Unused files

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

Hi,
My workflow is such that I have a dedicated linux machine, running Ardour4, in a studio room where I do tracking of my band (drums, bass, guitar, vox = 10 input simultaneous). We also do overdubs and there may be many takes which are ‘undone’. Ardour does not delete these files. This is to an external drive which I then take home and copy the entire session folder to my other machine running Ardour5 for mixing. The session is automatically converted from Ardour4 to Ardour5 but Ardour5 has no knowledge of which files are not in use. Cleanup doesn’t work in this case as I am guessing the conversion never registered the unused files.
How can I find out which audio files are unused so I can tidy up my system?
Thanks in advance.

#2

could you please go further with the concept “takes which are ‘undone’”?

#3

@stratojaune When recording starts the musicians may stop because they are not happy with their performance. In Ardour the undo key is pressed which removes the last recorded capture (a take) from the session. That’s what I mean by “takes which are undone”.
Even though Ardour has removed that faulty recording from the session the underlying file that was produced still remains on disk. These are ‘unused’ takes i.e. files which are no longer referenced by the Ardour session.
I’m looking for a way to identify which files are not in use by the session.

#4

I can think of three things that might help you.

  1. Ardour has a “destroy last capture” option that’ll immedaitely delete what was just recorded. You could use that instead of the normal “undo”
  2. You could perform the session cleanup before you convert the session to Ardour 5 format. You’d need to save, reload, cleanup, and then all unused files will be in the “dead” subdirectory in your Ardour project folder.
  3. You could upgrade your studio tracking setup to Ardour 5 and spare yourself the session conversion. I understand that this might be a last resort, because of the stability.

Also, this looks like a bug to me - have you filed a ticket in the Mantis Bug Tracker? I guess session cleanup should work regardless if you captured it with Ardour 4 or 5.

#5

@unfa Thank you for your time.

  1. I will look into that. I didn’t realise it existed.
  2. I had thought of that as well but I was a little nervous of the reliability of the cleanup utility. However, I’ll bite the bullet.
  3. This is a plan but I’m not quite ready to risk upgrading my studio tracking setup. Ardour5 does look good though and it has some features that I want on both machines. I’d prefer to have the same version on both anyway.

I’ve never used the Mantis Bug Tracker but I’ll look into that.

Again, thanks for your help.

#6

about 1. all you have to do is Ctrl+space to end recording & not saving it, HTH…