Transferring Pro Tools sessions can be a disaster. Luckily, there is "Save Copy In..."
It’s no secret. Sending sessions back and forth with collaborators has the potential to ruin your day.
In this Pro Member exclusive Grammy Award Winner Fab Dupont walks you through his tried and true method of sharing projects with collaborators that ensures no file is left behind.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn:
Pro Tools session folder hierarchy
How to set up your Pro Tools system so that you are always backed up
How to clean up a session before sending it to a collaborator
00:00:00 Good morning, children! Today, we're
gonna touch on a riveting subject
such as:
the Pro Tools folder file structure.
Mmmh!
How to export a whole Pro Tools session
so you can send it to someone
without missing stuff
like the lead vocal,
for example.
00:00:13 Important stuff!
Let's go.
00:00:24 Let's create a Pro Tools session
File.. Create New.
00:00:28 Most people do this and call it, like:
'My Session'
We're not gonna discuss this little
thing I'm doing right now because that's
a different video.
00:00:38 And I want to create it on the Desktop.
00:00:44 Here's the folder that Pro Tools
created for me.
00:00:46 It's called 'My Session', happily
named.
00:00:48 Inside that folder, Pro Tools created
for me,
handily,
a bunch of folders.
00:00:54 I will let you guess what is going to go
into the 'Audio Files' folder,
the 'Bounced Files' folder is a little
more cryptic:
this is where Pro Tools will by default
park every file that you bounce.
Hence the name.
00:01:07 The 'Clip Group' folder is maintenance,
you don't need to care about it,
Pro Tools uses it to store information
that he needs
to recall when you reopen the session,
later,
when you grow up,
if you grow up.
00:01:16 The 'Session File Backup' folder
is the folder in which Pro Tools will
incrementally keep
versions of the session.
00:01:23 You can force Pro Tools to auto save
a backup of your session
down to the minute, if you want,
so even if you crash
or whatever happens,
World War III, anything,
you will have a backup of the last
minute of the work you've done
which is very useful, especially for
WW3.
00:01:39 'Video Files' it's written on it.
00:01:41 The 'Wavecache' is the file that Pro
Tools uses to
store the waveforms that you see
on the screen,
it's a way for the software to have
pre-calculated waveforms so that they
display quickly.
00:01:51 So this is what Pro Tools
creates when you create a session.
00:01:54 What is nice about this is that
it's organized for you
so you could decide to ignore these
rules and guidelines and make a mess
but we're not that kinda people, here,
so we're not gonna do that.
00:02:05 There are some extra folders that Pro
Tools will create, for example:
if you tune something with Melodyne
you will see a 'Melodyne'
folder come in there. Technically,
the Melodyne plug-in is creating that
folder and parking it
inside the session folder
so that everything is together, which is
lovely
so you don't have files all over the
place.
00:02:24 However,
there are a couple things you need to
know to make absolutely sure
that you don't have files all
over the place.
00:02:29 Let me show you.
00:02:31 The secret preference that will save
your life
and your family's life and their
family's life
forever, seven generations down from now
is here: go to 'Setup',
'Preferences' and here
in the 'Processing' department
you have this thing that says
'Automatically copy files on import'.
00:02:48 What does that mean?
That means that when you drop
a file in Pro Tools
it will make a copy of that file
in this folder right here, the 'Audio
Files' folder
for example: somebody sends you a
bunch of stems
you know, like, raw audio files that are
not in your session,
you're gonna drop them in Pro Tools
and Pro Tools will
convert them to whatever session file
format it is
you know, it could WAVs, it could be
AIFF,
it could be 24 bits, it could be 32 bit
float, that's your decision,
and make a copy of those stems
into this 'Audio Files' folder.
00:03:22 What I do, is I keep the stem file
in
the same folder as the session
so I am adding
to the folder that Pro Tools generates
by default.
00:03:32 The reason for that is I want to be able
to have everything related to that song
put together in the same folder
so you will very often see
a folder called 'Name of Song'
you know, the name of the song,
and then
either source tracks
or stems, depending on what the client
calls it.
00:03:52 And that folder lives in there.
00:03:54 That's not a Pro Tools-generated
folder
I generate that folder and I park it
in there.
00:03:59 But! You're gonna say..
00:04:01 why not just not have this preference
and thus risk your children's' life for
seven generations, but..
00:04:09 ..since you have the files already in
this folder, here,
why do you need to make a copy of them
by dropping them and having the copied.
00:04:17 Good question, thank you for asking. The
reason for that is..
00:04:20 ..files never ever fail to get lost.
00:04:23 By copying
and using the life-saving preference
the stems into your session and making
a duplicate
A) You have the original files
untouched in a folder, right there
no matter what happens.
B) You now have,
thanks to Pro Tools 'Copy files on
import' preference
a copy of everything you have
that has a Pro Tools unique ID
put onto it.
00:04:50 Whenever you drop a file in Pro Tools,
it
puts an ID on that file.
00:04:55 That ID follows the file for the length
of the session
be it a day, a week or ten years.
00:05:02 Every single file in Pro Tools,
audio file,
has unique ID is key, we're gonna
talk about it
in a few minutes. To summarize:
in your Pro Tools session folder
you have the folders that Pro Tools
creates
to do its own kitchen work:
Audio Files, Bounce Files, Clip Groups,
Session File Backups and Video Files.
00:05:23 Of those, the only ones you're really
gonna look at
are gonna be 'Audio Files' in case you
are looking for something you missed
and 'Session File Backups' when
you crash.
00:05:32 By the way: the preference
for session file backups, which is
slightly off-topic but
I'm still gonna show you..
00:05:38 and it says 'Auto Backup', it's in
'Operations', 'Auto Backup'
'Enable Session File Auto-Backup', keep
however most you want, as you can see
I use 100 backups
and I backup every 1 minute. Because I'm
not paranoid at all!
And then there are the other folders
that you may put it
like the stems or the source tracks
or that a plug-in
is gonna put in there, like Melodyne
would,
to keep its.. you know..
hidden files, there.
00:06:05 One other folder I put in
all the time
and because of legacy, I call it
'Bounces'
and in there I put my personal
humanly-generated bounces,
not the Pro Tools bounces.
00:06:18 It's kind of a double use with the
Bounced Files
but Pro Tools only added this Bounced
Files folder
two versions ago, and I'm so used and
all my assistants are used to seeing
and looking for stuff in that 'Bounces'
folder
and it's called 'Bounces', not
'Bounced Files'
so I still keep that tradition
so basically now I have a delineation:
if I generate the bounce
myself, I put it in 'Bounces', and if
Pro Tools does that for me
through a 'Bounce to Disk'
function, I will
find it automatically in the 'Bounced
Files' folder, which is nice.
00:06:47 A question that comes to mind is
why should you care about this
insanely-boring stuff?
Good question! Let's look at a real-life
scenario:
I have here 'Coraçao'
by Magda!
The thing with Magda is, she likes
things filled
and she likes to do a lot of
overdubs
so I have here this session
as you can see
which is absurd. Sounds good, though!
But now I have to archive this session.
00:07:15 Let's go to the computer's Finder and
locate Coraçao's Pro Tools folder.
00:07:20 There it is. As you see
we have Audio Files, Bounce Files,
Bounces, I made it myself with my little
furry hands as I mentioned before,
Clip Groups, do we have clip groups?
None.
00:07:29 And then the 800 sessions
that it took to achieve this
masterpiece.
00:07:34 And then a bunch of folders we created:
exports,
guitar DI, that stuff that is created
in the process
we put it in the folder so we can always
find it.
00:07:45 Melodyne, plug-in settings,
Rendered files, that is something
we'll talk about in a second
The session file backup folder
itself
is 7Gb.
00:07:55 It's just silliness, the whole session
is 44.3Gb, now..
00:08:03 ..hard drives are cheap
but this,
just this one record
at this point is 0,5Tb, for one record.
00:08:12 It's silly, right?
Say Magda calls me and says:
'Fab! I don't like your mixes anymore!
I want you to send this session to CLA!'
So, what I need to do is I need to send
him
just what he needs: the top playlist,
none of the 2-3 years of agony
that we went through to get
the session to this point.
00:08:30 How does one do that?
Well, it's not that easy
because, I mean, I guess you could
go in the Audio Files folder
and have a laugh!
There's 3246 items, that makes
no sense!
How you do sort through that stuff?
Let me show you!
When you're about to share a session
with someone
and you want to pair down to the
strictest minimum
absolute necessary stuff
A lot of people work on the song
even the same person works on the song
and the track count gets out of
control
but there's like, fear of commitment
so you hide some stuff
and often the stuff has audio on it.
00:09:06 So before I'm gonna send the song
to someone
if I've decided that I'm only gonna send
the absolute strict
minimum to that person
what I will do is, I will go here,
and show only Inactive Tracks.
00:09:21 And I will do some soul searching
and make sure that, whatever is in here
is stuff that I really don't need,
I'll let you enjoy the absurdity of this
particular session
there you go!
And I will select all that
and delete them!
Boom!
Another thing to do is to get rid of
the playlists you don't need.
00:09:50 You can see there is 81 playlists of
drums in this one
so, what you could do in Pro Tools
is you could decide to delete unused
playlists and everything
that's not used in this session
will be deleted from the session
but not
from the hard drive, which means that
Magda comes back next week and says
'I wanna go back to where we were
a year ago!'
you still can. You can open the session
from a year ago,
what you're doing right now
is you're creating a new session
that only has the stuff that you
need
for the transfer.
00:10:24 So, you can see all these playlists
have been selected
and
I am now gonna delete the
playlist.
00:10:32 Notice that nothing happens to
the session.
00:10:34 Do not hit 'Save'!
Do not hit 'Save'! All right.
00:10:39 Just when I tell you to.
00:10:40 Then, I'm gonna remove
all unused files
so I'm gonna select in this clips bin
any unused file that's been generated
by removing all the unused playlists
and also by all the files that were
just hanging in there.
00:10:56 Because of years of work.
00:10:58 You can do that by choosing 'Select
Unused' or Shift+Cmd+U.
00:11:04 Pro Tools tells you: 'Hey!
These are all the files that you're
not using!'
and that's a truckload of files.
00:11:12 What you're gonna do?
Well you could choose to delete these
files
but then you would break compatibility
with your older sessions in case
you know, there's a revision of history
coming your way
or you can just remove them from this
session.
00:11:24 To do so, you can hit Shift+Cmd+B,
you could choose to 'Delete', which
does that,
'Move to trash', which is kinda like a
less of a commitment delete
it's like: there's a purgatory before
you ruin your life
or 'Remove'.
00:11:38 We're gonna do 'Remove'.
00:11:39 You have to hit Option, when you do
'Remove'
otherwise Pro Tools is gonna ask you
if you're sure
about what you just did, 800 times.
So hit Option
'Remove'.. and now every file that is
unused is removed from this session
so at this point
you have this session live, in Pro Tools
not saved yet! Live in Pro Tools
that only has the files you need
and that's it
so what you do at this point
you do a 'Save As',
stay with me:
I always do a 'Save As' so I can come
back to this point.
00:12:11 And I call it..
00:12:14 'Cons', consolidated.
00:12:16 That's what I call it, you can call it
whatever you want, you can call it
'Margaret' if you want. There you go.
So now..
00:12:22 you have this session
that has only the stuff you need
and I saved it as.. so all the work I
just did is available and recallable
but you're still not at the point where
you can copy
the Pro Tools session folder and
send it on its way
to CLA, because,
you have everything in there, all the
history of years of work.
00:12:43 What you need to do
is you need to force Pro Tools
to generate a copy
of this session
with the audio files related to this
session
and just that
and the way to do that
is to do a 'Save Copy In..'
but before you have to make sure
that the person who's gonna get
this session
also gets the processing if you wanna
pass the processing onto them.
00:13:07 And the way to do that
for sure
is to do commit.
00:13:12 So you can select the tracks that you
feel have
processing that your counterpart will
not have but
you're married to the processing
and you can commit those tracks.
00:13:25 If you commit the tracks you will make
sure before you send a track out
that there's a playable version
of whatever tracks have very special
processing. What I do
is I commit the track and I keep
the original source track in the session
if it's that important
to have the processed signal, because
sometimes, you know, perspective,
perception,
sometimes maybe your processing
sucks
so if you're doing something very
special
I would commit the track and I will
leave in the session and I will keep
the original track inactive
in the session
just in case..
00:14:02 ..and now I really have in this
session
only what I need. I removed all
the playlists the were unused
and I removed all the tracks that were
inactive and thus unused
and at this point is the leanest
possible thing.
00:14:14 'Save Copy In..' is a new step in the
life of your song
because of the aforementioned
unique ID.
00:14:21 What happens when you do a 'Save
Copy In..'
is Pro Tools
takes this one session
copies every file that's in this
session
and you saw how many files
we got rid of
in that session..
00:14:33 ..and makes a new Pro Tools folder
with the
architecture that we showed you at the
beginning
but.. creates a new
unique ID for every files it creates
in that session, which means that
say you want to open this newly
created session
and try and use the old
audio files from the original session,
that's not gonna work.
00:14:54 So imagine all the potential
catastrophes that could happen there.
00:14:59 If you don't label that stuff
very well
you will find yourself trying to use
audio files
from one session and session files from
another session
and that when your entire
children, children's family
for 14 generations
gets screwed forever.
00:15:15 It's always a good idea to check what
file format you were in before,
this is a 2488,
I don't wanna sample rate convert so
I want to save at the same sample rate
'Save Copy In..' it says
you can choose your file type,
I keep the same,
choose the sample rate, I keep the same,
choose the bit depth, I keep the same,
don't worry about the Character set
stuff, it doesn't matter
'Items to Copy:' Audio Files,
Convert to Specified Format
I always copy Rendered Elastic Audio
Files, I copy everything
and then the other stuff you need:
Main Playlist Only, I know I know..
00:15:51 if there's a main playlist only
option here.. why go through the
problem..
00:15:56 because this is safe and works. The
other one, sometimes..
00:16:00 Session Plug-ins Settings Folder, in
case you know, Melodyne wants
to carry over, you never know
and that's it! Nothing else!
Do not click 'Preserve Folder Hierarchy'
or you will suffer!
Click 'OK', choose
a location, so I'm gonna choose
the Desktop, here.
00:16:17 And then name it something good,
you will notice Pro Tools calls it
'Copy of..' and then the name
of my session.
00:16:24 If you leave it like this
it's hard because
in a search of a hierarchy cold
look at the folder
this will not line up with the
other sessions
so what I do is: I remove 'Copy of'
but I make sure I keep it.. give it
a new name like '2.0'
and I click 'Save' and at this point
Pro Tools will
create a new session,
we will save you this part.
00:16:56 Pro Tools is done
folder's been created
let's go look at it!
There it is.
00:17:04 Coraçao FabMix
pureMix
2.0, notice how lean the file structure
is because there's only a session
which is our big session,
and 'Audio Files'.
00:17:14 Howe big is this folder? Remember the
original Coraçao track for 43Gb
Get info.. 6.83Gb
now CLA is gonna be happy about
this one!
In summary
Pro Tools is pretty good
at keeping your sessions together in
one folder,
especially if you don't forget
to check that 'Copy Files on Import'
preference.
00:17:34 And even though Pro Tools is good at
keeping things together in one folder,
sometimes..
00:17:39 ..things still get outta hand
and you wanna create a sub-session or
a 'start fresh' session
and 'Save Copy In..' is the way to do
that but
you have to remember to: A) remove
unused playlists,
remove inactive tracks and all that
stuff that creates
noise and garbage in your session
folder.
00:17:59 Don't forget: if you choose to go
ahead
and 'Save Copy In..' you will create
new unique file IDs for the audio
files, which means:
that you're gonna break
backwards compatibility
with the previous sessions.
00:18:13 That doesn't matter if you use this
to share a file
with somebody else, CLA or
someone else
or to archive it long term and you know
that the person you're gonna work with
is not gonna wanna go back a year
or two years ago in mixes, for example:
NOT Magda.
00:18:30 That's about it!
What is left to do for you
buddying sessions share, is to zip the
file
because, it's better to send one
big file over the internet
because you're using the internet,
right? The one with email,
that's the one!
So you zip the file and then
you send it to CLA
and then you wait for the results.
00:18:48 Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is a award-winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.
Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.
He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.
Fab has received many accolades around the world, including wins at the Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards, US independent music awards. He also has received Latin Grammy nominations and has worked on many Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated albums.
When it's about transferring a session to someone else, or archiving it, there's a much simpler option : select all tracks and choose : "save selected tracks as new session" in the "Files" menu.
PT will then give you some options, like keeping the main playlists only, or convert audio files into some other resolution/sampling rate on the way ... and you'll get the same result : a clean session with only the needed audio files and playlists, but it does it automatically !
flandybob
2020 Feb 12
Not sure if anyone (Fab :) is still reading questions here but well... wouldn’t duplicating the original session folder and actually removing the clips when getting rid of duplicates instead of « save copy in... » achieve the same result AND keep the original files ID ?
JAW_007Mix
2018 Oct 05
Super helpful video!! Thanks! ....With the bonus my family tree will now survive!
tomas.darthes
2018 Feb 01
Thanks Fab! Very easy to follow!
Sara Carter
2018 Jan 25
Really useful video, thanks Fab. I find these short file management, session management type videos really helpful