Hi, I’m starting a movie project with ardour, and I just wanted to know if there is an easy way to reroute the file locations of regions. You know, what would happen if I change the name of a directory? Or if I want to open the project in another computer?
I’ve been messing around with the project file, and I know that you might be able to change the file locations manually by editing it with a text editor. But is there a way to do this within the GUI?
Thanks!!
There is no real concept of file management in Ardour at this time. Your best bet is not to move the files honestly. Any particular reason you feel you need to with your project, and why you feel you can’t import instead of embed?
SeabladeHey seableade!!!
I did several tests, and I was able to reroute the files by editing the .ardour file with a text editor! 
Some of the reason for needing this kind of functionality for movie editing are:
Having Ardour import all the files is very disk-space consuming, so it is cool to have all your sound library in a separate directory. So, I prefer working with external files. This way you can also edit the files of the library any time you want.
Opening old projects (maybe after a couple of years your hard disk structure has changed and things are no longer where they used to be). As a movie project is usually a very long process, you may have to move things around to different hard disks, and one day you may have to open a project which you had backed up in another place, so an automatic “searching for lost media” option would be great.
When editing a movie, you may start building a rough project without the final media you will be using, so you may have to replace some of the media. To be able to do that by just changing the source file location within Ardour would be great.
You never know what strange Idea the director will come up with, so automatic media replacing is really useful. For example, if he doesn’t like the “bird ambiance” you used, you could just automatically replace that media with another one.
If you edit a sound in audacity or other audio processing program and you want to automatically replace the unprocessed media you were using in your Ardour project. Let’s say you edited externally a “foot steps” file, there maybe hundreds of regions using that file spread all over your project. In this case, an “edit externally” option would be great.
Well, those are some of my reasons 
1) Having Ardour import all the files is very disk-space consuming, so it is cool to have all your sound library in a separate directory. So, I prefer working with external files. This way you can also edit the files of the library any time you want.
My personal opinion is that I like having all my source files in the same directory where I know exactly what I am using on a project, but yes I also keep my SFX libraries in a different directory(Usually on an external disk in fact)
2) Opening old projects (maybe after a couple of years your hard disk structure has changed and things are no longer where they used to be). As a movie project is usually a very long process, you may have to move things around to different hard disks, and one day you may have to open a project which you had backed up in another place, so an automatic "searching for lost media" option would be great.
Well this would be solved by importing all media, it doesn’t really address why you feel embedding is better than importing like your last point:)
Not going to disagree proper file management isn’t needed in Ardour, it is just a fair amount of work to do which is why it hasn’t been done yet.
3) When editing a movie, you may start building a rough project without the final media you will be using, so you may have to replace some of the media. To be able to do that by just changing the source file location within Ardour would be great.
My question then is, where do you ingest your media from? Something seems off if I don’t have all the sources when I am mixing. Granted I may replace some field audio with ADR later, but that is about all I can think of, and in those cases I often want the field audio as well when I am recording the ADR.
4) You never know what strange Idea the director will come up with, so automatic media replacing is really useful. For example, if he doesn't like the "bird ambiance" you used, you could just automatically replace that media with another one.
Again not sure why this is different between embed and import. To me the import solution is much easier for this, as you replace on Ardour’s timeline. Combined with its ability to clean up sources as needed(Though I rarely do this without making a backup copy just in case).
5) If you edit a sound in audacity or other audio processing program and you want to automatically replace the unprocessed media you were using in your Ardour project. Let's say you edited externally a "foot steps" file, there maybe hundreds of regions using that file spread all over your project. In this case, an "edit externally" option would be great.
Ahh ok this seems to be the major difference between your workflow and mine I think. I no longer use Audacity, Peak, or other destructive editing programs for the most part. I would prefer to edit the regions in Ardour, especially as most of my restoration and plugins work fine in Ardour where they may not in other programs, then if I need to use that new edited region multiple times I bounce it out to create a new region to import. By the way the edit externally option I am fairly sure is a feature request in Mantis(I know this as I looked for it before I used Ardour for editing) so please feel free to add your vote or sponsorship to that issue and the file management issue.
Yea I think it is primarily a workflow difference is the main difference between how you and I work. I have gotten used to Ardour and using it in place of where I might use external programs to edit audio, which means that from the get go I am importing audio, and I don’t embed as much anymore.
Seablade