Audio in ancient WRK files

[Randy Wolf]

I have an ancient WRK file which predates SONAR even. It opens fine. However.

In those days Cakewalk didn't have different types of tracks (midi, audio, etc.) so audio was just inserted into a track. When opening in current version the tracks with audio appear as MIDI tracks and the audio waveform is flat (no audio). Playback is no audio. Right clicking a track and going to Associated Audio Files leads to the correct audio file (which works outside of the app in Windows). BTW the old WRK files apparently copied every single CLIP for each usage. So even tho there are only like 3 actual clips of audio there were 65 external files

Anyway, the question is how to make the audio work? Before I laboriously reconstruct it by dragging the right external audio clip into new audio tracks... I'm hoping there is a way to "fix" it automagically.

Is there any way to convert a MIDI track to Audio? I mean -- tell Cakwalk "no no, this is not a MIDI track it's actually an Audio track". Not talking about "converting" MIDI to Audio here.

I've tried saving a copy as CWP and CWB but no luck.

 

Thanks for any tips or tricks.

 

[Lord Tim]

If you save the project as a CWP, then insert in a new audio track and then drag the clips from the old MIDI track to this newly inserted audio track, does it work after saving and reopening the CWP?

[Randy Wolf]

Thanks for the suggestion but this did not work. I also tried "Recompute Picture(s)" button on the Associated Audio Files dialog and still flat, no audio.

Ultimately I just dragged the clips in from the file system and fixed it. Not too much effort once I realized the external files were all duplicates and there were only really 3 actual clips to deal with. 

Any other suggestions anyone has I'd be willing to try just to document a better way to do it... but for now I've worked around it.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, this is a tough one because this pre-dates SONAR and, if I remember right, audio clips were handled very differently in CWPA - there was no slip editing for a start, they were just kind of objects inserted on the timeline initially, and then when audio recording eventually came in, they were kind of a monolith thing that needed the audio editor view to be destructively edited.

If you saved a copy of the project as a CWP, then opened up both the WRK and CWP projects, could you select all of the audio in the WRK file, then go to the CWP and paste them into a new audio track, perhaps?

I think the fact that they're not showing up as WAVs in the WRK is a big thing though.

Can any other old-timers remember if we had OMF back in the day, or did that come in with SONAR? That might be an option to export an OMF if it's available and see if that works.

Another thing that might work is to save the WRK as a BUN and see if that includes any audio when it's opened back up. Seems unlikely, but worth a shot.   Ignore this, I missed that you tried that.

I guess, other than that, is to do what you've just done, and use the blank clips as guides as to where to drop the re-imported files manually.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lord Tim

[msmcleod]

By far the best way of dealing with .WRK files is to drag them into a new project rather than open them directly.  If you use something like the "Basic" template, you get the benefit of a Master, Preview and Metronome bus set up for you already.

I'm pretty sure this is how I converted all of my CWPA 7 / 9 files into SONAR cwp files.

Opening .WRK files directly however left me with having to create all of these buses manually, a Pro-Channel that didn't work properly, and a bunch of other issues due to project options being deprecated over the years.
 

[sjoens]

FWIW, .wrk & .cwp files don't contain wave files, but .bun & .cwb files do. Unless you have the original wave files associated with the .wrk file, you won't have any audio.

.wrk & .cwp files will look for wave files in the original folder they were saved in (probably the global audio folder). Otherwise they will ask you to locate or skip them. If they've been moved from their original location, you may have to re-import them back into the project.

[Lord Tim]

By the sounds of things, Randy had those files referenced in a folder where the project knows where to look, so it's more or less like how we do things now with the CWP not containing audio, but references to it. But for whatever reason, CbB can't resolve the links to those audio tracks, most likely due to a tangle with the older track type that these things were saved as.

Mark's suggestion is a good one, so long as there's no tempo information in the file (which you can work around by doing a couple of preliminary saves as .MID to preserve the tempo changes).

The only other thing I can think of is maybe rolling up a Virtual Machine, running Win 9x, and installing CWPA 6+ on there and seeing if that will open it correctly, and then doing a track by track audio export. That way you only need to import in a few track sized clips rather than a million little fragments, and then split them later once they're running in CbB.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lord Tim

[Xoo]

5 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Can any other old-timers remember if we had OMF back in the day, or did that come in with SONAR? That might be an option to export an OMF if it's available and see if that works.

No - much later.

[Randy Wolf]

5 hours ago, msmcleod said:

By far the best way of dealing with .WRK files is to drag them into a new project rather than open them directly.  If you use something like the "Basic" template, you get the benefit of a Master, Preview and Metronome bus set up for you already.

I'm pretty sure this is how I converted all of my CWPA 7 / 9 files into SONAR cwp files.

Opening .WRK files directly however left me with having to create all of these buses manually, a Pro-Channel that didn't work properly, and a bunch of other issues due to project options being deprecated over the years.
 

I will try this out and see if maybe it can help.

[Randy Wolf]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

By the sounds of things, Randy had those files referenced in a folder where the project knows where to look, so it's more or less like how we do things now with the CWP not containing audio, but references to it. But for whatever reason, CbB can't resolve the links to those audio tracks, most likely due to a tangle with the older track type that these things were saved as.

Mark's suggestion is a good one, so long as there's no tempo information in the file (which you can work around by doing a couple of preliminary saves as .MID to preserve the tempo changes).

The only other thing I can think of is maybe rolling up a Virtual Machine, running Win 9x, and installing CWPA 6+ on there and seeing if that will open it correctly, and then doing a track by track audio export. That way you only need to import in a few track sized clips rather than a million little fragments, and then split them later once they're running in CbB.

You've got it right. I'll give Mark's idea a try and see what happens.

[Randy Wolf]

3 minutes ago, Randy Wolf said:

I will try this out and see if maybe it can help.

No love. Audio is still flat/silent as tracks with embedded audio are still depicted as MIDI tracks. 

Interestingly, with each of these trials the external audio folder if filling up with copies of the original clips!  So the current version is *very* aware of the audio clips just refuses to play them back. 

[msmcleod]

2 minutes ago, Randy Wolf said:

No love. Audio is still flat/silent as tracks with embedded audio are still depicted as MIDI tracks. 

Interestingly, with each of these trials the external audio folder if filling up with copies of the original clips!  So the current version is *very* aware of the audio clips just refuses to play them back. 

You should be able to copy the clips into new audio tracks though.

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

... so long as there's no tempo information in the file (which you can work around by doing a couple of preliminary saves as .MID to preserve the tempo changes).

Once you've dragged the .wrk file in, you should be able to open the .wrk file as a second project then copy/paste the tempos over.
 

[mettelus]

IIRC, there was a "Find Missing Audio" dialog that popped up automatically when opening similar projects. It would either search the entire file system (takes forever) or you could point it to a folder to drill down. Not sure if that could be manually launched though... it has been a while.

[Randy Wolf]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

You should be able to copy the clips into new audio tracks though.

Once you've dragged the .wrk file in, you should be able to open the .wrk file as a second project then copy/paste the tempos over.
 

Definitely can drag to new audio track but they come across silent (flat waveform). I'm guessing current Cakewalk is not happy dragging audio embedded in a MIDI track. It doesn't expect that because you can't create that today. Old versions yes. 

[Randy Wolf]

48 minutes ago, mettelus said:

IIRC, there was a "Find Missing Audio" dialog that popped up automatically when opening similar projects. It would either search the entire file system (takes forever) or you could point it to a folder to drill down. Not sure if that could be manually launched though... it has been a while.

It's finding the files no problem. And those files when played outside Cakewalk are fine. It's just unhappy that they are embedded in a MIDI track. Which is how it worked in 1990

[msmcleod]

2 hours ago, Randy Wolf said:

It's finding the files no problem. And those files when played outside Cakewalk are fine. It's just unhappy that they are embedded in a MIDI track. Which is how it worked in 1990

Hmm - those are VERY old .wrk files.  Can you remember which version of CWPA you were using?

[sjoens]

7 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

By the sounds of things, Randy had those files referenced in a folder where the project knows where to look, so it's more or less like how we do things now with the CWP not containing audio, but references to it. But for whatever reason, CbB can't resolve the links to those audio tracks, most likely due to a tangle with the older track type that these things were saved as.

This was unclear to me so I rendered comment from my own experience which is from Home Studio 9 - 1999.  His (now we know) 1990 .wrk's are probably different than mine.

"Anyway, the question is how to make the audio work? Before I laboriously reconstruct it by dragging the right external audio clip into new audio tracks... I'm hoping there is a way to "fix" it automagically."

If the old .wrk files are "embedding" audio into MIDI tracks then it's doubtful CbB will know what to do with them. Unless msmcleod's way solves that (drag in the .wrk file), you'll most likely need to import them into the new project as their own audio tracks - then Save-As the new project. Yeah, this'll be fun if the file naming convention was "f1gj43hn.wav" like it was with CWPA9 & HS9.

No need to create audio tracks before doing that. Just drag the files to the blank area below the last track and tracks will be automatically made for them.

Interesting link

Edited May 23, 2023 by sjoens

[Lord Tim]

6 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Hmm - those are VERY old .wrk files.  Can you remember which version of CWPA you were using?

This sounds something like CWP 2.x to me, back before audio recording there was "audio events" where you could insert audio clips into tracks. That was 1993 or so. That would explain the ambiguous track type for sure. So actually pre-dating CWPA by a few years.