why do clips take SO long to preview & load?

[benjamingordon]

hi.

i have a couple of 'master' sets which contain every clip i could every want warped and ready to use.

when i make a mixtape i start a new session and drag in the clips i need from the built in file browser.

the problem is that it takes SO long to preview each clip and even longer to drag them in.

can u please tell me how to speed this process up as it becomes VERY tedious when searching, previewing and dragging in thousands of clips.

i am on 8.1.5 on a macbook pro, dual 2.4GHz with 4GB RAM.

i ask why it takes so long as dragging in from finder is instant but its much easier to browse from within ableton..

many thanks!

[yur2die4]

Are they MP3 or any other compressed format?

Do Wav tracks take just as long?

[benjamingordon]

They are clips from other Ableton sets, some wavs, but mostly cropped in Ableton and collected and saved... I don't remember it taking this long... It's so frustrating and really preventse from being creative as soon as possible.....

[yur2die4]

How much space is remaining on your HD?

This is probably an issue beyond my understanding haha.

Do macs ever have fragmented hard drive issues?

[H20nly]

are they stored on an external drive? USB has its limitations.

or, is the drive they're on pretty meaty... what I mean is do you have a 100 gigs of data on it? - or some other large number??

I don't think Live creates a new edited piece of audio when you make your changes. I think it just saves a set of directions for which part of the audio you hear and what settings/conditions that you hear them under. I could be wrong about this but it seems to be the way Live works. .als files for example are really small even though the audio and files they deal with may take up a ton of room. if Clips are maps like .als files then this could be why. So when you want to load the clip it has to find the audio and then comb through to that part you want and finally play it back as requested... warped, higher bpm, lower bpm etc. take all that and multiply by external factors such as a fragged hard drive, external USB connection, or lousy Front Side Bus and you end up with a bottle neck at some point.

Besides all that... Live isn't exactly the fastest app on the planet. Load times between empty sets or at start up are proof.

[benjamingordon]

ok i see what youre saying... but there is 320GB 7200RPM drive with 300GB free!!

ive also tried to play back the clips in the 'RAW' mode and it takes equally as long...

its the same whether on the internal or the external 500GB Firewire800 7200RPM drive....

does anyone else have this problem or is it possible to browse quicker like the finder?!

[pepezabala]

I don't know why it is so slow, but I can confirm that finder is way faster for searching and previewing.

[DJ K-Tel]

Try creating seperate .als clips for each track.
I've found if i have a ableton set with 50 or so tracks in it that
it takes super long to drop them in (Scary long beach ball spins).

if I have a smaller session that i'm dragging the track from it's quicker.

I just learned the trick of dragging each track individually to the browser.
And it will create a .als session for each track...so those should drop in real quick.