Decoding ALS file format

[peter_kirn]

Greetings, Live hackers.

I'm curious, has anyone been able to derive any useful information from the ALS file format outside of Ableton Live? It'd be terrific to be able to, say, run a visualization of all your different session files - ideal for finding that lost clip somewhere or seeing how clips may be related. It appears to be a binary format, so mostly there's not much that can be done, though I gather you can see some things in ASCII format in there.

I imagine it may be the sort of thing someone has tried before; apologies if this has been covered, but I couldn't turn up anything with a cursory search. If not, could be fun to investigate.

If nothing else, I'm working on visualizing my project files in Processing using Java's own FileSystem access capabilities. Why? Because it's there... and it seems to make you have a different sense of all this gunk on your drive you've been working through, emotionally, to be able to see it as visual information.

[arachnaut]

I have looked into them a little. They are quite complex, even for very simple files.

For example, just start with a saving a single track with a single instance of Utility with all the default settings.

Secondly, they change radically with release. Do the above in Live N and N-1 and compare.

For files that have samples, there are more complex issues with project folder paths and things like that. I tried to look at these once or twice when I was having problems with the internal library sample manager.

I usually give up after staring at them for a while.

[H20nly]

Isn't there something about reverse engineering in the end user license agreement?

[peter_kirn]

Okay, good to know someone else tried them and I'm not missing something obvious. There seem to be some text strings in there, though, so I'll look into generally how you'd read *just* text strings out of binary files, so I would at least get something. I may also just navigate my session folders and leave the ALS files alone. (It's actually possible I'll come up with something semi-useful, at least to me, but I'll see.) It makes sense that this file format would change regularly. If your file format is internal only to your own use, and not something other software consumes, then you can do that. I do wish that generally we had more use of XML in file formats, though that can be an issue with performance so may not be appropriate for a program like Live.

H2Only -- I seriously doubt Ableton's legal department will come after me for making pictures out of my files. The thing is, basically, lawyers insist that kind of language into legal agreements as protection. Ableton has been, to their credit, a pretty progressive company, so when users went and decompiled Python scripts without permission for the Live API, they were supportive. If someone crossed a line there, I'd expect them to get upset.

Actually, that said, there is some question as to whether legally you or a software company owns the unique signature generated in your files. So, for instance, it is debatable whether Apple can protect the unique string that's generated in your iTunes library, because it is actually unique to *your iTunes library*. But anyway, I'm trying to make pretty pictures, not make my own version of Ableton Live.

[arachnaut]

Isn't there something about reverse engineering in the end user license agreement?

Yes, but we are not doing anything to the licensed material we bought that is subject to that agreement.

We own the data in the ALS files we make, not Ableton.

[H20nly]

Are you prepared to make that claim in a court of law?

[peter_kirn]

H20nly - relax. I asked a question about the file format of my own files stored by my own copy of Ableton Live. I don't think Ableton is suing me. If I thought I was doing anything that might upset them, I wouldn't WAIT to get sued -- I'd ask, if out of courtesy for no other reason, long before I thought I was violating their intellectual property rights.Anyway, there are plenty of reasons why they might not publicly disclose how their file format works. Most software companies keep proprietary binary file formats not as some sort of lock-in but because they make regular changes to the formats in line with the development they do in the software - period. Not everyone is making Microsoft Office. Most file formats are the way they are because there a programmer's swiftest solution to a problem.

[arachnaut]

Are you prepared to make that claim in a court of law?

I'm not sure what claim you are referring to, but if was mine about my ownership
of ALS files that I made, here's my reply:

No, I'm not an idiot, that's what lawyers are for.

But I do understand English fairly well and I have read the EULA pretty carefully.

I don't think there's anything in there about Ableton claiming ownership of my creative output.

If this is going to provoke arm chair lawyers to pipe in with their opinions, I'm out of this thread.

[outershpongolia]

Are you prepared to make that claim in a court of law?

I'm not sure what claim you are referring to, but if was mine about my ownership
of ALS files that I made, here's my reply:

No, I'm not an idiot, that's what lawyers are for.

But I do understand English fairly well and I have read the EULA pretty carefully.

I don't think there's anything in there about Ableton claiming ownership of my creative output.

If this is going to provoke arm chair lawyers to pipe in with their opinions, I'm out of this thread.

Haha seemed like he was joking, but you can never tell, can you...

[H20nly]

Haha seemed like he was joking, but you can never tell, can you...

I was kiddin fellas... Its cool that you know your shit enough to not sweat it. On that note have you ever read the Blackberry Software License Agreement? You basically agree not to throw it over the fence at a military target site so that the GPS can be used to aim missles. Crazy... I wouldn't have thought that you could. Thanks EULA!

oh, and good luck with the file mangling!

[chris_sparks]

I have asked for this information myself but Ableton was not going for it. I told them I would sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) but that wasn't sufficient. I write software so I could create an app that gen'd the ALS files so that I don't have to do all that tweaking with channel automation.

Chris

[cjw296]

Hmm, I wonder if the ALC format would be any simpler?
Not too fussed about ALS, but a decent clip browser that showed start position, loop position, length, bpm, key (with transposition shown or taken into account) and some metadata (like title and author) would be extremely useful...

Anyone be up for collaborating on such a beastie and open sourcing the result?

[chris_sparks]

I am not familiar with ALC format. Is this something that can be processed by Ableton Live already?

chris

[cjw296]

ALC = clip files.
Try dragging a clip from the session view to a folder in the browser on the left.
It'll create a clip file

[chris_sparks]

I am not familiar with clip files. All I do is MIDI generated files to import into Ableton Live. MIDI doesn't have all of the necessary expressions needed to create tracks realistically.

Can you point me to a link or something that can explain clip files a little more for me?

chris