Is there a way to do the equivalent of a “Save As…” to save an entire session to a new folder, new name? With all the powerful features of Ardour I expect I’m simply missing how to do it somewhere.
I tried copying the folder but that didn’t work.
I love Ardour! It’s a revolution in the making!
The main reason we don’t have “Save As” is because of the immense size of some audio projects. “Save As” implies copying, which we believe most users would actually not want to do.
If you check out the “Snapshot” feature, I think you’ll find that its close to what you want, except that it remains inside the same session folder.
Copying the directory works. To make the copy perfect, you need to do two extra things to it before using it:
First, you need to rename the session file (the .ardour file named after the session) to match the new session name.
Second, you should change the session name in the .ardour file you just renamed. The session file is in XML format. You need to change the value of the attribute 'name' in the base node 'Session'. The tag looks like this: <Session version="[some version]" name="Foo">
What I really want to do was almost what the templates feature already does:
I want to save all my settings for a new templated session but I wanted to retain all of my track settings, particularly their input and output connections since I have a reasonaly complex input scheme. Note that my tracks are empty at this point.
Without that ability it can take a fair amount of time to get all my tracks setup for a new session.
This isn’t anything major, just a “nice to have”. Or maybe Ardour already does it (save tracks along with the Template) and I just don’t know how.
Sampo’s procedure will likely work but it is a bit of a hack.
I see the developer’s reasoning for not doing a simplistic Save As as that would be a dangerous/senseless feature with large sessions. Maybe Ardour’s Save Template feature could have an option to save everything except the actual audio data? Does that make sense?
A template should save your tracks and connections. Have you tried it out?
I did try this and it did not bring up the tracks when creating a new session from the saved templated session. I just tried it again and this time and it worked perfectly. Same version of Ardour (0.99.2) in both cases.
I suppose I did something wrong but I doubt it since I definitely remember the tracks being there when I saved as a template. Do I need to Save the session before Save As Template? Maybe that is why.
Anyway, I am very pleased that I now know the right way to do this. I agree, Save As is not needed. I will report back if I observe losing tracks again during a Save As Template.
I’m just so thrilled about discovering Ardour, issues like this don’t bother me one bit.
Thanks!
Hack sounds just like something I would do… 
I wasn’t sure about the reason why you wanted to “Save As”. I assumed the reason was to make a copy of a whole session with another name in (maybe) another directory.