File Management Question

[Alexander4444]

When deleting whole audio files from the region list, often times you encounter the "Cannot be deleted from disk. Regions from 'Name of File' remain in the session. Would you like to remove 'Name of File' from the session?" This seems harmless at first. So lets say you remove the whole file from the Regions List. The file still of course exists in the Audio Files folder and is accessible via the project browser, workspace, or Finder (if using a Mac). What is left in the Region List is the region referencing the whole file you just removed - it is not bold reinforcing the fact that it is not the whole audio file. Let's say that at some later point you come back to that non-whole audio file region and decide to consolidate it, thus turning it into its own unique whole audio file.

Here's the problem:

How can you get back to the original whole audio file so as to delete it? Realistically the difference between the whole audio file and the region referencing the whole audio file may have been as small as a few samples/ticks of trimming. To have consolidated the region is often times a reasonable thing to do. For instance, you may have trimmed to the first transient of the file and consolidated so as to make it available to be grabbed from a Digibase Browser for a looped-based arrangement in a current or future session. What can't be ignored however is that when the consolidate command is executed, the original whole file still continues to exist and CANNOT be linked to from the newly generated whole file. To me, this is a problem worth acknowledging and I would appreciate any insight on how anybody on here deals with this.

[daeron80]

Behind all that lies the question, what are you trying to do, and why? Is your goal to make your session folder as small as possible by removing all unused audio? Is it to be able, in the future, to have the option to use audio that you currently want removed from the session? Or...?

If you remove a bunch whole files from the Regions Bin, and want them back in it, I think you can just drag all files from the Audio Folder into the Regions Bin. It should ignore the ones that are already there and add the others back in.

I like to leave all whole files that contains used regions in my regions list in order to avoid the possibility of accidentally deleting something I might need someday. If you let it remove a whole file name from the bin, leaving it in the Audio Files folder, then consolidate, what does it do? Make a new file? Or does it alter the original? I would expect the latter.

I wish there were a way to use the Remove command and have it automatically answer Yes to all "...will be deleted..." and No to all "...cannot be deleted...." I made an official request for it some time ago. For all I know, they could have incorporated it in 8.x. Probably not.

[Alexander4444]

Thanks David for the in depth reply. Ultimately in most cases, I'm trying to reduce the size of the audio files folder for archiving purposes. The original whole files that are left behind after the consolidation are of absolutely no use. I am literally opening up a given session and manually reducing the size of the audio files folder to represent exactly that which is present within the edit window. At the end of the procedure, there should be only one whole audio file for each region present within the edit window. I think your request regarding the region clear dialogue was right on - unfortunately it was not implemented in PT8.

[daeron80]

I did a test, and sure enough, if you remove the whole file from the Regions Bin, then Compact the remaining regions, it compacts the original file. If you then drag the original from the Finder back into the Regions Bin, it's the same as if you'd compacted it without first removing it.

So, if you're going to compact, it doesn't really matter whether or not you remove the whole file from the Regions bin first. The course of action should be:

1) Regions/Select/Unused
2) Clear with Option key held down (I think that's right - I'm at home on my Windows machine at the moment where it's the Alt key, but I think it's Option on Mac)
3) In Finder, select all files in Audio Files folder and drop them into the Regions Bin
3) Select All (Regions)
4) Compact

A little convoluted, for sure, but it seems to do what you're asking for. Still, I would never do it without first copying the whole session to another drive so in case something went wrong you could recover lost data. Once you've verified that it's all there, then delete the copy on the other drive, if you wish.

[seek]

Go into the region bin and under the disclosure triangle at the top right select "select all unused" Delete.

[Alexander4444]

That's a great course of action David. I truly appreciate you taking the time to generate a workflow to reach my objective. Trust me, the workflow you suggested is not convoluted compared to the method I was going about it. People like you are what make the DUC great!

[itai bn]

help please
I accidentally (and very foolishly...) chose the delete from disk option when clearing the region list.
does anyone know of a way to find thease files on the hard drive?

does disk warior know how to do this, or any other disk utility software that can find these files?

help please.....