Ableton Forum

The only thing that I still find counterintuitive in Ableton is its file management. For me its overly organized and complicated.
I found a few tutorials on the subject on YouTube but those were either basic ones, or dealing with particular issues.
Could someone please recommend a COMPREHENSIVE one. I especially interested in relationship between projects and sets, storage of 3rd party M4L devices and why they’re always ‘getting lost’ or probably disassociated from their presets despite me saving a copy of them in most every folder on my computer, folder icons changing in Ableton browser into the dark ones on their own volition, and other magical BS. Also, a folder by folder walkthrough would be nice.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, collect all and save. The User's Guide pretty much will tell you where everything is stored. Search the file system for Ableton and you'll find most of the locations.

Reading it now.
I wanted to ask, should this paragraph from User’s Manual 5.6.1:
“Note that the new project folder has no Samples folder (yet). “Electro with Piano.als“ is still referencing the piano sample from the original Tango Project. There is nothing wrong with this except for when the Tango Project is moved away or deleted; then “TANGO with Piano.als“ will be missing samples. You can prevent this by collecting external files (see 5.8). Even after the fact, Live’s tools for searching missing files (see 5.7) can help solve this problem.”
be actually read:
“Note that the new project folder has no Samples folder (yet). “Electro with Piano.als“ is still referencing the piano sample from the original Tango Project. There is nothing wrong with this except for when the Tango Project is moved away or deleted; then “ELECTRO with Piano.als“ will be missing samples. You can prevent this by collecting external files (see 5.8). Even after the fact, Live’s tools for searching missing files (see 5.7) can help solve this problem.”
?

Can anyone look this paragraph up in subchapter 5.6.1 of Live user’s manual?
I guess it’s a typo, but I’ not sure because English is my second language.

I believe that is a typo. But the gist of it is, samples are referenced/found by their location. If the location is gone or changed, Live won't find the sample. When you collect and save, all used samples are copied to a subdirectory inside the project and this is where they are now referenced from. Unless you delete the samples directory or don't copy it for some reason, it should travel well.

Thank you for your reply.
But it leads me to another question... If I understand correctly an Ableton Live Project is just a folder containing one or more related Ableton Live Sets(.als files) and optionally (on collect and save) related files like samples. And this folder is created automatically whenever you save a new Ableton Live Set outside existing project folder, but...
my whole User Library folder behaves as if it’s a project folder (or an Ableton Live Project), and when I try to save a new Ableton Live Set into it, Live doesn’t creat a new subfolder(an Ableton Live Project) in it, but just creates a new .als file in it, supposedly adding it to an existing project.
1. Why is it so? Can I make Live stop considering my whole User Library folder as a project folder?
2. Is there a way to explicitly creat a new Ableton Live Project folder?
3. Or maybe the User Library is a bad place for projects?

I’d say 3. Though I’ve never actually tried putting a project there.

Thank you again. For me it was quite the opposite - when I saw a folder called User Library I immediately thought, that’s where I should put my projects to, but, oh well.

It took me some time to understand how files were managed in Ableton.
Now that I master how it does. I find it genious!

Advice 1 : Read the manual
Advice 2 : in the browser go to Current Project under Places, see how the project evolves as you work on it

ekle wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 02, 2019 10:32 pm

Thank you again. For me it was quite the opposite - when I saw a folder called User Library I immediately thought, that’s where I should put my projects to, but, oh well.

It does make perfect sense. And I vaguely remember doing the same thing once so I lied. Maybe I just thought about it. Live and learn!

phil71x wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 02, 2019 11:19 pm

It took me some time to understand how files were managed in Ableton.
Now that I master how it does. I find it genious!

Advice 1 : Read the manual
Advice 2 : in the browser go to Current Project under Places, see how the project evolves as you work on it

Yes, I ‘ll do it, but I wanted to ask if your User Library folder also behaves like a Live Project?