Naming audio files w/o all the extra info Cakewalk adds?

[Christian Jones]

I'm trying to figure out how to change the scheme by which Cakewalk names audio files, so as to do away with all that extra info Cakewalk adds to the name. Usually Cakewalk will name the audio file on a track the same name as the track itself, but then it adds stuff like "bounced 1022" or whatever and sometimes other additional stuff. So if I name a bass track "Bass Guitar" Cakewalk will name the audio file something like "Bass Track (Bounced 982)." I know why Cakewalk does it, and that may be useful to some people, but that's info I don't always need/want and I'd like a cleaner audio file name and for it to be named exactly what I named it without any extra characters, words or info. Any way to do that in Cakewalk (other than manually going into the folder and renaming them)? 

[reginaldStjohn]

I don't think you would want to rename them. Cakewalk keeps a reference to these files for use in the DAW. If you rename them in the folder Cakewalk will not be able to find them.  Anytime you split, bounce, record etc. Cakewalk keeps track of these file for its use and may create new ones. The files in the audio directory are how Cakewalk manages them for its use.  They are not meant to be directly accessed by a user. If you want your own copy of wave files for your tracks then you could export them as stems and save them in a folder of your choosing.

Edited January 16, 2019 by reginaldStjohn

[dwdyer]

You can rename the files from within Cakewalk to the name of the track.

highlight the track you want to do this for, then choose

Tracks  --> Copy Track Name(s) to Clip Name(s)

If there's more than one clip in the track, it appears to append an integer to the track name, like "MyNewTrack - 01", "MyNewTrack - 02"

[David Baay]

Clips are not files, they're just graphical representations of a file or a part of a file, and altering the clip name doesn't affect the name of the referenced file which is what the OP is concerned about. CbB adds suffixes to files to differentiate them from earlier versions or recording takes. Nothing gets deleted unless all references to a file are deleted from the project during the same session in which the file was created without ever saving.  And once saved, a file will never be deleted unless you use Clean Audio Folder or CWAF Tool to  purge orphaned files, or save a copy of the project to a new folder, which will copy only referenced files.

Once you've finished a project and cleaned all orphaned files from the project folder, you could conceivably rename all the clips, and then tell CbB which file is which when missing files are reported when the project is re-opened, but it would be labor-intensive and prone to errors in a big project. It's best just to let CbB do it's thing, and not pay too much attention to how the sausage is made under the hood (I love a good mixed metaphor).

[tecknot]

I am with you, Chris.  Unfortunately, we only have one alternative and that is to change audio file/clip names manually (after material is recorded or added to project).  I sure wish we could set a naming scheme for clips in a projects.  Perhaps this could be one of the many feature requests submitted to Cakewalk/BandLab.

Kind regards,

tecknot

[David Baay]

I don't see how you'd end up with anything radically different or simpler that was still workable. You'd still need a suffix system to distinguish different takes and bounces in each track and across tracks. Also, I neglected to mention a few key features of the current scheme that any new scheme would need to preserve:

- Tracks and clips do not need to by uniquely named, and you can rename them at any time.

- Clips can be copied as many times as needed, and reference the same original audio file until a destructive edit is rendered by bouncing.

- Multiple versions of a project can exist in the same folder referencing the same or different audio files, and deleting a clip from one project does not affect the availability of the same audio file for another project.

- A project can reference an audio file in another project's audio folder or any location from which audio is imported without having to create a new copy of that audio unless destructive edits are rendered.

You think the current system is ugly? You should have seen it in pre-SONAR days when file names were essentially random  strings of numbers and letters like WJX4DMIJ2SVD7R.WAV - That was ugly.

Edited January 17, 2019 by David Baay

[RBH]

I thought that bounce to clips will resolve associated clips to a track and to a single audio file. Is this a mis conception on my part? I haven't really dug deep into the file architecture since upgrading to Sonar Pro  - and then to CbB.

[David Baay]

Yes, that's still true; the OP just wants more control over the naming of that file.

[Christian Jones]

Yeah normally I'd be and am content with letting Cakewalk name the file(s) however it wants to. But lately I've been using the daw the sample a keyboard and after editing and bouncing the samples and cleaning the audio file folder of unneeded files so that I just have my cleaned samples.. maybe I'm a bit ocd but in that instance I was really wanting my wav files - which were no longer associated with a daw at this point - to not have all those naming extensions and just be neater. I'd just rather have the file named "Bb5 Quadra.wav" and not "Bb5 Quadra (Bounded 1932).wav"  and yeah it was a pita renaming them manually and next time I'll just live with it I guess ?

[chris.r]

1 hour ago, Chris Jones said:

I'd just rather have the file named "Bb5 Quadra.wav" and not "Bb5 Quadra (Bounded 1932).wav"  and yeah it was a pita renaming them manually and next time I'll just live with it I guess ?

if the names could get rid of the brackets that would make renaming significantly easier

[David Baay]

13 hours ago, Chris Jones said:

But lately I've been using the daw the sample a keyboard and after editing and bouncing the samples and cleaning the audio file folder of unneeded files so that I just have my cleaned samples.

I've had to deal with that in the past where I wanted multi-samples named with the note number and velocity used to drive a hardware synth. I didn't bother searching at the time, but I'm guessing there are freeware file-naming apps that could help automate the renaming.

[Gregg Markus]

If you don't use "per project" folders, then you have to include the song name at the front of each file name.

But it seems to me that if you ARE using 'per project' folders, you should be able to tell CbB to leave the song title out. This has always been annoying, so I don't necessarily expect it to change.