Ableton Forum

Hi!

I've been trying to get my head around the "Collect all and save" feature, and I'm stuck on a question.

Let's say I import a long audio file from an external source. If I hit "Collect all and save" I will make sure that this audio file will be available in my project folder, right? Fine!

But what if I only end up using a small bit of the audio file? Can I simply highlight that specific part, hit ctrl + J (consolidate) and then hit "Collect all and save" again thus deleting the long original audio file? Or do I have to do this manually? I would love it if there was a way to instruct Ableton to delete all files presently not in use by the project.

Any info on this is greatly appreciated!

AFAIK if you use part of a sample (consolidated) and do Collect & save, only the consolidated fragment is saved.

This topic is of interest to me since my sets live in the cloud and I want to save space.

If I have had a long and messy creative process, I often consolidate the final version into a new project and delete the old one.

And: the best way to keep your project folder tidy is to organize your underlying samples wisely.

All my samples are in a fairly well organized sample folder so I almost never use Collect All and save to begin with.

Taka a closer Look at the Manage Files function, then go to Manage Project.

In the panel there's a section to inspect files that aren't used in the project.

Best thing to do is a simple test : just one big file, use a small part, collect and save and check the size of the project.

chapelier fou wrote:Best thing to do is a simple test : just one big file, use a small part, collect and save and check the size of the project.

So, I have now done a simple test and came to the conclusion that "Collect all and save" does not delete unused files. This will have to be done manually by using the "Manage files" option (thanks chrk)

Sorted.