What hapens to the unwanted files

[Paul Bush]

Hi guy s After recording a song with all the tracks within being deleted and re-recorded I went on to audio libraries only to find so many takes and retakes ,is this ok ? or is there a way of reducing or deleting the unwanted  `´takes ´´ so as to free up my PC  or is this just not worthwhile ,any easy answers would be welcome (I´n not too pc savy)

cheers now

[Kalle Rantaaho]

IIRC, (I'm not 100% sure, though)  if you press Undo immediately after recording a take, the audio is erased, otherwise it's saved in the audio folder.

The safest and fastest way of getting rid of unnecessary audio is to save the project under a new name  with "Save all audio with project" (or how was the wording exactly?) checked. Then delete the old project.  This deletes all audio, that is not a part of that particular project.

There used to be, and maybe still is, a function called "Clean audio disc" (or something) which erased all audio that was not attached to any project. However, that was/is very clumsy, because it scanned all  darn places, took forever to perform the task.

I assume you are using "Per Project Audio Folder", instead of saving audio from all projects to the same folder.

My info may be outdated as I'm on oooold version.

[DeeringAmps]

Do a “save as” and the unused tracks should be “cleaned” up. 

t

[user 905133]

I have what I think is a related mirror image question:  How can I keep a project, but unlink a missing audio file that used to be in a track that was deleted? 

I tried all versions of save, save as, and copy with different check box options checked as well as saving as a *.cwt file. No matter what I try, when I load the new/altered project, Cakewalk keeps giving me the "Find Missing Audio" dialog and associated warnings. 

[bitflipper]

In that case, there is still a (bogus) link to some nonexistent clip in one of your tracks. Unfortunately, there is no convenient way to identify which track it is. Here's how I handled that scenario when it happened to me...

First, make a copy of the entire project folder. This will be a temporary workspace for diagnostics and you won't need it afterward. Now open that copy and start deleting tracks and saving the project. Repeat until it comes up without the missing audio warnings, and then you'll know which track was having the problem. In my case, I had some 60 tracks in the project so I used a binary approach to save time, deleting half the tracks, then half the remaining tracks and so on.

Once you've identified the problem track, clone it but don't clone events (just plugins, automation and routing). Select all the clips in the original track and CTL-SHIFT-drag them down into the new track, which will be clean of orphaned links. Finally, delete the original problem track and away you go.

[David Baay]

26 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Unfortunately, there is no convenient way to identify which track it is.

In most cases, the track name should be part of the file name that is reported 'missing' unless it was changed sometime after the recording was made.

 

[David Baay]

4 hours ago, Kalle Rantaaho said:

There used to be, and maybe still is, a function called "Clean audio disc" (or something) which erased all audio that was not attached to any project. However, that was/is very clumsy, because it scanned all  darn places, took forever to perform the task.

Utilities . Clean Audio Folder now gives you an option to searhc only the project path or the whole PC. so it;s very efficient for cleaning a single project folder now.

Personally, I still prefer to clean my whole project folder periodically, using Utilities > Cakewalk Audio Finder Tool. CWAF tool can do all projects in one go, and gives much more information about what audio belings to which projects, and more control over what happens to 'cleaned' audio. Here's how i use it:

Preparation:
 
- Create a folder called “CWAF Excluded WAVs” on the drive that contains your projects folder.
 
- Create a shortcut to \Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\cwaftool.exe so you can run it with Cakewalk shut down.
 
Usage:
 
- Close Cakewalk.
- Empty the Recycle Bin.
- Start CWAF Tool.
- Add your “Excluded” folder and any other paths that will never have Cakewalk projects in them to the 'Folders to Ignore' list.
 
- Select a drive to search (i.e. the one containing your projects folder).
 
- Click Find – The button label will change to Stop, and you will see paths being searched in the status bar at the bottom.
 
- Wait for the Stop button to change back to Find, indicating the search is complete.
 
- Click the Status column header twice to get all the Orphaned files floated to the top.
 
- Select all the orphans, click the Move button, and select the CWAF Excluded WAVs folder on the local drive as the target.
 
- Repeat the search and sort, and scroll through the list to be sure there are no Orphaned or Missing files reported (i.e. you found all the orphans, and didn’t inadvertently move something that wasn’t an orphan).
 
- You can now safely Shift+Delete (permanently deletes, bypassing the Recycle Bin) all the files in the “Excluded” folder.

[Jon White]

To delete the saved audio files in your project that are no longer in tracks, simply execute "Utilities/Clean Audio Folder".

That simple.

 

Another way is "Utilities/Consolidate Project Audio".  That will collect the active audio files into a subdirectory in the project, but you then must delete the audio directory files and put the files in the sub back up into your audio directory.

Another way is to go to Windows file explorer and select all of the audio files in the project's audio directory while the project is open.  Hit delete and all the ones not being used will be deleted.  Clean Audio Folder does it for you.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Jon White

[bitflipper]

Clean Audio Folder removes files that are no longer referenced. User 905133's problem is the opposite: there is a reference but no matching file.

[Chaps]

Would it work if he created a .wav file with the name of the missing audio and put it where Cakewalk is looking for it? That might stop that annoying missing audio message if nothing else.

[user 905133]

Thanks for the suggestions. I believe the problem I face stems from importing an audio file which may have created pointers to audio regions that persist and do not get detected/removed by any of the strategies I tried before asking and since.  There is a thread from January that has some possibilities.  I will try those after a break.

[Paul Bush]

On 3/18/2020 at 1:27 PM, DeeringAmps said:

Do a “save as” and the unused tracks should be “cleaned” up. 

t

So this could be my problem after every recording /deleting /and playing along with  session I always do a ``save as ´´ is this not nessersary ? should i just click on  `´X´´ and not save .

[DeeringAmps]

Paul,

It might be necessary to change the parent folder. If I’m following you right, it sounds like you are doing a “save as” but in the same folder ie:

Song/song-v1.cwp

then versions -v2 -v3 etc remain in the same folder? The earlier versions point to all the takes, edits etc. 

if you save as Song V4/song-v4.cwp

only the files for that version will be saved.

hope that all makes sense. 

t