Hello,
 
In all these years I used the 'Clean Audio Folder', to reduce disk data occupation...
How this feature is done, at least for me, it has a little flaw, the fact that projects to consider which file as used or unused must reside in the local system disk....
Here is my problem :
The PC where Sonar ( I still use X2 producer ) is installed has its own root folder under which all projects are developed and saved, an such a folder is 'backupped' each day, at least changed files are, automatically on a NAS, so that I have an exact restorable copy of the project realtime whatever it happens, even for files that may be wrongly deleted...
Now, once per week, the backup folder on the NAS is copied on a remote FTP for safety purposes, and here comes the problem...
The backup folder owns all the files for a project, from audio to projects, templates and so on, but it even holds temporary files like cut, edits, bad recordings and so on...
So, the Backup folder usually grows to about twice the size of the original folder owning all the original Sonar projects, creating a huge amount of unnecessary data to be eventually copied remotely...
If I use the 'Clean Audio Folder' feature of Sonar on such a NAS, Sonar, for the check, will consider only projects that are stored on the local disc, and, if a project has been removed from the disk to make more space, deleted for error or even just corrupted, but it is still present on the backup folder, well, results in the backup folder are the loss all its audio files, at least, for what I read on the online documentation for this command still now...
 
So, my question is :
Is still the 'Clean Audio Folder' working this way... ( it's 2 years since I am out of Sonar use )...?
And if so, why not making an option in this very useful function to select which folder to refer to for projects that may use such Audio files...?
Or, even simpler, why not making such feature looking from the selected folder locally down both for both audio and linked project files to make sure a folder would be consistent with itself both as audio and as projects...?
Eventually even an independent tool would be useful performing such an action, to make this very useful feature more usable...
 
I hope I have explained quite clearly what I mean...
 
Thanks,,,
 
Alex
 
 

Hey Alex.
 
I have never found the clean audio function to be particularly efficient. In the past, once a project was completed I would save it as a bundle (which would compact the audio to only used tracks) then on it to a new lcation. I could then delete the original project folder containing all of the unused takes etc.
Now, with per project audio folders, it is even easier. Once a project is done, I just save it to a new lcation and tick copy all audio with project. Only the used audio files will be copied with the project,, and you can then delete the original project folder. Once in this habit, there is never a need to clean the audio folder, and your main and backup drives will be identical.

Try Utilities > Cakewalk Audio Finder instead. Not perfect, either, but far more flexible and powerful in terms of what paths get searched, what it tells you about what it finds, and what to do with orphaned audio files.

Thanks to both for the suggestion....
Well, both solutions would be doable, but I think I will have a time consuming related problem...
I may work on few projects at time in a single day, if I want the 'saved for backup' project only to hold the used files, it would require me to delete it before saving an updated copy on it, and then, save the new one, and I should do it every time I leave the project, not being sure I would work again on it later.
Not doing this, and making a direct overwrite of the save, would let the overwritten copy of the project to always hold also older files that are no more used...
More, deleting old project by network may require a lot of time for each project, both in deleting the older project folder and saving the new one, that's why my backup is automated to check and save in background only changed files every hour...
This way, just before the backup to the remote FTP I would eventually call a modified 'Clean Audio folder' function...
 
However, the suggested 'Save with audio files' mode may let me think about a some more efficient data organization... I never considered it, and I need to think about it...
 
Alex

If you have a bunch of co-mingled audio clips in a common audio folder, for multiple projects, I would suggest you start creating a separate new project folder for each project, then do a Save As with the option checked to copy all audio during the Save As, and that would build up each project folder to have a sub-folder called Audio with only the active audio clips for the project.
 
At the end of that exercise, every project would exist with its proper active audio clips, and I would think then that you could archive or even delete the original project folders and that giant massive mis-mash of co-mingled audio from that single audio folder.
 
Wouldn't the above be another approach to fixing the issue?
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks Robert,
 
What you described as an option, single projects with single Audio Forlders is exactly the same as I already am organized with projects...There is a Root Folder for Sonar X2 projects, in it a subfolder for each Group/Album, and inside such a folder, subfolders for each project with all the data, both digital and audio...
 
To keep all these folders updated manually every day, would be time consuming, and, I could no tell in advance if a project on which I worked in the morning would be left untouched for the rest of the day, may be it will be modified again in the noon... This would mean to update a project copy may be twice a day to be safe, and apart time, there is the fact that all this data transfert every day, is prone to errors, both from humans and from IO's...
I can not thing if the copy of a project had any kind of error which I was not aware of, and I already deleted the original one, it already happened...I may realize about this few days later, and that would be far too late to recover anything, so I should also introduce a verify in the copy operations...would be very complex and sluggish...
 
I think I will anyway think about this Save with audio files option checked...
 
I think anyway that the real good solution would be a 'Clean Audio Folder' which may work locally...
Wouldn't be a great coding by the Sonar Guys, all they need to do is to substistute the path in which to look for Sonar Source Projects and make it settable by the user to override the default one...
If I had the format in which a Sonar Project relates to it's Audio files, well... I would do an application myself, but I am not sure if such a format is public or available anywhere, or even the same thru Sonar project versions...
 
 
 
 

Hi Alex.
 
I would strongly recommend adopting the procedures described by Robert above.
For backup purposes, you can simply drag & drop your entire projects folder to your backup drive of choice every day.
 
This folder should end up a LOT smaller once all your projects have been subjected to the "Save As" and the originals deleted.

To backup my project folders I use a program called Vise versa pro. Very handy:)