Ableton Forum

We made the File Manager support nested projects because we know that many users have created them on their harddisks (mostly by accident I think).
However, it is more a "the File Manager can live with nested projects" than an intentional support. And you still cannot create nested projects within Live, because that is not what projects are meant to be:
Each Live Set should belong to exactly one Live Project, and if you have a Project within a Project, then it is never clear which one is THE Project of the Live Set.
This can lead to all kind of confusions, especially when sharing samples between Live Sets of different projects.
As I said before, if you want to manage multiple projects at once, you should use the "Manage all projects" feature of the Browser on the parent folder (NOT project, just folder) containing them, at least that's how the File Manager is meant to be used.

But certainly you are always welcome to abuse any feature as you like

OK now I see what you guys mean "cannot create nested projects" = the option is greyed out...

I just create them elsewhere and drag them into place..

The more I test this the more I like it - everything works exactly as expected. You can go many layers deep of Project Folders and it's no problem.

if you have a Project within a Project, then it is never clear which one is THE Project of the Live Set.

Live seems perfectly clear as to which one is THE Project. It is the innermost one (i.e. the one which is immediately surrounding or containing the .als which you are using)

What if I don't want to manage all projects, but only want to manage 20 out of 200? I think this is a real advantage.

Also I can use this to help with another long-standing problem - managing "save for later" clips and samples. With a PF nested inside the Library for this purpose, I can save "idea" clips IN THE LIBRARY but not have to manage the entire Library in order to control them...

I will go ahead and point out the most obvious argument against doing this, before someone else does specifically..

F.M. already confuses a lot of people, and this adds more layers of things you have to understand.

I just thought of another weird application of this -

if you were collaborating with someone, you could transfer sets back and forth,

and during each transfer, only provide the NEW content changes, leaving the previously established samples and folder structure intact. Therefore, much smaller file transfers each time.


I have to go to work but could explain this one further

How would nesting projects help you in doing this?

I have started to write an explanation, but need more time to get it concise before posting. I may put it on another thread, and ask for help in testing the method

If so I will link it here.

In the meantime, is it correct that there is currently no clean way to do that? (Send a project with only the NEW content, and leave the existing content on both user's computers)?

I suppose you can just send the files and some explanation of how to structure them on the receiving end, but that seems problematic

Have to think about that some more

Again, out of time, and off to work!

The reason I spend time geeking out on this kind of stuff is that without my music computer even set up, all I can do is play around with the File Manager