Delete unused audio samples

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kazableton
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Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:43 pm

Delete unused audio samples

Post by kazableton » Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:58 pm

Dear all,

I am rather desperate and could not find any answer via google, this forum, the manual etc. What I would like to do is seemingly absolutely simple:

1. I create a project (not only a set)
2. I record audio several times
3. If I do not like a take (usually), I always delete it immediately on the track
3. I end up with a lot of audio files in the "Samples - Recorded" subfolder
4. The File manager ("Manage Projects") tells me that I cannot delete these files because they are used in the project - well, they are not - they are not on any track and in fact it does not help if I delete the recording track entirely.
5. The files do not show up in the "unused" section either

What do I have to simply get rid of such audio files which are of no use to me at all?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Tarekith
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Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Tarekith » Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:07 pm

"Save As" from the file menu to select a new location to save the project, then do a "Collect All and Save" command from the File menu to only copy over audio files used in the project. Also make sure you don't have any unused audio in the Session view if you're using Arrange View, and vice versa too.
Tarekith
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kazableton
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:43 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by kazableton » Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:45 pm

Thank you, Tarekith, for your quick reply!

I did as you suggested with the following results:

1. I did the "collect and save all" leaving all of the 4 selections at "do not copy"
2. I ended up with two audio clips/samples in the new folder
3. I ended up with over 200 references to media files as "external files from other projects" - those were the same files I wanted to get rid of in the first place - seemingly, the project believes that these 200+ external files are still used by the "collect and save" project.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks again!

Tarekith
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Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Tarekith » Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:06 pm

You should have left the options in step 1 checked, otherwise how will Live know you want to save the files to the new folder?
Tarekith
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kazableton
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:43 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by kazableton » Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:43 pm

I did that now.

Now I have the 200+ unwanted media files in my project folder + the project claims to use and need the same 200+ unwanted from other projects.

These are, however, the 200+ test audio tracks that I want to entirely get rid of.

Why is not easily possible to simply delete those files. They are not needed by any of my projects (as I said, I was just testing some audio recording loops for a few hours).

Thanks again for your support!

Chancery
Posts: 159
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2020 9:59 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Chancery » Wed Jan 26, 2022 7:13 am

In my experience, those elusive audio files are always "hidden" in two places: The Backups generated by Live and in Take Lanes. Live will count those as used, even if they really aren't.
I always delete all files in the Backup folder, go through all Take Lanes and save the project before doing a Manage Project.

kazableton
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:43 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by kazableton » Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:27 am

Yes!

Thank you Chancery for the "golden hint". Indeed I had GB worth of data on my take lanes - erasing those solves the issue.

Having said this, it would be nice if Ableton could introduce a feature to (semi-)automatically erase the take lanes.

Thanks again to the two of you!

Angstrom
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Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Angstrom » Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:43 am

ableton have a habit of creating features which are left 75% complete before they move on to their next feature.

orphan files is one area. Unless you "manage project" and manually delete unused files you will have projects of multiple gigabytes in size . But manage project has a couple of big flaws.

The first occurs If you happen to save songs incrementally, so ... if you initially save your song as: my-new-song.als ,
then at the end of the day you make sure to keep things safe, you save as. my-new-song-001.als, then the next day my-new-song-002., etc.

for every one of those songs in the project folder Live will create TEN undo songs in the /backup subfolder. These will be named something like my-new-song-001[12-12-2022].als. for the three songs mentioned above there will be a total of THIRTY backup.als files in the backup folder. These will never be deleted.. Ableton say otherwise in the manual. They are incorrect..

Now, even if you use Manage Project, and click Unused Files, and manually open the browser and manually delete the "unused" ones listed .... there will still be unused files. Because, firstly every other old song has references (so you have to delete the old songs from the project) but also the backups still exist. backup als files count as songs too. So the unused waves are counted as "used"

So even if my-new-song-001.als, is gone, my-new-song-001[12-12-2022].als. will live on forever. And with that file hidden in /backup there is always a file reference to the old waves.
So old recordings, waves and old backups persist forever unless you have a monthly manual deletion spree.

copy the most recent song, delete all backups, open the copy song in live, manage set, scan project, remove unused files .
try at your own risk!

this weekend I reclaimed 20Gb from a tidy up of just this months songs. It's painful but there's no real alternative other than buying new hard drives every month.

Gustavomusik
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Joined: Wed Jan 30, 2019 1:38 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Gustavomusik » Fri Oct 14, 2022 2:51 pm

Yes. After 2 years working on Cubase i came back to ableton for different reasons. And i've also notice this non-sense behavior with the unused files. Deleting a clip from arrangement view or session view should immediately put those files in "unused folder" from File Manager and don't need to delete every clip in take lanes...

Rivanni
Posts: 400
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Delete unused audio samples

Post by Rivanni » Fri Oct 14, 2022 2:58 pm

Files are not marked as unused as long as they are still used in one of the backups.

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