sending a track to another computer - please help!
Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:37 am
First let me apologize in advance for the length of this post.
I am having such problems with Ableton Live right now I'm starting to regret ever getting it in the first place. All I want to do is send my projects to my new computer. I just got a new laptop, which is a Mac and my old computer with all my music is a PC. I have music that I've been working on for months all in Ableton Live and I need to get it on my new computer.
So, I tried just sending the sets to the new computer, but then with each set, when I open it it says something like 600 samples are missing. If I try to find those samples, it will find most of them because most of them are in the software instruments themselves. It will be "missing" the kick from one of the Impulse drum sets, for instance, then it'll find it through the manage set thing. That's pretty annoying, but at least I've figured out a solution to that part of it.
But then anything that is an audio clip, including all the things that I've flattened that started out as MIDI clips is missing and can't be found after I send the project (which is most of the music, because I took to flattening every MIDI clip when I realized Live will spontaneously change the way just about any clip sounds if you move it around in the arrangement view, but that's a separate issue). I basically know where these samples are in my PC, but they're in a giant folder of hundreds and hundreds of samples and clips, none of which have real names, and there's no organization to it whatsoever in the folders. It's just numbers and letters.
This seems to be because, for some reason, on my PC, Live has never created any PROJECT FOLDERS. I didn't even realize there was such a thing until I started using Live on a Mac, and every time I made a set, it would create a project folder that would keep all of the project's samples in one place. That would be useful for this, cause then I could probably just e-mail a little folder like that to myself for each project, but instead I have massive folders with hundreds of samples and no way to transfer all of it at once, and trying to figure out which samples go with which set one by one would take an immense amount of time and I'm not sure if it's even doable, despite the fact that the projects themselves seem completely organized and normal when I'm working with them in Live on my PC.
I've tried figuring out another way to transfer lots of stuff from my PC to my Mac at once but have had no luck. I went to the Apple store and talked to the "genuises," who basically just told me to read the instructions online for connecting the computers, but after working at connecting them directly for hours, I've made no real progress for reasons I won't even go into. They offered to do it for me, but only if I leave my computers with a group of strangers who can freely go through all my original music files for three days. So, I feel like I've reached a dead end as far as sending my music to myself through any method.
I have also tried "self-containing" the sets, which appeared to have worked at first, but then when I sent it to myself and opened it on my Mac, it was EXACTLY the same as when I sent just the set without self-containing it. It still said hundreds of samples were missing and it was unable to find any audio clip from the set, presumably because that method didn't result in all of the clips actually being sent.
My real frustration is that, after working on this problem for two days, I have yet to manage to successfully SEND a single track to myself in Ableton in full. This is not just a PC/Mac issue, this is something that really affects what I think of Ableton as a program that I can use in the real world as a musician. How is it possible that this program isn't set up in such a way so that you can send your projects to another computer through any method that I can figure out after all this work? How are you supposed to collaborate with other musicians or DJs on your Ableton Live projects if this is so impossible? It seems like this would be an essential, basic feature, and I'm unable to figure out how to make it happen, and the MANUAL has virtually nothing on this topic. I assumed when I bought the Mac that I would be able to just install Live on there and send my projects to myself.
I have reached the point where I feel like I've wasted months of work on music that can never be shared with another computer. I feel that I've wasted huge amounts of time and money because of this problem, and I'm eager to find out if other similar programs have this kind of problem. I could go on and on about this, but I know this has already become a very long post, but I just wanna say that I completely give up on this if no one out there can help me solve this problem. And if anyone's actually read this entire post all the way through, thank you for your time, and I appreciate any help from anyone at this point.
I am having such problems with Ableton Live right now I'm starting to regret ever getting it in the first place. All I want to do is send my projects to my new computer. I just got a new laptop, which is a Mac and my old computer with all my music is a PC. I have music that I've been working on for months all in Ableton Live and I need to get it on my new computer.
So, I tried just sending the sets to the new computer, but then with each set, when I open it it says something like 600 samples are missing. If I try to find those samples, it will find most of them because most of them are in the software instruments themselves. It will be "missing" the kick from one of the Impulse drum sets, for instance, then it'll find it through the manage set thing. That's pretty annoying, but at least I've figured out a solution to that part of it.
But then anything that is an audio clip, including all the things that I've flattened that started out as MIDI clips is missing and can't be found after I send the project (which is most of the music, because I took to flattening every MIDI clip when I realized Live will spontaneously change the way just about any clip sounds if you move it around in the arrangement view, but that's a separate issue). I basically know where these samples are in my PC, but they're in a giant folder of hundreds and hundreds of samples and clips, none of which have real names, and there's no organization to it whatsoever in the folders. It's just numbers and letters.
This seems to be because, for some reason, on my PC, Live has never created any PROJECT FOLDERS. I didn't even realize there was such a thing until I started using Live on a Mac, and every time I made a set, it would create a project folder that would keep all of the project's samples in one place. That would be useful for this, cause then I could probably just e-mail a little folder like that to myself for each project, but instead I have massive folders with hundreds of samples and no way to transfer all of it at once, and trying to figure out which samples go with which set one by one would take an immense amount of time and I'm not sure if it's even doable, despite the fact that the projects themselves seem completely organized and normal when I'm working with them in Live on my PC.
I've tried figuring out another way to transfer lots of stuff from my PC to my Mac at once but have had no luck. I went to the Apple store and talked to the "genuises," who basically just told me to read the instructions online for connecting the computers, but after working at connecting them directly for hours, I've made no real progress for reasons I won't even go into. They offered to do it for me, but only if I leave my computers with a group of strangers who can freely go through all my original music files for three days. So, I feel like I've reached a dead end as far as sending my music to myself through any method.
I have also tried "self-containing" the sets, which appeared to have worked at first, but then when I sent it to myself and opened it on my Mac, it was EXACTLY the same as when I sent just the set without self-containing it. It still said hundreds of samples were missing and it was unable to find any audio clip from the set, presumably because that method didn't result in all of the clips actually being sent.
My real frustration is that, after working on this problem for two days, I have yet to manage to successfully SEND a single track to myself in Ableton in full. This is not just a PC/Mac issue, this is something that really affects what I think of Ableton as a program that I can use in the real world as a musician. How is it possible that this program isn't set up in such a way so that you can send your projects to another computer through any method that I can figure out after all this work? How are you supposed to collaborate with other musicians or DJs on your Ableton Live projects if this is so impossible? It seems like this would be an essential, basic feature, and I'm unable to figure out how to make it happen, and the MANUAL has virtually nothing on this topic. I assumed when I bought the Mac that I would be able to just install Live on there and send my projects to myself.
I have reached the point where I feel like I've wasted months of work on music that can never be shared with another computer. I feel that I've wasted huge amounts of time and money because of this problem, and I'm eager to find out if other similar programs have this kind of problem. I could go on and on about this, but I know this has already become a very long post, but I just wanna say that I completely give up on this if no one out there can help me solve this problem. And if anyone's actually read this entire post all the way through, thank you for your time, and I appreciate any help from anyone at this point.