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

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:01 pm

Thanks for the info Amaury.

Your workaround is certainly valid. I think a lot of us are just trying to express the the current method is not very well explained in the manual, and not intuitive to how you think it SHOULD work. Even the image in the manual (pg 51) show these being saved as alc files, and there's no mention of saving as als. Perhaps some more explanation of these two different types of possible behavior in a future manual revision?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:04 pm

or better yet, explain what you guys thought would be an efficient workflow when you created the functionality...

scientist · Post by **scientist** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:12 pm

i'm glad to see more people on this issue...we've gone over it at least once before:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

i think the basic problem is that people get used to their os's management style, then a software company comes along and says they have a better way and start fucking with things (reason did the same thing). if you pay no attention to file management then you're in luck because suddenly things make more sense, but if you're at all organized there's a good chance it'll screw you up. i had a nicely organized folder/subfolder system that got ruined by live 6's library update feature. then live 6 started making all these crazy folders i didn't want and there's no way to stop it. whereas i can understand the reasoning behind most of the changes, the one thing i don't get is subfolders...as someone else said, who cares what/how/where a sample was recorded? its all sound and can all be in one place along with its .asd file so if you do any management outside of live's browser you're good to go.

the biggest concept for me to grasp was the regular folder vs project folder...if you drag a clip in the browser to a regular folder, it creates a project folder for you. this drove me crazy because as i said i had my nice management system and now all of the sudden live is making a bunch of folders inside of folders that i don't want. then i learned that there was a trick for making a project folder, so i could change all my folders so this wouldn't happen anymore. since this all went down though i've been too busy to get back to rebuilding the library, so there could still be problems (like can you have a project folder within another project folder?). on a side note, while fucking with this stuff i accidentally made my entire audio directory a project folder. that was a near disaster but i managed to fix it.

it speaks volumes that these threads are full of very experienced users...and it makes it apparent that ableton sort of fucked up. the heart of the problem is that they decided the live design philosophy should extend into the os. they have subverted some os functionality with the intention of improving it, not taking into account the users that already had their own management system that was working just fine in previous versions. amaury has been very helpful with all of this (thanks!), but hopefully this discussion will get the powers that be to have a meeting about this and go over the solutions. (we mentioned some good ones in the thread i linked to).

oh, and whatever you do, don't ever use the 'manage library' option unless its time for a coffee break.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:18 pm

Scientist I think that you summed it up perfectly when you said the new methods are really only helpful to those people who don't have an organizational scheme already in use. And that the current methods are so different from the way OS's work. Funny you mention Reason's new workflow too, as I felt the exact same way with that app too.

I NEVER use the live library, I don't save device presets there, and I don't use the included presets. Everything for me is project related, all of my project folders have always had a folder I create called "song name patches", where obviously song name is the name of your current song. This way all patches in that project are saved, moved, and archived WITH the project.

So having so many things be reliant on library type of methdology is not at all useful to me. And yes Manage Library is broken as far as I'm concerned.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:20 pm

hear hear, well said!

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:29 pm

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:34 pm

amen breaks even.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:38 pm

nebulae wrote:amen breaks even.

u stole my joke.. .. ... for that no beat repeat for u!

scientist · Post by **scientist** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:39 pm

http://www.strongforthefuture.com/music ... rother.mp3

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:40 pm

sweetjesus wrote:
nebulae wrote:amen breaks even.
u stole my joke.. .. ... for that no beat repeat for u!

that's ok, I'll settle for a true-side-chain compressor...

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:47 pm

I just wanted to add that one this note, one of the things I've said in the wishlist is that collect all and save should also collect all device/effect presets in use and store those with the project too. THAT would be handy and save me a lot time.

Not complaining, just suggesting

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:04 pm

Tarekith wrote:I just wanted to add that one this note, one of the things I've said in the wishlist is that collect all and save should also collect all device/effect presets in use and store those with the project too. THAT would be handy and save me a lot time.

Not complaining, just suggesting

+infinity

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:11 pm

Amaury wrote:Hi,
For the search function, please try, on top of enabling 'search folder' and setting the right folder (when you know where the samples are), to enable 'fully rescan folders - and only that. That works for me. this can be seen as a 'wrong behaviour' and is worked on.

That worked. Thanks.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:14 pm

It is only today , when I wanted to use a take from a shorter version of the tune, realized how "innovative" messed up the new system is.
.
I have all my samples well organized since years in my sample library, named with details on separate partition that I can copy, transfer without messing up to any HD, or computer. It is E:\Samples\....so I can just keep on adding any new material. Simple way that most of professionals use, such partition needs hardly defrag, paths are defined and application independent.
Only today, looking for a take to use it in another version of a song I saw the song folder empty, instead everything used / unused is in the recorded folder it is like a big trash bin, damn innovative, thank you very much !
Any song will have samples from my library and recorded for that song. I never ever use any Live preset, wav or whatever from Lives library. Is it that now I am forced , like it or not to follow a concept of some developer ? No other options ? Is it the idea to tie the user to Live instead of letting him use general, widely universal system of archiving that is application independent.
Maybe I am too stupid but the fact is I am wasting time writing this and and trying to find out solution, instead of doing my work.
Are the days of Live as application to be used byr professionals over and instead it is club for betatesters geeks playing games with some developers with limited awareness of what using computer for producing music is.
I am practically oriented so it is not a question to discuss or complain really, if it is messed up the way this company develops I got to live with it .
All I would expect is perhaps someone who works similar way ( I guess Tarekith) could suggest some workable solutions. I am not keen to change completly my main application, hope there is some way to continue with Live though as for the moment it does not look to bright for me.

joeyfivecents · Post by **joeyfivecents** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:18 pm

same situation here. very annoying.

pepezabala wrote:
frahnque wrote:speaking of which. Does the "sample finding" function use Spotlight on the mac? Could it? Because I have a feeling the lookups would be blazingly much faster, if It'd actually use that.
It seems that it doesn't. Using the finder to search for samples is incredibly fast - if you compare it with window or with Live's built in search.

Did anyone try to transfer complete self contained sets from a windows PC to a mac on 6.05? I was just doing this and although the project folder contained all the samples/recordings, the live set would open with missing samples. If I use the built in search/filemanagement and it doesn't find them although I chose as only option option "search in project folder". If I click on the search button to the left of the missing sample, Live find's it. After dragging and dropping it from the browser to the "Missing samples list" a search with only option "search next to found sample" would be successful.

But why in hell does a freshly self contained set open with missing samples and not find them in it's own project folder?