Live 6 complaint !!! File management system is messed up

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Amaury
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Post by Amaury » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:22 am

hambone1 wrote:OK... I've read through this thread... re-read the manual...

I STILL can't figure out how to do a 'Save Live Set As' and get a plain, old-fashioned, simple .als, and NOT a f*cking project folder!
Hi Hambone,
It is not advised to save sets into the Library, as it makes it hard to manage them. But for the 'Live creates a Project folder for each sets I save', yes, as any serious DAW works for saving referenced files. But my answer will be the same as for Live clips:

Do you just save sets all over the place on your computer? If not, there is an easy way of saving sets in a same folder without Live to create a new Project folder each time: you just have to drag the sets in an existing Project folder, such as the Library, or another Project you created.

As I said above, I'd rather advice to save them in custom made Project folder, so you will still be able to gather some information if you need to, later.

If you are organized and keep your sets in say, x folders for later reference, just copy one of the 'Ableton Project Info' folder from one existing project folder, to each of your x folders, and they will become Project folders.

best,
Amaury
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Amaury
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Post by Amaury » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:30 am

LJ Martin wrote:I have a problem I have 850 songs in a folder for DJing and 850 Als files in another series of folders. I recently moved all of this off of my internal on to an external drive.

In Live 5 the first time I load an .als it asks me to locate the original file, after that it just looks in that folder automatically every time, and as all my track are in one folder it always finds them. No Problem.

With Live 6 I have to press the go button manually every time I load an .als. I would like live to keep looking in that folder every time without asking me to do it manually every time... i don't pre-plan my sets and having to search every time I load a track is stopping me from switching to Live 6 for Djing.
Hi,

You could very much use the File manager to fix your references for ever. How are your sets organized? Are they all in one folder? If so:

-MAKE A BACKUP of the folder containing all of your sets, better to be safe than sorry, in case anything goes wrong. And that backup will still work in Live 5, whereas the one we are working on will be re-written in Live 6, so it won't be compatible with Live 5. In fact, make two copies of your sets, and test if the copies open fine in Live 5, before doing anything else.

-copy one of the 'Ableton Project Info' folders that you find in any Project folder that Live 6 creates when you save a set, inside the folder containing all of your DJ sets.

By doing that, you will transform that set into a Live 6 Project folder.
-Then, locate it in the Live 6 Browser, right-click on it, choose 'manage folder'
-in the File Manager, you will see that samples are missing
-locate them using the search engine (enable both 'search folder' and 'fully rescan folder')
-once Live found all of the referenced samples, click the 'collect and save' button at the bottom of the file Manager.

You'll now have your sets fixed, with no need to search for the samples anymore. Let me know if something is unclear.

Kind regards,
Amaury
Ableton Product Team

rikhyray
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Post by rikhyray » Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:56 am

Keeping Sets in the library was the root of the whole confusion. Once moved old projects to "live 5 Projects" and saving new ones into its own Live 6 projects, I do not have slightest problems, the file management works as it was intended to do.

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Post by Amaury » Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:10 am

rikhyray wrote:Keeping Sets in the library was the root of the whole confusion. Once moved old projects to "live 5 Projects" and saving new ones into its own Live 6 projects, I do not have slightest problems, the file management works as it was intended to do.
Hi,

Glad to know it works for you now. As I see it, one misunderstanding can lead to a lot of confusion, frustration and even partisanship (this thread is a good example of it).

We are working on improvements and listening to wishes, but it is a first step to be sure we all understand what we are talking about. So for the time being, we'll try to provide some documentation in a form or another.

Kind regards,
Amaury
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Amaury
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Post by Amaury » Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:25 am

Sorry, Reading again I saw I had not answered that one:
Josh Von wrote:Also:

We (myself and others on the board) have pointed out that Live re-installs are dangerous to anyone dependent on thier Library, because Live doesn't have a way to point you to an existing Library structure 8O

It wants to point you to a new Library location - forces you to choose one, and doesnt have "use existing location" option.

SO not only would my 80+ GB existing structure be lost again, I would have yet another place on my harddrive(s) with a spurious Live library. I think Im up to about 23 or more of those now, Ive given up on trying to track them down and delete them.
Well, we miss a way that Live would ask if there is an existing Library when initiating the preferences (after you've deleted the preferences file for example). It is known and worked on. But for the time being, first, live will never erase you current, existing Library as it asks for an empty folder. So you can just create a folder named 'temp' onto your desktop (so you don't foget to erase it), and once Live is opened, re-set the path to the right Library. When you exist Live, delete the 'temp' folder from your desktop and that's it.
Josh Von wrote:
Amaury wrote: It would have two advantages:
-when you collect and save a Project, you could choose not to include the files from your collection more easily
-if you would choose to include these samples 'from the Library', the resulting sub folder structure into your Project would be the same as your own.
Yes, these kinds of things are among the top reasons why I immediately tried to do this a couple of years ago when the Library first came about.
These options are only available with the new File manager, so you can't have tried it a couple of years ago. It the the whole purpose of a File Managing, which was not existing at all before Live 6.
Josh Von wrote: But again - the experience was so traumatic and wasted so much of my time - and subsequent realizations about the system only reinforced why it would be a bad idea (see above) ... I never tried again

I would have to say that I do manage without it (Live Libary) most of the time, I do things manually and end up wasting about 5x as much disk space as I probably need to.

But this is a small tradeoff to be able to work without something broken, or confusing, or spending hours or days setting something up only to find out its going to hose your whole workflow
I know this can be traumatic, but sometimes learning to use a tool on test projects (taking a day may be impossible somtimes, I know that too) can be beneficial. and it is only when one understands fully a system that he can make criticism about it, or? I mean, look at rickhyray: a simple misunderstanding caused all his trouble.

Not trying to convince you, as I'm happy to take any constructive criticism in account, but just trying to make sure if you really explored the proposed sytem or not.

Kind regards,
Amaury
Ableton Product Team

serotoninsteve
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Post by serotoninsteve » Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:35 pm

Misunderstanding?
Related to the library?
What is that? :wink:
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rikhyray
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Post by rikhyray » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:54 pm

Some people including myself thought that our projectsshould be placed in the library, in the "Sets". It didn't matter in ver 5 . Now in the ver 6 this seems to confuse the search machine of Live, like it starts looping itself, taking eternity to find anything etc, etc. Moving those Live projects out of the library into its own folder, solves all the previous problems, at least for me. I have no any issues at all.

nebulae
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Post by nebulae » Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:58 pm

agreed rik, I also moved all my samples and loops out of the library. Now library management is much better.

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