pro Tools 8 - ALL of the audio files have their modification date automatically changed (In the Finder) to today. This, obviously, is due to Pro Tools updating the embedded audio file waveform to 16-bit.

Up until now I have kept quiet about this and just accepted it, and I have simply added a "Date Created" column to all of my folder windows. But today I have been running into many sessions from people's systems who had not even bothered to set their mac clock correctly when the audio files were originally created, or it came from some old system where this criteria did not even exist. So, my list of files are either from today (Modified), or December 31st 1903 (Created).

I have seriously had ENOUGH of this B.S. !!

Surely, SURELY, this automatic waveform update should be a PREFERENCE !!!

I would rather not even SEE a waveform than have my file modification dates automatically changed.

I personally NEVER, EVER, EVER want my audio file Modification Dates altered.

NEVER. EVER. (get it?)

This is screwing up things for me SO MUCH that I am having to resort to copying ENTIRE session folders before I open the session - and then I trash the copy when I find that this is not even the session my client is looking for.... just so that I can leave the original file dates intact. Knowing when something was recorded is of paramount importance.

Did anyone at Digi really think this through?

Can we PLEASE have a preference with a checkbox:
"Auto-Update Audio File Waveforms To 16-bit" - YES / NO

The default should be "NO".

Please. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

(Harvey Keitel just finished my thought for me)

[fman]

Originally Posted by Tweakhead

This is screwing up things for me SO MUCH that I am having to resort to copying ENTIRE session folders before I open the session - and then I trash the copy when I find that this is not even the session my client is looking for.... just so that I can leave the original file dates intact. Knowing when something was recorded is of paramount importance.

Did anyone at Digi really think this through?

Can we PLEASE have a preference with a checkbox:
"Auto-Update Audio File Waveforms To 16-bit" - YES / NO

The default should be "NO".

Please. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

(Harvey Keitel just finished my thought for me)

Yeah this is extremely frustrating and has made the whole backup procedure really annoying. Its doing it on 7.4.2. So no way they're gonna go back and fix it for me, but certainly for the new versions, this small little oversight is adding a lot of hours to my year, unnecessarily!

fman

[DigiTechSupt]

I replied in several other threads about this, but it looks like I missed this one.

The preference option is not something we can control - the modification date is changed by the OS and not Pro Tools. Because new waveform data is being written to the file, the OS updates the modifcation date. There is simply no way around this other than to use a utility like A Better Finder Attributes to change the date modified after the files are updated with the newer waveforms.

[levelaudio]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

I replied in several other threads about this, but it looks like I missed this one.

The preference option is not something we can control - the modification date is changed by the OS and not Pro Tools. Because new waveform data is being written to the file, the OS updates the modifcation date. There is simply no way around this other than to use a utility like A Better Finder Attributes to change the date modified after the files are updated with the newer waveforms.

Um... yeah. LOL! I think you missed the OP's point completely. Pro Tools is writing data to wav files that aren't being edited, thus making modifications to wav files that the user is not destructively editing in any way. THAT is the really frustrating part of this situation, since there is no way to avoid it.

Avid should allow the end user the ability to disable the writing of waveform display data - even if it means disabling drawing of waveforms in Pro Tools. Either that, or you should use some other dummy file to save waveform display data. Like how about that WaveCache.wfm file maybe? I mean, if you're writing waveform display data to the wav files themselves, then WTF is this wfm file even for anyway?

I'm with the OP on this one. I have opened sessions where I didn't do anything but scroll around, hit play, and solo tracks while looking for a sound. But sure enough, within a few minutes of navigating the session looking for something, some wav files will get their date modified date/time updated. This is REALLY ANNOYING when you use backup/version control software that references file modification dates to check for changes. I end up with dozens, or sometimes, HUNDREDS of backup copies of some wav files file for a session that I'm actively working on and keeping a backup of because of this.

Please, for the love of all that is good, get your engineers to make some actual improvements to the app in a future version instead of just adding a few new bells and whistles in an attempt to keep up with the competition. REAPER is already so far ahead of Pro Tools that you'll never catch up - even if you wanted to. So why not just be faithful to your old, slowly-dwindling user base, and start giving them the feature improvements and fixes that they are asking for (and have been for many years in some cases)?

[coalasound.com]

I ran into this problem in Pro Tools 2022.12 .
This is serious. More than 12 years have passed and nothing has changed .
I'd even go so far as to say that not much has changed since 2001, when I first saw Pro Tools. And it's scary.

[JFreak]

Only thing that could possibly change this would be macOS returning to using resource forks, which is both cumbersome to maintain and is not Windows compatible. So as they say, "works as designed".

[coalasound.com]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Only thing that could possibly change this would be macOS returning to using resource forks...

This is not about OS. This is about embedded audio file waveform. Most DAWs have separate files for this and thus don't have this PITA. At least it should be an option in the preferences for those who care.

[Darryl Ramm]

This is going to be fixable with a shell script, likely using the touch command to set the modification date back to whatever they were before.

Complaining about this won't get anybody else to do anything about this. Write a shell script or find/pay somebody else to.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by coalasound.com

This is not about OS. This is about embedded audio file waveform. Most DAWs have separate files for this and thus don't have this PITA. At least it should be an option in the preferences for those who care.

Same thing happens in Logic, because of how macOS works. And I for one don't want to go pre-OSX systems.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

This is going to be fixable with a shell script, likely using the touch command to set the modification date back to whatever they were before.

Yes.

touch -t 2302270215 filename

... to set time for present time as of posting. Some scripting needed to automate changing all audio files at once.