How do I rename an Ardour Session

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

I’m using Ardour 2.4.1 on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. I have created a session, but now need to rename it … another session needs that name. How do I do this? I looked for “save as”, but could not find it. I tried copying the files to a new directory and also renaming the files in that directly to reflect the new name … but no luck. Is there something I’m missing here? (In case you’re curious: I was doing a 3 part series for public radio, but then realized it should be four parts … so part 3, which was already created, needs to be renamed to part 4.)

#2

  1. There is no “Save As” because it requires asking the user what they want to do about the (potentially) hundreds of gigabytes of audio data that constitutes the session. For various reasons, Ardour has tried to avoid pushing this decision onto users; it may eventually give up and offer this operation along with a dialog to make choices.

  2. There is trivial way to rename a session. If you are comfortable with a text editor and using a file manager/navigator and/or basic unix command line tools, there are several steps required. If this is feature you feel would be valuable, please add it (or your voice) to our bug tracker/feature request system. If you want to know how to do it by hand, please ask.

  3. What Ardour does offer are named “snapshots” of a session. These do not result in any audio data copying - all that is stored on disk is a new session file. So you can “Snapshot Session”, name the snapshot, and then always load the snapshot. Snapshots are a stored within the session folder, not outside of it.

#3

Paul: I would be very comfortable with text editors and command line tools … if you have time please explain. – Bill (a dedicated emacs user for 20 plus years!)

#4

You need to do three things at a minimum:

  1. rename the top level directory containing the session
  2. rename the directory below “interchange” to match the new session name
  3. in the .ardour file, alter the name=“foobar” property that is normally on the second line.

You should also scan the .ardour file for any references to the session name and replace them with the new one. There generally will be none, but its worth checking.

You’ve been using Emacs almost as long as me! Congratulations!! :slight_smile: