okay, the setup;
I have a system set up with an eight track sound card, I had a couple buddies over the other night to jam and test my multi-track recording capabilities, I set six tracks to record and just let it run for a couple hours while we jammed. recording works as expected.
what I’m trying to do;
as I listen to the playback, I have a couple songs that I would like to work with, and I would like to copy/paste them into separate files.
I would think this would be as simple as doing a cut/paste (like in a spreadsheet or such), select a start point and drag across for the length, and drag down for the number of tracks, but I can’t seem to make this happen.
am I missing something obvious here, or is it just not as simple as that?
@stagekraft: you a bit confused about what a “session file” is. a session file is a relatively small text file (in XML format) that contains references to other files (notable, audio files). an ardour session is actually a directory (or “folder”) that contains both the session file and those other files. and yes, it is true that at present there are no facilities in ardour to create new session folder. however, each session file is 100% independent of all other session files, and can refer to audio files that may or may not be in use in other sessions files that live inside the same folder. Snapshot will create a new session file for you.
there are many issues with doing “Save as…” the way that most people imagine it to work. its not hard but it involves presenting the user with several fairly tricky choices and it may take a very long time to finish (since it may involve copying huge amounts of audio data.
the session start and end markers are distinct markers visible in the marker ruler and also displayed in the Locations window. you can just drag them in the ruler or set them directly in the Locations windows.
I understand what you are saying about the snapshot theory, but that doesn’t seem very “cool” to me.
and you are saying that if I get the tracks I want selected, that I can’t save said selection to a new session file? I get the snapshot thing but that means that I have to soak up a couple hours worth of HD space just to reference three minutes of a snapshot that I want to keep?
and for the the life of me I can’t figure out how to " set the session start and end", I find a “start range” and “finish range” in the edit menu, but I can only get that to select one track.
there’s no way to save said three minutes to a session of it’s own???
and if I want to move said three minutes to another system, I have to move the whole two hours worth because the snapshot does not really include the audio data???
load original session, repeat from 2) with next song
Snapshots are cool because they are lightweight. All you save is the session file which says where all your regions and markers are, but not any actual audio data.
That will create a file with a LOT of silence depending on the length of the session that isn’t that region. You would be MUCH better off doing what was suggested above utilizing snapshots, or by right clicking on the region and exporting the region instead of an entire track that is mostly silence.
I realize this is an old post but anyway… If you have a 2 hour track & you want to export 3 minutes of it into a new session, split the audio file at the start & end of the song,drag that clip onto a new track,go into the export dialougue, export ONLY that track to your format of choice, start a new session,and import the file you saved. I’m guessing that what was stopping you from copying & pasting was that you didn’t split the original file.I’m not sure if you could copy it in 1 session & paste it into a new one but you could paste it into a new track & export that track to an audio file.
Craig