Ableton Forum

Can anyone help me improve my workflow with Live?

I'm recording live performances, which result in up to 24 individual WAV files (samples) of instruments/mics/sources that are up to 2 hours long. I then want to get these files into Live, and crop the samples into individual songs/tracks. They would all get cropped at the same position, as the samples are recorded simultaneously and continuously.

My current workflow is having to warp all samples once I bring them into Live. Then I go through a single sample where I can note the beginning and the end of the individual songs. I then proceed to select samples individually, adjust the start/stop points, right-click and select Crop Sample. This provides the results I need, but when you start thinking about 24 samples x 20 songs per sample = 480 times I have to repeat this action, I'm looking for better and more efficient ways of going about this process.

Ideally, I could set the start/stop points for multiple selected samples and do a batch "crop sample" command. Like if I was in Arrangement view, moving the start/stop markers to where a complete song is within all the samples, selecting all the samples, and then doing a "crop sample" command.

Is there any way of getting a better workflow for this on Live, or do I need to jump to other software for this? Any recommendations for other options?

Thanks,

misa

hmm first, i'm wondering why you wanna warp the samples. with that kind of recording i'd deactivate "warp" completely on all audio after importing it into live.
and then, just mark the whole area of one song (in arrangement view), covering all audio tracks at once, and hit 'command-E' ("split"). that's all.
optionally, do a "consolidate" on the individual audio pieces then (command-J), to get individual audio files for each song (so at the end you can throw away the long all-in-one audio recordings)

I would end up warping the tracks so that I could get some sort of "scrubbing" or "fast forward" functionality for a sample while in session view, which is where I like to do the mixing. Nevertheless, I agree. I end up turning warping off once I dump the cropped samples back from session view to arrangement view when I prepare to export.

Thank you for the tips, I'm going to try them out tomorrow and see if I follow what's going on. I'm glad to see some options available.

...basicly i can't see any reason for session view in your whole application. all that seems more easy & direct in arrangement view.

You're probably right. I think it's just the GUI that I prefer in Session view:

Tracks are lined up more like a hardware mixing board
Track volume fader is larger and easier to read, with dB marks
Panning is visualized as a knob rather than a strip with a numerical value

I think these are just preferences I developed as I started using the software and learned my way around it from the start. It may be worthwhile to force myself to use Arrangement view more to help speed my workflow, which I do feel needs to improve. I record at least 2 shows a month, and the less time I have to spend tidying up the recording the more time I have to improve the mix.