Moving a sesssion between two computers

[Talisker]

My question is this: If I copy a session onto a hard drive to take it home with me from the studio I obviously make sure I include all audio and at home I have "automatically copy audio" checked. But at home I only arrange the session, do some routing and coloring and stuff like that . I don't mess with the audio at all. So when I bring the sessiion back to the studio, how do I deal with the audio ? I was thinking about just copying the session with no audio onto the hard drive because the computer in the studio has all the audio files. What is the usual way to handle this ? thanx in advance.

[JFreak]

First you needo to Save Copy In and transfer that onto secondary site. What happens is PT copies everything on timeline to your specified (transfer) folder and you can go to work on it on your secondary site. What also happens is all audio files get a thumbprint called file ID which stays the same on both systems. Therefore, if you do not record anything but only adjust the session parameters, you can later simply email the session file without audio.

[Bob Olhsson]

I've never had a problem with just copying the session folder.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by Talisker

... I obviously make sure I include all audio ...

Open up the clip bin and select Show Full Pathname. Is everything in the correct audio files folder? If so, then you should be ok to just copy the session folder. Save Copy In will make sure to grab all files, even if they are accidently scattered around in some other location.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I've never had a problem with just copying the session folder.

Me neither, as long as the session is NOT referencing audio from other locations This works fine, even going between Mac to or from PC.

[FunkzzaJ]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I've never had a problem with just copying the session folder.

Same-same here.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Talisker

My question is this: If I copy a session onto a hard drive to take it home with me from the studio I obviously make sure I include all audio and at home I have "automatically copy audio" checked. But at home I only arrange the session, do some routing and coloring and stuff like that . I don't mess with the audio at all. So when I bring the sessiion back to the studio, how do I deal with the audio ? I was thinking about just copying the session with no audio onto the hard drive because the computer in the studio has all the audio files. What is the usual way to handle this ? thanx in advance.

To answer your question, I expect "the usual" way to handle this is you move everything, session and audio files to the second computer, and you move everything back to the primary computer when done. Never overwrite the past sessions, name the folders suitably and copy the new version back. I would not do brain surgery trying to seperate sessions files from audio content etc. That is asking for trouble.

Do not fall into the trap of accidently running the sessions off the drive you are using to move stuff, unless you want to do that and are set up properly... i.e. it's a high performance enough external drive (preferably SSD) and it has a filesystem you can run pro Tools on (esp. *Not* FAT32 or exFAT). But in contrast my prefered *transfer* media is a 1TB SanDisk Extreme USB memory Stick with an exFAT file system precisely because it's portable across Mac and Windows, fit's in yet pocket, and is pretty high-end as USB memory sticks go.

If you don't intend to do that I think it's a good idea to create a zip file of the entire session directory and move that zip file to the new computer and then copy it there and unzip it. That can help avoid it accidently running from where you don't expect (especially a good idea if the session is being copied through cloud storage).

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Talisker

I was thinking about just copying the session with no audio onto the hard drive because the computer in the studio has all the audio files. What is the usual way to handle this ?

This might be the main point of the opening post, and I think it's not really been adressed.
I've never done it myself, at least not that I can remember, but I think I've seen people do this; Copy just the session file, click 'cancel' when you're asked if you want to locate the audio files, and do sorting, coloring, naming, organizing etc, everything that doesn't involve audio processing, save, put the session file back into the original session folder, open.
I think this is the way it has worked since forever.
Good luck.

[thin ice]

Save Copy In is the only safe way to do this. If you have multiple drives or get audio from another studio, occasionally the session can scatter audio around the system.

[justinhill]

Originally Posted by thin ice

occasionally the session can scatter audio around the system.

I should co-co. Recently I had an issue with this big audio drama I'm working on where the music beds (which were in a common 'external assets' folder) kept making Pro Tools stall on chapter after chapter. I looked at everything and even replaced the SSD, before realising that Pro Tools had decided at some point to start referencing the music audio from the backup drive(!), which is an HD and spins down when not accessed, instead of the work volume. Since then I try to remember to make sure the backup volumes are dismounted when I'm working...