exporting MIDI track

[greg54]

I have a MIDI drum track in a song that I want to export - not the enrire song, just the MIDI drum track.  How do I do that?

[John Vere]

Lots of way. 
Drag the midi clip from the project to a windows folder or desktop 

Use the file menu export dialogue 

Save the project as a midi file 

[greg54]

I don't understand how to save a project as MIDI file and export that, since it's just the MIDI drum track, not the entire song   Dragging the MIDI file onto my desktop seems like the easiest way. 

Thanks!

Edited November 29, 2021 by greg54

[greg54]

Nothing has worked.  It won't allow me to drag it onto the desktop.    File>export doesn't work with a MIDI file - at least, not for me.  Can't save it as MIDI file.  It won't allow me to.

[scook]

18 minutes ago, greg54 said:

Can't save it as MIDI file.  It won't allow me to.

Please upload an image of the error message?

Are you trying to save the file in the project folder? If not, try that.

[greg54]

The MIDI track highlighted on top is the one I'm trying to export.    When I go to File>Save As, this is the message I get.   Or when I go to File> Export,  it doesn't allow me to save the MIDI file either.   I know I'm doing something wrong somewhere.

[scook]

The message is a warning that saving the project as a MIDI file will not save the audio in the project.

Continuing past the message will save a MIDI file.

Rather than using the Save command, you may want to use "Save Copy As". It will still throw the same warning message which you may continue past but unlike Save, "Save Copy As" does load the saved file as the current open project.

Make sure to select the track prior to Save or Export.

To save one track using drag and drop, select the clips and bounce to clips to create one big clip then either drag the file onto the desktop, a windows folder or into the media browser.

If running as administrator, the OS will not allow drag and drop to the desktop or Windows folders but dragging to the media browser still works.

[greg54]

Thanks, scook!

[Andres Medina]

Just in case... see video

[greg54]

Thanks, Andres!  That's what I've been doing.  I guess I need to do what scook said and ignore the message.

[Jack Cat]

The reason you probably couldn't drag and drop from Cakewalk directly might have been the simple instrument track? But I just tried drag and drop from both a midi track and a Simple instrument track and it created  midi clips on my desktop. The clips play fine in media player or VLC. It also dragged back into Cakewalk and created a new midi tack just fine. 

If you select only the midi track and use from the file menu- Export Standard Midi File , you won't get that dialogue.  

[greg54]

Jack Cat:  That's what I did (Export>Standard MIDI File), and I still got that dialogue box.

And after I got that message and clicked Yes anyway, it saved it.  However, when I went to save the project later after I did more work, I clicked "Save," as I always do.   And that same message box came up, even though no track was highlighted.   I was not exporting anything, only saving the changes I made in the project.   I clicked Yes, because it wouldn't allow me to save it otherwise . . .and I lost my entire song.   I backup all my songs when I make changes, so I was able to retrieve it from the flash drive.   But I won't click on Yes when that box comes up again.   In fact, I'm not going to try to save a MIDI track again.  Not worth it.
 

Edited November 30, 2021 by greg54

[John Vere]

Why didn’t the drag and drop work? It always works. I got curious and just tried it. 
make Cakewalk screen smaller so I can see the desktop on the right. Point mouse at a midi track click and drag to desktop let  go and there’s a file there that plays midi data in any player or back in Cakewalk. 
Like Jack above if I highlight a midi track and choose export as midi file I don’t get any warning.  It just creates a midi file in the project folder.  
I can’t think of what could be weird about your midi track that this doesn’t work! 

[sjoens]

The OP has at least 3 separate clips selected. In this scenario, when I try to drag & drop them to my desktop I get the warning: "Could not find this item." for 2 of the 3 clips. Then it produced one clip on my desktop that included all 3. So it bounces separate clips together when exporting.

 

There is also a bug with drag & drop that wants to name each clip in the same track "clip(1).mid if they aren't already named in project.

CbB 2021.09 b141

Edited November 30, 2021 by sjoens

[John Vere]

Good detective work.

Might have caused the drag and drop to not work  I only tried it with one clip as I assumed this was what the op was doing. In that case it might work better to first bounce to clips or tracks so it’s one clip. But that said it looks like a group of repeating drum loops anyhow so you would only need one to use elsewhere  

One of my backup / future proof methods is I always “Save As” to a midi file all my projects that contain midi. Most of the time spent on many projects is midi. 
 

This is sort of an interesting topic I’m going to play with this today. I bet you can even drag clips back into the Browser 

Edited November 30, 2021 by John Vere

[John Vere]

First I looked in the new export dialogue but there is only lots of options for Audio, no midi found there. So thn I made a quick screen capture of how I export a midi clip. I had already done this yesterday so it did ask to overwrite that file. But no warnings about saving and loosing audio.. Why would it? 

 

Yep you can drag a clip of multiple clips to the Browser. I used the short cut to the projects folder and re purposed the "Mix Scenes" folder as a place to drop them. As you can see it numbered each clip correctly too. 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by John Vere

[greg54]

I will try bouncing the clips to make one drum clip and see how that works with dragging and dropping.   Btw, I'm using an older version of CbB, because when I checked out some of the new features, I didn't care for some.  I like this version.   I believe it came out a year or so ago.

[Andres Medina]

I try to keep updated to the latest release... a lot of fixes are addressed. And I think it's easier for the support team to investigate problems? not sure.

[John Vere]

3 minutes ago, Andres Medina said:

I try to keep updated to the latest release... a lot of fixes are addressed. And I think it's easier for the support team to investigate problems? not sure.

This is correct. They are constantly fixing bugs and it does make it harder to troubleshoot because first step is making sure you’re using the latest version. 
As far as not liking new features? I can’t think of anything that changed in my workspace at all for a long time.  only the new Export dialogue which has been a huge improvement. They even fixed one little item a few of us reported within a week!  
You most certainly don’t need to use any particular feature. 
What bugs you? Maybe we can offer a solution. 

[scook]

10 minutes ago, Andres Medina said:

I think it's easier for the support team to investigate problems?

Definitely. The first thing support will likely suggest is update the software.

It is useful when posting here to mention the version if it is not the current release. And since some may be unaware of the current release, adding the release and build number to the OP is a good idea.

Guessing about release and build numbers is a waste of everyone's time.