I recently had to reinstall Xubuntu 11.10, which means I had to reinstall Ardour (2.8.12 donated pre-compiled binary). I wanted to test everything to make sure my recordings were still intact, so I opened a project that uses numerous LADSPA plugins. I forgot to install these before I opened the file, and now it appears as if Ardour removed them from all of my tracks. I have since reinstalled all of the plugins, but I’m wondering if there is a way to restore the plugins and their settings from before I reinstalled and opened this track?
So it turns out my problem is even bigger than just plugins now. One of my sessions is missing large chunks of audio files! Does Ardour store session audio files anywhere besides the folder you create when you first start the session? Is there a prescribed way of backing up session files?
Also, it seems as if Ardour will permanently erase any plugin it doesn’t find it on startup whether you saved after opening the session or not.
On the second point, odd. I don’t remember that happening, please file it as a bug.
On the first point, only if you tell Ardour not to copy the session files to the folder by linking to them, etc. By default it will always copy audio files to the session folder if you import through the import dialog. If you drag and drop, you need to make sure the option is set in the option menu for this to hold true.
It looks like I must have inadvertently saved when I was exiting that session. Both the original and backup are both missing the plugins. The rest of my sessions are fine. At least I still have the original audio. I’ll be more careful about reinstalling the plugins if I move these sessions around.
If you didn’t save it when you noticed the problems there shouldn’t be an issue. If you did save it… well there probably isn’t much luck. You can try the .bak file, but that is about the extent of it unless you have a copy of the session from before you resaved it without the plugins.