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

[rikhyray]

Just did a little test "what happens when I press collect" This is absolutely ridiculous, it created imported folder with copies of archived samples. Simple question - what for ? They are there on my "Samples" disc, the paths wont ever change I dont need, want it. More important it does not say the name of the song just bloody imported.
Is it the way it is supposed to be done? That is the most useless way I have ever seen in any music application.
So now my question got more defined. All I want is to make songs sometimes using samples from my archives, mostly recording new clips. Is there any way to define that those clips will land in some folder that would be preferably name like the song, as it was done in before Live 6.. Is the one huge trash bin folder "hold it all ever recorded" named "recorded" only way now ? No possibility to separate the takes, trow away unused ones ?
All I want is that all audio created in particular project=songs gets saved in a separate folder with a name so I could locate it when needed. Any other samples will be where they are. Do I have to do it by hand, save every single take/ clip separately and keep trashing the "recorded" bin every day? Is it how it is suppose to be done?
I wonder if there is any point to do any work with Live right now, since it might be absolutely waste of my time. Since I wont be able to do what I want, instead playing the betatester game that would be definitely entertaing and amusing but I do not have time for it.

[scientist]

the workaround is to make your sample library folders into 'live project' folders. that way you can move any samples in/out without live deciding to create new project folders every time.
the collect and save behavior has always been like that, if i understand you correctly. its a great feature for e.g. moving a song to another computer, it just copies everything into the folder so all you have to do is copy that folder over...pretty standard feature.
i'm with you 100%...my sample organization has been shot to shit by live 6, and i still haven't had the time to rebuild it all. my 'workaround' has been to collect and save any project that lost its sample links in the upgrade, which results in tons of duplicate files and wasted hd space.
on that note, i do miss the 'get rid of unused samples' feature. anyone know if that's still hiding somewhere?

[nebulae]

you can still view samples that are unused when you do file management and then project management. But you'll have to manually select and move to trash the files from your browser. Again, more flexible, but total PITA.

[ground_control]

I just wish that the "Go" button in the file management window was bigger than the "Set Folder" button. I'm forever pressing the "set folder" when I just want it to go search for missing samples.

Other than that, I'm not having any problems.

J

[anti-banausic]

rikhyray -

I feel you. Since I still only have a 60G 7200 RPM in my laptop, I am obsessive about space, but honestly, isn't that what used to happen with collect all and save in 5? I mean, it didn't do it into a project, but it would create a copy of the clip and put it in a different folder than where it usually resides.

I can see both good and bad from the new file management system. Honestly, it wasn't until just last week that I moved my tracks out of the "Project Beta 6" which was created in my Library back in August to their own project files. I had some headbanging, as all my freeze files weren't being recognized by the .als in the project, so I deleted them, but then I realized that it was sort of user-error. However, after all that was sorted, and it took a day or two (plus assessing tracks and big-time purging), it dawned on me how easy the new system is. Plus, when you manage the file, it gives you the option of removing any unreferenced samples (and checking them before you do!!!!).

It definitely sucks for those who are used to a different work-flow, and it took me what, 6 months to come around, but after you do, it does work pretty nicely.

It still kinda sucks that it copies the files into the project. Therefore, for some of my most used samples (hi-hat oneshots, kiks etc.) I now probably have about 15 of the same sample taking up space on my HD, but I absolutely KNOW what I have in each project which is nice.

Perhaps a good answer would be if they could develop a shortcut method, whereby the sample needn't be copied, but a shortcut reference to where the sample is. But that would destroy the concept of portability. They wanted to create a system where you could just put the project on a usb drive, and take it to another computer where you could work there if you had to. So?????

I am not sure there is an answer, unless there were to be a third option (like collect and save as SHORTCUT) along with collect all and save???

Best,
AB

[rikhyray]

you can still view samples that are unused when you do file management and then project management. But you'll have to manually select and move to trash the files from your browser. Again, more flexible, but total PITA.

More flexible ? what do you mean ? sorry I am getting so pissed now that I am getting vulgar but the only flexibility would be of licking own ass, Sorry, whoever came with the idea of new file management, it is not personal by that is the worst thing Ableton every messed up.
All right now seriously, you mean the only way is to nail the clip that is unused and delete it, means spending hours auditioning all sorts of shit and possibly make the mistake of deleting something important?
So Live is not able to distinguish anymore what is used and what is not. Damn, that is rather basic in any application.
Now as I keep writing and checking the situation with Live it is all becoming gloomy i start to question myself if I really want to continue, sometimes it is better to take a drastic decision. I really like the chaps at Ableton, and support is so great, but no support will help if application got generally fucked up. I will have to freeze all my current work, continuing with this program until it gets cleared up might be waste of time.
So till it gets fixed I might suspend my using Live 6 or Live in general, since it is better then cursing myself afterwards.
It would be stupid to throw away/mess up my archives that took years to organize and work fine with any other application
The main problem is now I would get to work on a song, record my takes without having bloody idea where these land, this is absolutely ridiculous. Why instead of fixing what never worked they waste time messing up what worked in simple and effective way and nobody complained.
Out of love for this company, people and wish to continue with the fastest working DAW ( at least for me) I could take the jump, take few days and reorganize my archive into Live archives. The point is however that from recent experiences I cant be sure the in the next rushed like usual upgrade there will come another "reform" and will throw this whole thing away.
Going back to ver 5 ? WHy wasted money for upgrade and new duocore notebook, back to Cubase then. ???......hmmmm have to really find a solution.
Fuck it at least for today will not do what I planned- wait till someone maybe will give me groundbreaking tip, tonight will finish some other job that is luckily with good ole MPC, Gods bless Mr. Linn

[rikhyray]

rikhyray -

I feel you. Since I still only have a 60G 7200 RPM in my laptop, I am obsessive about space, but honestly, isn't that what used to happen with collect all and save in 5? I mean, it didn't do it into a project, but it would create a copy of the clip and put it in a different folder than where it usually resides.

I can see both good and bad from the new file management system. Honestly, it wasn't until just last week that I moved my tracks out of the "Project Beta 6" which was created in my Library back in August to their own project files. I had some headbanging, as all my freeze files weren't being recognized by the .als in the project, so I deleted them, but then I realized that it was sort of user-error. However, after all that was sorted, and it took a day or two (plus assessing tracks and big-time purging), it dawned on me how easy the new system is. Plus, when you manage the file, it gives you the option of removing any unreferenced samples (and checking them before you do!!!!).

It definitely sucks for those who are used to a different work-flow, and it took me what, 6 months to come around, but after you do, it does work pretty nicely.

It still kinda sucks that it copies the files into the project. Therefore, for some of my most used samples (hi-hat oneshots, kiks etc.) I now probably have about 15 of the same sample taking up space on my HD, but I absolutely KNOW what I have in each project which is nice.

Perhaps a good answer would be if they could develop a shortcut method, whereby the sample needn't be copied, but a shortcut reference to where the sample is. But that would destroy the concept of portability. They wanted to create a system where you could just put the project on a usb drive, and take it to another computer where you could work there if you had to. So?????

I am not sure there is an answer, unless there were to be a third option (like collect and save as SHORTCUT) along with collect all and save???

Best,
AB

But that option - save as self contained was always there and could be used if chosen to, or needed.
So what is new ? What is better ?
It is OK for saving for posterity or whatever once a project is finished, to be stored on ext HD or DVD. That what everybody does with Live, Cubase or whatever.
Forget those 16 closed HH- though I dont want that either, what about all trash takes that you dont need ?

[Tone Deft]

If someone could lay out how the new system is better and what its features are, that'd be great. I read the manual section on it a few weeks ago, it only left me with the impression to not fuck with it and let Live do all the file moving.

I want to believe it's a great thing but I fear it.

[LOFA]

Hi. I just got a new laptop. I would like to start things out by keeping this one organized. I admit it. I never bothered to keep things organized on my G5. I got about 700 sets, and I'm not talking about clips or 3rd party items. They are everywhere.

My Mashup files are all kinds of screwey. I have about a hundred different master wav's/mp3's (if it's a bassline it doesn't make sense to me to rock a huge file) for each song. My 250gb hardrive has 13gb left on it. This is why organization is good. It is an inpenetrable task to organize all of this now. Whatever. I was both working and going to school fulltime. I'm gald that I was able to learn more about and create electronic music at all ontop of that. But now I need to get organized.

1) This file system is not intuitive. I hope to sort/filter out redundancy and garbage as I import sets from my G5 to my macbook. I hope that things will click then. One thing that would really help would be A MOVIE. Somehow when the ever charismatic Monolake explains something it makes sense (though I'm sure if you, Amaury, made a video it would be just as helpful). If not a movie, perhaps instead a detailed explanation with photos? I'll draw you pictures for free if you want the help!!! In the meantime, it sucks when you save a clip and the samples seem to vanish. Boy I hate that. I also don't understand what I have to do with placement of sound files and als. files so that once I put them on a new computer they are seen.

2) Scientist's post made me very relieved. It seemed to encompass how I feel about the new system. Don't use the manage file option unless you have time for a coffee break. Well said. Perhaps that's how I go through cases of Pepsi's.

I see the virtue in the new design, but it does not make sense yet. A tutorial sounds like an absurd thing to package for a system that gets by on its reputation for easy workflow alone, but I think it would really help.

Also, the live packs idea seems great, but I am still having the worst of times keeping all of my 3rd party presets acknowledged by live. I wish there was like a laminated cheat sheet like they sell for calculus. You know, so that I could pretend I understood what was going on until I did!?!?!?

[scientist]

I wish there was like a laminated cheat sheet like they sell for calculus. You know, so that I could pretend I understood what was going on until I did!?!?!?

that's what stickies are for. i have a whole bunch of stickies for different things like "how to burn a dvd in dvd studio pro"..."how to export a .mov file with chapters"...etc. i'm totally serious! note that when you double click the top bar of a sticky it collapses and only shows the first line. very handy for remembering how to do unintuitive things in misc. apps. i need to make one for library management in live.

[rikhyray]

I think the whole new file/storing system was a sabotage done by Logic and Cubase united in the common interests to destroy the dangerous competitor at his strongest- CLARITY; SIMPLICITY; COMMON SENSE by planting that what they are masters of making simple things messy, unintuitive and useless. Robert has to find out if it was done by planting a saboteur or directly projecting the destructive ideas into the brains of Ableton developing team via wireless or satellite network . I wont be surprised to see 3D walnut panels and chrome knobs on the mixer of ver.7 plus 17 and half optional windows, and automatic trance creator VST.

[Tone Deft]

I wont be surprised to see 3D walnut panels and chrome knobs on the mixer of ver.7 plus 17 and half optional windows, and automatic trance creator VST.

Ooooh, and swinging cables, I always felt like the lack of swinging cables held back my creativity.

[Amaury]

I think the whole new file/storing system was a sabotage done by Logic and Cubase united in the common interests to destroy the dangerous competitor at his strongest- CLARITY; SIMPLICITY; COMMON SENSE by planting that what they are masters of making simple things messy, unintuitive and useless. Robert has to find out if it was done by planting a saboteur or directly projecting the destructive ideas into the brains of Ableton developing team via wireless or satellite network . I wont be surprised to see 3D walnut panels and chrome knobs on the mixer of ver.7 plus 17 and half optional windows, and automatic trance creator VST.

That one makes me smile
Soooo. I'll try my best to at least describe better how the system works, and how we see it better than the Live 5 management, and even better than anything else on earth (sorry, the smile is still on my face)

Seriously, let me first say that facts now tell that the system is not documented enough and we shall make a big effort in that direction. I will start here:

What Live 5 did: by choosing 'save as self contained', Live was creating a folder named after the song's name, aside from the Live set, containing ALL files from the set. If later on, while working on the set, you removed some clips and some data was not used, you had a warning window when saving and quiting the set, telling you 'XX, ZZ, YY files are no more in use, should I erase them?'

That had many disadvantages:

-ALL files were always included, even the ones from the Library, so you could end up having 100 times E-Kick 1.aif on your hard drive
-that worked only on a single set. If you had 20 variations of the same set, and were a bit safe about files, you would have 20 times the same files in different folder.
-when the warning window about files not used anymore came, if there were too many files, you could not even see all of the names, and you could not even 'review' these files, listen to them before deleting. This has been reported as very scary.
-there was no way to manipulate the data from Live, and it was scary to do so from outside.
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Now, how the Live 6 management file works:

!.You have this 'collect and save' command in the file menu, but I would say you should only do it that way if you don't bother copying the same files over and over in your projects. It works pretty much as the Live 5 'save as self contained', but put files in a sub-folder structure inside the Project folder. I do understand that some people here don't like this sub-folder structure. Point taken, it will be discussed. But the fact that all is in the Project folder is, i guess, very desirable, isn't it?

2.Otherwise, you can 'manage your project', via the file menu 'manage files', or with a right click on the project in the Live Browser. There, you can:

-see exactly how many files, sets, presets are contained in the Project folder.
-see which audio data is already included in the project folder
-see which data is not included and from other projects
-see which data is not included and from the Library
-see which samples are unused, so you can review them in the Browser by clicking 'show'. there, you can prelisten them, and if you want to get rid of them just select them all and press the DEL key on your computer. You can delete them individually or You can choose to keep some of them for some reason. to save them for later use, right click on the one you want, and choose 'show in explorer, so you can move it to a safe place.

3.The whole Project folder concept serves many purposes:

-you can have various versions of the same set within one project folder, or even all songs from one album, you can off course organize the sets or files in custom subfolder (in your computer's explorer) - and have only one instance of each sample used in all the sets
-you have everything in one single folder, named after the first set you saved in it, but you can off course rename the Project folder to your liking. So, to answer to scientist, the samples folder inside the Project folder does not have the name of the set (because there could be any sets referring to it), but the Project folder name is the reference.
-for organization purposes: a Project folder does not have to contain any set, and what I have, for example, is one Project folder named 'custom clips' for example, where I throw the clips I want to save for later use. I organize them in subfolders named accordingly. I can then inspect and see where the samples are from. So I don't include the ones from the Library, but I do include these from other projects or the external ones.

4.Now, for those of you who are organized and have an own custom Samples folder, you have different options, to be sure to identify these files and not include them:

-best is certainly to move that folder into the Library, so, when you manage your project, the samples used from that folder will be shown as 'from library', and you can choose not to include them
-otherwise, you can make that folder a project folder, by copying one of the 'Ableton Project Info' at its root, so, when managing your project, the samples from that folder will be seen as 'from other projects'. But, this will be confusing if you really used other samples from other real projects.

5.The subfolder structure in a Project is the same used in the Library, and that serves the purpose of being able to export a project into the Library. At the same time, the 'export to Library' feature respects a custom subfolder organization: if you created, in your project, a folder named 'my preferred samples' at the root of the Project folder, and you export it to your Library, there will be a 'my preferred samples' at the root of your Library.

The whole concept of Project folder is very common, and useful, but unlike Pro Tools for example that just has an 'audio files' folder inside its project folder, and no way to manage it properly but deleting unused samples, we try to provide more options to see and manage the content, for the very purpose of saving space and being safe about deleting files. It is quite easy to get rid of all recordings, or of all frozen files, or only some of them, to archive a file that is not used anymore in the project but has the best sound of all your recordings ever etc...
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I see how confusing all this is. I hope this post helps clarify, and more, understand a few concepts on how to work with Project folders and file management.

As a user now, in my own experience, and having worked on a huge project last september and october, requiring about 20 sets, as many 'sub-set' of bits of the final 1 hour project, I could not be more happy about this new system - at leas from the Live 5 one.
I took the time to understand the file management and to see how I could use it, and I was a happy camper. Never before, using Live 5 or other DAWs for these kind of huge projects (stage shows), I could achieve to save so much space, keep data crossing different versions and sub-versions of the same thing - and that means a lot when the final thing was already about 30 go - and more over, FELL SAFE about the whole process. Call me a fanboy I don't want to convince you people, just give an experience.

Please let me know precisely how the new system comes into your way after having considered all of the above. There is always room for improvement, and we are listening. But it is good first to all start on the same line, the same understanding. So i would say, let's do it in two phases: first the understanding, then the wishes. right?

Kind regards,
Amaury

[Tone Deft]

Thanks, well done!!!

Otherwise, you can 'manage your project', via the file menu 'manage files', or with a right click on the project in the Live Browser

Poking around and seeing how it's all working is key for me, this will help to learn. The rest of the great advice will come with the next sets I make.


IMO... There should be 2 hard set directory shortcuts, one for the active project, one for the library. Then a BUNCH of shortcuts to whatever we want, more than we'd need. It could also be handy let us label each directory shortcut. As it is the directory structure doesn't cover all my sample sources, it's constricting.


Any tips on how users can pack Live sets and use other peoples' .alp? How are the files handled? It's in the manual to an extent, but while the dialogue is open, I thought I'd bring it up.

[Amaury]

IMO... There should be 2 hard set directory shortcuts, one for the active project, one for the library. Then a BUNCH of shortcuts to whatever we want, more than we'd need. It could also be handy let us label each directory shortcut. As it is the directory structure doesn't cover all my sample sources, it's constricting.

Hi,

Can you explain me that a bit better? What is your goal? What do you call a 'shortcut', and what do you mean exactly by 'the directory structure doesn't cover all my sample sources'?

Any tips on how users can pack Live sets and use other peoples' .alp? How are the files handled? It's in the manual to an extent, but while the dialogue is open, I thought I'd bring it up.

-Inspect your project
-include files from the Library if you think the destination user does not have the same Library
-collect and save it
-then choose 'create Live pack.
-choose the destination location in the dialog that opens.

Now, to unpack:
-double click on the pack or choose 'install Live pack' in the File menu
-choose a destination location for the unpacked Project folder

the result is the exact same Project.

Regards,
Amaury