BACKUPS AND FILE MANAGEMENT

Organizing Audiofiles

For small to medium projects where you are dealing with fewer than fifty audiofiles, the Pro Tools Session folder organization makes sense: all your audio goes into an "Audio Files" sub-folder within your session folder. You don't have to go looking for it; it's all in one obvious place. It also makes back-up simpler as long as your session folder size doesn't exceed the size of your back-up media. You just drag the whole Session Folder to the Jaz and you get a copy of the whole works. For these reasons, it's highly recommended that you keep all your audio inside the Audio Files sub-folder of your Session Folder.

The following fine print, then, is of interest mostly to those wondering how some feature film editors might organize their audio.[The one instance where you might have to adopt some variation on the approach below is if you can't fit a big project onto a single 2 GB Jaz, or if you are forced to back-up a small project onto a series of Zip disks.] So unless that's the case, you might want to skip to Backing Up Sessions & Audiofiles

For larger projects like feature films, especially ones in which a big "library" of sounds is accessed as needed, keeping all the audio inside a session folder is not always practical. Remember that you can easily access audio by importing it into your session; there's no particular advantage gained by doing your audio loading in the same session where editing is performed.

In fact, there are a number of disadvantages of having all your audio actually reside inside your session folder:

1. If you've added some audio since your last back-up, it may be difficult to determine exactly what is new, and you may have to back up all the files again to be safe.

2. It's often harder to find a given file when you have to scroll through a huge list of unrelated items. It becomes easier when you have sounds organized by broad categories.

3. For very complex projects where Pro Tools is accessing lots of audiofiles simultaneously, there are advantages to having the files spread across several drives rather than one. (That's because a single drive may begin hitting limitations of "seek time" since it is trying to read lots of different data files from different locations on the drive.)

The "Audio Files" sub-folder of our session need not contain any audiofiles at all. We might create a separate session which is only used for loading. The resulting audiofiles could then be moved into other specially created folders. In this way we could organize our audio in categories and simply import the files as needed. (Remember -- "importing" is just writing a line of instructions that tells Pro Tools where to look for the file. No additional copies of the files need to be created, and the files don't have to reside inside our session folder.)

Here's what that kind of organization might look like for a "Big Project":

<------ Notice that there are alternate versions of these Session documents. Also notice that in this case, there is no "Audio Files" sub-folder inside the "Big Project - Mix" session folder. Pro Tools only creates those folders as needed. In this example, all our audiofiles will be imported from other folders.

Each category -- Dialog, Foley, FX, & Music -- might be backed up on a separate Jaz. Incremental backups on smaller media might be used for last minute additions, like the FX subfolder of "FX since July 6."
Again, I'm not suggesting that intro students adopt some complex system like the above. For now it's probably best to keep it simple with all your files in your "Audio Files" session folder. But I wanted to introduce these other possibilities to you.

Backing Up Sessions & Audiofiles

After you've created your session and audiofiles on one of the Mac Partitions set aside for digital sound you'll need to back up the data. Since these Partitions are "community property" and space is limited, you can't count on those files remaining on that Partition for long. You'll need a backup -- and since audiofiles take up a lot of megabytes, a floppy or Zip disk is unlikely to hold them all.The easiest back-up procedure is to use a Jaz cartridge. [Most Jaz cartridges now hold 2 gigabytes; you may run across some of the 1 gig versions in some stores. The 2 gig cartridges are a better buy; they retail for about $125 each, while the 1 gig Jaz's go for around $90. Buying 3 or more usually gets you a discount; you may want to pool resources with other students.]

Here's the easiest procedure for backing up your work:

1. Insert a Jaz cartridge into the Mac, wait for it to spin up to speed. The icon for the Jaz cartridge should appear on the desktop. It usually looks something like this:

<---- Jaz appears on Desktop.

Open the Drive where your session is located, then drag & drop your entire session folder onto the Jaz ------>

Note: DO NOT SIMPLY COPY THE SESSION DOCUMENT (THE ICON THAT LOOKS LIKE A TAPE REEL.) THE SESSION DOCUMENT DOES NOT CONTAIN YOUR AUDIOFILES AND THE SESSION DOCUMENT IS NEARLY USELESS WITHOUT THE AUDIOFILES. As stated before: if you've kept all your audio neatly organized inside the Audio Files folder that resides inside your Session Folder, copying the entire Session Folder is the safest bet.

This could take quite a few minutes depending how many large audiofiles you have. A progress bar will give you an idea of how much time you have to kill:

By the way, if the whole back-up happens in the blink of an eye, chances are you're doing something wrong. Audiofiles tend to be fairly large. Make sure you're not copying just an empty folder, or a Session Document without the audiofiles.

Once you've completed copying your session to Jaz you can eject the cartridge by first clicking on the Jaz to highlight it, then selecting Special|Eject from the Mac menubar.

Or you can also simply drag the Jaz icon to the Trash Can icon to eject the Jaz.

[Note to newcomers to the Mac: This is one of the few counter-intuitive items in the Mac OS. Dragging an entire back-up cartridge to the Trash seems like it could result in erasing the whole thing. Relax; this is just the Mac way to eject removable media. It's when you open a drive and drag contents like files and folder to the Trash that they are deleted. A slightly confusing distinction.]
Once you're sure you've copied all your audiofiles to Jaz, and if you don't create or load more audiofiles later on, you don't have to do such a long back up procedure for subsequent session work. After all, if you go in and do a bunch of editing, or you create some new mix automation and so forth, you're merely writing new session document instructions. These are small files, and you can copy them over individually. And if you get into into the habit of using "Save As" to save a series of different versions, you have added security.

Just how you might approach creating different versions is up to you. But, please, be sure you always have a spare back-up copy of your session document. Not to be unduly alarmist, but there are situations where this could be especially important. (Described in detail in the section on "Missing" Audiofiles.)

Starting each day with a new session might be a good idea: you might just tack a date at the end of your session names. Or you can conserve space by adopting a letter system, which I sometimes use.Then -- only if you've previously backed up ALL the audiofiles you're using -- you have the option of merely backing up the latest session document onto your Jaz. In the example below, both my digital sound partition and my Jaz are opened so you can see some of the contents. The latest version of "J. Smith Practice" -- which is designated by a "c" -- is about to be copied over to the Jaz backup of my Session folder.

Yes, this would be a good way to do things. There's only one catch --

Managing Fade Files

-- those pesky little Fade Files. See, Fade Files are actual audiofiles, and when you're editing away, making new fades, you are creating new Fade Files. They get recorded into the Fade Files sub-folder of your Session Folder.(As you make fades in the Edit Window, if you were to periodically visit the Desktop and open up your Fade Files folder you'd see an ever increasing list of them .)

And they tend to accumulate, and for very complex sessions they can begin to fill up hundreds of megabytes. (A feature film FX session can easily contain hundreds of fades.) Here's a partial listing of some of the fades from a demo session:

<--------- It's not very interesting reading, and it's not meant to be. The point is that if you want a complete copy of all your audiofiles, you should copy your entire Fade Files folder as well.

And to avoid confusion, the best procedure is probably to trash the entire Fade Files folder left over from your previous session, and simply re-copy the whole thing.

Chances are that your project will have only a few megabytes worth of fades, and it will go quite quickly.

But the good news about Fade Files is: You don't necessarily need them all. We'll see why later on, or skip ahead if you're curious.

Backing Up Session Documents

To review a bit: let's suppose that you have a project that will take several days to complete. On day #1 you created your session and loaded all the soundfiles you needed onto a Mac Drive Partition set aside for such projects. At the end of day #1 you copied your entire session with all audiofiles onto a Jaz.

On day #2 you return and find that another person was working on that same partition and they had to delete your session. No problem -- you expected that. (And, probably, as a courtesy you should have deleted it yourself.) So now you put in your Jaz and copy the entire session back onto the Mac partition. Then you eject the Jaz and you go back to working from the Mac Partition.

Now here's the question: as soon as you start working with the session, and saving as you go, you no longer have a back-up of your session should anything go wrong with the Mac or the partition you're working from. You could do a day's work and lose it all due to any number of minor goofs.

It's easy to avoid this disaster.

Session documents are fairly small files; you can fit quite a few on just an inexpensive floppy. In fact, that's what I'd suggest. Get yourself a few Mac-formatted floppies and get in the habit of periodically copying your session documents to a floppy. (A Zip disk works fine, too, and it will copy a bit faster.)

So here's the easiest method: leave your session folder open on the desktop. When you insert a floppy, it too will appear on the desktop. (You can give the floppy a descriptive name, if you like, by single clicking on it's name.)

Now every so often -- when you take a coffee break, say -- you just go to the Mac Application Menu in the upper right of the screen, temporarily "Hide Pro Tools", then do a quick drag and drop of your session document only to your backup floppy. Kind of like this:

Click and drag the desired session to the floppy, then release the mouse.

Then return to the Mac Application Menu and go back to working in Pro Tools.

The next time you try to copy a later version of the same session in this manner, you'll get a prompt asking you if you want to overwrite the earlier copy.

Chances are you'll want to press "OK", unless you elect to follow some scheme of rotating different floppies. In this way your floppy backup will always contain the most recent version.

Unless you create or load new audiofiles, this floppy and the Jaz with your audiofiles is all the backup you really need.

[Of course, if you've really been paying close attention, you should be wondering about a flaw in this scheme. What about any new Fade Files that have been created during these session revisions? We haven't copied them onto any floppies, so aren't we in trouble? Stay tuned -- or if you can't wait, click here.]

How to Deal With "Missing" Audiofiles

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you'll go to open a session and it'll hiccup somewhere along the way and present you with a window like this:

This clearly isn't good news. Pro Tools is telling you it can't find your Opening Music. Still, this may not be a disaster. You just have to stop and think: is it possible that you moved this file from whatever location it was in the last time you saved your session? Because that's all Pro Tools has to go by; the session document just has a record of where this Opening Music used to live, and apparently it's moved without leaving a forwarding address.

At this point maybe you say to yourself, "That's right -- I reorganized a bit and moved the music from the session Audio Files folder to a separate "Big Project MUSIC" folder." In previous versions of Pro Tools you would now have to point Pro Tools to the right place, because the program was too stupid to look for itself.

But in Pro Tools 5.1 there is a search function incorporated into this window. Before you use it, though, make sure to have a back-up copy of the session document in question. That's because this procedure, if successful, will be used to alter the session doc information. [It's easy to make a back-up copy on the spot. At the Finder level, locate your session document icon and single-click it to select it. Then go to the Mac menubar and choose: File|Duplicate. (The shortcut is Splat-D.) This will create a safety copy of your session. You should see it appear right under the original.]

Now -- we have some choices as to how the search should proceed. We can search:

Searching in the highlighted (or current) folder? Well, that's probably pointless because that's the session folder and Pro Tools has supposedly already looked there.

We could select the "Big Project MUSIC" Folder since that's where we suspect the file is. But if we did that, we'd be narrowing our search drastically. Instead, suppose we search the current volume -- that is, the entire Audio 1 drive, as indicated by our button selections above.

The search is quite fast. Below is our result:

And sure enough, there's the Opening Music listed in the "candidates" window. But if we look at the path leading to "Opening Music" we see that it wasn't in the "BIG PROJECT - MUSIC" folder after all. It was mistakenly placed in the DIALOG folder. This is an example where it was better to be less restrictive and let the Mac search the whole Audio 1 drive. (And if we're unsure about which drive to search, maybe we'd better choose the "All Volumes" option.)

Once the file is located you can press "Open" and Pro Tools will regard that audiofile and location as being the correct "Opening Music" and the session should open. [This has advanced uses: if the same file exists under a different name you can "teach" Pro Tools the new name, or you can "trick" Pro Tools into duplicating a series of edits made on one file and applying them to another.]

If more than one file is misplaced, you may have to repeat this process.

Once your session finally opens and if you're sure everything is present and accounted for, immediately save your session. Now the next time you open the session, Pro Tools will know where all the files are.

A Few More Details About File Searching

Use the "Matching Name" search criteria first; the "Matching Unique ID" choice should be a last resort, as it is much slower. Pro Tools 5.1 tags each audiofile with an ID code which stays the same even if the filename gets changed. (The manual is unclear as to whether audiofiles created with earlier versions get stamped with this ID merely by being imported into a 5.1 session; I suspect they do not.)

If you just can't find a file you can "skip" it. In previous versions, skipping a file and opening the session without it meant you were just out of luck. In Pro Tools 5.1, though, grayed-out "ghost" regions of offline media will appear in the session. You can't play them, of course, but should you later locate that audiofile the session will recreate the correct regions. (Note: if you're sure those files are gone forever you should clear those regions from your session. Otherwise Pro Tools will continue to prompt you to search for them each time you open the session.)

Dealing With Missing Fade Files

Sometimes you'll get a variation on the above scenario, only it'll be Fade Files that turn up missing. What do you do about Missing Fade Files?

Here's an answer you might like: Ignore them.

Fade Files are different from regular audiofiles in one key respect. When you create a fade by making an editorial decision in a session, not only is an actual Fade audiofile created and stored in the Fade Files folder, the Session document also writes a record of the instructions involved for making the fade. Among all the other lines of code instructions, there's a line that essentially says, "create Fade #x of such-and-such shape for a length of y number of samples occuring at a point z samples from the start of audiofile Opening Music."

So if you tell Pro Tools to skip a fade it can't locate, it will simply re-create the fade and put the re-created fade in the session Fade Files sub-folder.

Of course if you have many megabytes of missing fades, this will take a while. But it beats fishing around for them one at a time. So if you get a window like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

<-- The safest course is to select "Skip All Fades." (Pro Tools should still use any fade files that haven't gone missing, but it will re-create and re-file any missing fades that it has to skip.)
This is why, in a pinch, all you really need to re-create a session is your Audiofiles and your Session document.

 

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Copyright ©2000 by Rodger Pardee