Library and search engine sucks.

[popoff]

Guys,
in my oppinion this is the most uneffective tool of AL and you should do something about that. I've decided to write it after file manager failed to find the sample which was in the project that was about to be collected and archived into alp. (check the shot: http://popoff.pl/live.jpg)
As the windows users have a search engine almost as bad as the one in AL, they wouldn't feel any difference if the ableton used somehow the OS search engine (cmd-F) but it would be much better for the MacOSX users if ableton could use spotlight for the searching.
This might sound crazy, stupid or whatever you say, but the file manager and managing library is simply out of order and there must something done with it to make it work at all.
First time i read of the file management feature i thought of inserting every tracks that i use in live and dj sets and manage it fromwithin the AL, imagine working with the library that contains about 150G of data.

And BTW; why there's no possibility to render audio to flac files, it would make much easier to work with big projects containing many loops.

cheers.

[scientist]

thought i'd reply to this thread because of the good title. so true. i have managed to avoid the library by just going about things the old way, never using live's built in presets or sound files. but here i am at a coffee shop away from my trusty drum machines and realized i'd like to throw in a quick hihat. open impulse, open impulse preset...all the samples are missing? using the auto search function in the file management window finds nothing. i use the osx search to find one of the missing files (takes about half a second) and drag the file icon onto the missing file. search again for the remaining missing files (with "search near samples already found" selected)...nothing. i "manage library" and let live sit and rescan/rebuild the library. search again when this is complete...nothing. so here i am replacing sample by sample, just to see if it even has a sound i want to use. painful.

dear ableton,
what did you do? you've managed to do everything so brilliantly up to now. but this library system, beyond being functionally half baked, doesn't even work correctly, works at about 1/10th the pace it should, and is meant to replace os search functions THAT WORK JUST FINE. so, pretty much everyone who pays half attention to where files are stored hates the library management system, and i know you're all deep into the dev cycle of the next version of live (if not into alpha testing), but i'm making one last plea to fix this mess if it hasn't already been addressed. i really thought something would've been done in a bug fix update, but no such luck. and i know there's no immediate fix (i've posted about this a few times before) - so can you at least give us a hint that something is being done? that would put my mind at ease and let me look forward to a day when i'm not 100% avoiding anything in the library.

oh and btw? this entire message was written while live was "searching" the exact folder in which the missing samples reside. result: "No new candidates found".

[m.Lo]

Hi, my opinion is the same, indeed it´s the worst seeking tool I ever used. I use the finder (mac) now to find my hundreds of missing samples and I learn to save them all with the set now, whenever I get much data volume.



[quote="popoff"]Guys,
in my oppinion this is the most uneffective tool of AL and you should do something about that. I've decided to write it after file manager failed to find the sample which was in the project that was about to be collected and archived into alp. (check the shot: [url]http://popoff.pl/live.jpg[/url])
As the windows users have a search engine almost as bad as the one in AL, they wouldn't feel any difference if the ableton used somehow the OS search engine (cmd-F) but it would be much better for the MacOSX users if ableton could use spotlight for the searching.
This might sound crazy, stupid or whatever you say, but the file manager and managing library is simply out of order and there must something done with it to make it work at all.
First time i read of the file management feature i thought of inserting every tracks that i use in live and dj sets and manage it fromwithin the AL, imagine working with the library that contains about 150G of data. :evil:

And BTW; why there's no possibility to render audio to flac files, it would make much easier to work with big projects containing many loops.

cheers.[/quote]

[floodstrand]

Well I recently "upgraded" to Live6 from 5, thinking I was going to get some cool sounds and tools to work with. I have been tearing my hair out for 4 weeks trying to fix my archive problems. I came to this fourm as a last resort, now I find that at least I am not alone in this nightmare. I have done about 10 projects so far. To do any re-mixing is out of the question because now the files are spread out all over my computer and external hard drive I don't know if I will ever get it cleaned up. I am SOOO disapointed with this library, and "new search feature" I feel like giving up, but of course I won't. At least I feel better that I'm not the only one with this problem.

[Komplex]

agree, its one of those useless functions that are there but you don't use. Ableton should allow Live to be tweaked during the install or something so you can remove the shit functions

[Tarekith]

A plus 1 for fix the library functions from me too, very unAbleton-like. There's a lot of posts here from people who are having issues with it, or don't understand how it works, that alone should speak volumes.

[longjohns]

This thread really makes me sad

It motivated me to spend quite a bit of last weekend thinking and writing the begginnings of a F.M. tutorial. Unfortunately it kind of got out of control. Maybe I should just spend an hour tomorrow wrapping up some thoughts, and some quick clean-up - and just post it all anyway.'


I think that actually in most cases it is pretty OK at finding things, but as it has been described by hoffman2k - you must know the "secret handshake"

Also I think many people have misconceptions about the Library in general. With the exception of a certain small number of "special" folders in there - it's actually structured in a way that's pretty arbitrary, and therefore customizable...

An in-depth explanation of the FM and strategies for working with it - that's something that's conspicuously missing from Ableton.

[scientist]

can we please get some official word from ableton on this? i've been relaxed about it because i've assumed that the library management problems were so bad that they'd get fixed in a minor update, but that just hasn't happened. beyond any problems with people just not understanding how it works, there are things that are just plain bugs:
1. the ridiculously long library 'scan' and sample search times. searching for missing samples pre-version 6 was simple and quick. it takes forever now, to the point where os x even thinks that live has crashed (when you select force quit it shows live as "not responding").
2. live not finding files even after a directory has been scanned.
2b. live losing some of its own samples. live's built in presets/samples are missing...stuff i've never even used or touched that live supposedly installed on its own are missing. wtf?

@longjohns...i think its a bad sign when a: file management needs a tutorial. and b: when writing said tutorial it quickly gets "out of control"!

[longjohns]

It certainly is a bad sign

However at a certain point your energy is better spent working with it as best as possible under the current system -

If I may be so bold, I feel pretty comfortable predicting the "official" Ableton response:

"To be sure, the File Manager is something which we hope to improve. Unfortunately we cannot say at what point this will happen."

And if it is any reassurance, I can say that they are certainly aware of all these problems...

[fragchamp]

Some Live 5 samples had incorrect extensions (wav instead of aiff). When Live 6 tries to find missing samples and it comes across one of these it crashes. In Live 5 you had to manually find every missing sample, so it's still a great improvement. I used to have problems with files not being found, but haven't had it for a while now. It might be just an indexing thing.

[rikhyray]

The file mis management so called system is the greatest shame ever. We could really demand money back for the ver6 upgrade.
They should fire whoever got the retarded idea.
Spent 3 days learning it after upgrading, year ago but then anyway had to find my own ways since months. Nobody complains because what a fuck for that byatch does not work, never did. We should bring it to Ableton attention, before release of ver 7.
Amaury is nice guy and trying to help lots of times but THAT SHIT DOES NOT WORK NEVER DID!
Better bring it back how it was in 5, not the best but at least working.

[Poster]

The file mis management so called system is the greatest shame ever. We could really demand money back for the ver6 upgrade.
They should fire whoever got the retarded idea.
Spent 3 days learning it after upgrading, year ago but then anyway had to find my own ways since months. Nobody complains because what a fuck for that byatch does not work, never did. We should bring it to Ableton attention, before release of ver 7.
Amaury is nice guy and trying to help lots of times but THAT SHIT DOES NOT WORK NEVER DID!
Better bring it back how it was in 5, not the best but at least working.

are you using the current 7 beta?
the FM has improved..

[scientist]

yes, file management has improved...


a little. if you're beta testing its probably a good idea to go to the beta forum and post something about it, as imo its now or never to make things better.

[rikhyray]

The file mis management so called system is the greatest shame ever. We could really demand money back for the ver6 upgrade.
They should fire whoever got the retarded idea.
Spent 3 days learning it after upgrading, year ago but then anyway had to find my own ways since months. Nobody complains because what a fuck for that byatch does not work, never did. We should bring it to Ableton attention, before release of ver 7.
Amaury is nice guy and trying to help lots of times but THAT SHIT DOES NOT WORK NEVER DID!
Better bring it back how it was in 5, not the best but at least working.

are you using the current 7 beta?
the FM has improved..

I can`t, have so much work at the moment, behind schedule, cannot risk getting into some beta troubles. Very bad, very a-social but have to skip it this time.
Please, keep nagging Ableton about it, a bit better is not good enough. What is a bit better from a disaster that FM ver.6 is/was ?
I like the Ableton guys too much, so avoid FM when I can, it just brings lots of very negative ideas....it really freaks me out every single time.

[longjohns]

Well, there are a few of us who are keeping some pressure on the FM front.

It's all that we can do at this point

I'm currently backing up my entire audio drive so that I can feel pretty much free to just make copy after copy of my Library and manage them over and over using the betas!