Hello there,
this is is my situation:
I usually record quite long sessions in our rehearsal room while rehearsing. These recordings contain lots of waste because most of the time, the recording just runs alongside and I don’t want to hit the stop/start button all the time.
After recording, I’d like to cut off the redundant parts of the .wav file to save disk space. (Sometimes there are only 3 minutes of a 30 minute recording that I’d like to keep while all the rest could be deleted)
I found that it’s possible to trim the regions with dragging the bar underneath the waveform until the desired part is left, but since this works non-destructive, the wav file is untouched and lots of disk space is wasted.
Is there a way of cutting/trimming destructively in Ardour?
The closest thing you can do is to range-select the piece(s) you want, and bounce or consolidate them. Then delete the long region.
Then choose “Session->Cleanup->Cleanup unused sources”. Now Quit, Reopen the session, and choose “Flush wastebasket”.
Ardour places such a priority on “preserving your data” that it can be quite hard to clear out stuff you don’t want.
Here’s an idea: make a “scratch” track with a tape-mode track. Record into this for as long as you like. When you hit stop and rewind, it will overwrite the previous data like tape, so you don’t make new files requiring new disk space, it just overwrites the existing wav file. When you get a bit that you like, export or bounce the range to its own short wavefile.