Saving a bun file

We just had a discussion about these bun files the other day!!
 
It seems that bun files don't compact the fikes in the way a zip file does. It may appear that way if you take a song that had many many edits/deletes and such, save it as a bun file, and the new bun file is much smaller than the project/audio folder. All the bun file save did was keep all relevant audio files and didn't save the old unused/deleted audio, therefore making it appear that it shrunk the files sizes. When all it really did was toss a bunch of unused files and kept the good stuff.
 
 
So if you just started a project that is 2hrs long, then delete all but three minutes of it, I think the bun file will be just the same size as all 28tks three minutes long.
 
Am I understanding you right?
 
Or is the bun file keeping all 2hrs of the file?

You might try running the utility "clean audio file" before you save as a bundle file.  You may have a lot of orphaned files associated with that song.  Just a thought.

Thanks for the replys. 
 
I've tried the "clean audio" but that doesn't seem to help. Possibly because the original audio is in large "files per track" that are the complete length of the 2 hr recording.
 
Grem - It seems to be keeping the entire 2 hrs of audio, not just the 3 min I want it to keep. 
 
Kalle - This is a good idea, I haven't tried that yet but will give it a go and report back. 
 
 

how about bounce to tracks with just the 3 min selected? that would give you new tracks of just that material as new files. then copy those to a new blank project...

gbowling

 
I guess I can export audio as wav files, it creates one file per track, then import those tracks into a new cakewalk project and it will do it. But that's a lot of work with 28 tracks. Would be nice if they would export a multi-channel wav file. 
 

It should not be too hard to:
select the the tracks,
set the time range,
export all tracks at once by setting source category as tracks,
create new project,
import all tracks at once
 
Not much different then a multi-channel wav, just have to hold the shift key while selecting tracks in import dialog or lasso them in windows explorer and drag into the new project.

gbowling, there must be a reason that what Kalle suggests doesn't work. And as CJ suggest, it's very simple.
 
However, try this;
Split the clips before and after the 3 min part. Then select all the clips in the 3 min part, right click and select "Apply Trimming"
 
Now once that is done, do as Kalle and CJ suggest, 'Save As' to a different name.
 
If that doesn't work, I suggest you give us the exact steps you are taking. We can go over them and figure this out.
 
Let us know

The step that is important when you use CWP files, is to do the "save as" to a new location! 
If you just do a save as and re name, it will still use the original audio folder. it's still associated with that audio folder. Saving to a new location will only copy the 3 minutes in the new audio folder.
 
Sure a bun file should strip this away but with so many people finding them corrupted for no explained reason, why use them at all.. 
 
They seem to be a left over from the days before we had the "per Project' option. 

scook
Aside from the occasional report on the forum, do you have an idea of what the failure rate is? It would seem a little fear mongering without a handle on the figures. Project files get corrupted too with no explanation. Zip files get corrupted with no explanation. Rather then suggesting to avoid using cwb files entirely, a better approach may be to suggest verifying the bundle after creation.

I asked in another thread whether anyone had tested a bun file immediately after saving to see if it opened or not. If it opened correctly, that would indicate the BUN process is fine but the corruption happens after the fact due to other factors. However, I saw no responses.
 
I decompress important zip files after compressing just to make sure everything was compressed properly. I have had instances where everything was okay when I tested it, but the file was corrupted when I tried to send it over the net or open it a few years later. I suspect something similar could happen with bun files.

Grem

To OP, Cactus makes an very important point. You HAVE to save the new file to a DIFFERENT location for what is suggested to work properly.

 
 "Per Project Audio Folder" method sort of includes that, doesn't it?  If you change the name of the project and use Per Project Folder there's no other option than to save to a new location, ie. a new folder. 

Sure it might only be 1 in a 100 bun files that go south but I'd hate to be that person. It will never happen to most of us because we save and double save our work. 
Given a choice file formats,  would you use the one that always works or one that has a small history of failure. 
Besides if a CWP files goes south you still have your audio. A smart person would also have saved the project as a mid. file too. 
I too asked if the "Burnt Bun" issue was caused upon creation and so far nobody seems to know anything. I find it hard to swallow that any file format becomes corrupt if saved to a normal hard drive. Over the internet of course that's different. These people have all saved their work as a bundle on a hard drive, CD/DVD ROM or USB stick only to find they cannot open it latter down the road or at their friends house. Why? 
It is most likely that it is a certain situation within a Sonar project that corrupts the file and it would be nice if someone figured that out so it could be avoided. We know about Audio snap that's all. 
For now I will continue to warn people. 
 
 
 
 
 

Wow, thanks for all the replies and help. 
 
Well, I finally figured it out, one little thing that Grem said that I missed was the "apply trimming" command, that seems to do the trick and now my 70gig file is only 600meg!!
 
Thanks

Thanks Scook, just figured that out about the same time you posted!!
 
Again, thanks for all the help, it's great to have a place to get good help!

Slip editing IS cutting. They both retain the full clip - just hide the portions you don't see. Bouncing or Trimming deletes the hidden portions so the clip is now WYSIATI (what you see is all there is).

Cactus Music
I find it hard to swallow that any file format becomes corrupt if saved to a normal hard drive. Over the internet of course that's different. These people have all saved their work as a bundle on a hard drive, CD/DVD ROM or USB stick only to find they cannot open it latter down the road or at their friends house. Why?

Because all those storage media are capable of dropping bits. When you format a hard drive, it marks off the bad sectors and won't let you write to them. However, there's no guarantee additional blocks won't go bad over time. The surface of a hard disk is not immune to old age.
 
Flash RAM can lose cells. In fact flash memory has fairly complex data management schemes to avoid writing to the same areas over and over again, which wears the cells out and eventually causes failures. Optical disks are subject to a variety of problems, especially if stored incorrectly. CD-ROMs have had pinholes in the aluminum, and various other issues such as exposure to heat or ultraviolet light can corrupt data. Production runs of cheap optical discs can be bad and you won't know it until you try to retrieve a file years later. Blu-Rays are probably the most robust of the optical media but when you're storing 25 to 50GB on a disc, that's a lot to lose if there's a problem.
 
This is why I don't just save multiple times, I save to different media if possible. I also use offsite storage. I just gave 135GB of video backups on Blu-Ray to a friend who's involved in the company for whom I made the videos.
 
The only reason people freak about bun files, or zip files for that matter, is if one little thing goes wrong you can't recover the data. As a result, it's not the best choice for long-term storage. But it's a great choice for exchanging projects over the web. Right tool for the right job, and all that.