Moving Project Directories

JDOD

JDOD

therecordingrebels.com
Like most of you I reckon I have a directory with about a million projects in it. I've made a shortlist of 14 projects that I want to take to completion - some are nearly done, some need a complete re-working.

Anyway, is there an easy way of moving the directories for these 14 projects somewhere else on my computer and changing the names of the directories without buggering up all the paths for the different files? My "sessions" directory has evolved over years and now I want to separate full songs from the massive collection of ideas. Loads of the directories have names like "AMaj with interlude" whereas most of the songs have names now!

Is there a clever option in Reaper for doing this? Or do I have to go into every project and write down the file name for each track copy them over, then re-establish the path to each .wav in its new location.
 
Just open the projects you want and save them to a new folder.

Say your AMaj with interlude is actually called vomit sammich.

1. Create a folder named "vomit sammich".

2. Open AMaj with interlude

3. Save project to new folder "vomit sammich". All files will copy and transfer to vomit sammich folder.

4. Done
 
You have all those songs and their associated files in the same folder? If so you have some cleaning up to do. You should first settle on a system of organizing your files and stick to it. Here is how I do it. I have a folder for all my original music. Within that folder there are subfolders titled:

\Untitled\Untitled 2016 and;
\Originals\Originals 2016.

When I record some riff that might become a song, it goes into its own subfolder of the first of those folders. Never, ever begin a new project without creating a seperate sub folder for it. Reaper will do this automatically if you check the "Create folder" box under "Save as."

For convenience I title a new project and its sub folder by the date on which I begin it. If I were to begin a project today:

\Untitled\Untitled 2016\8_24_2016\8_24_2016.RPR.

When a project gains a title and gets closer to completion, I will use "Save as" and the "Create folder" and "Copy files" (not "Move files"--my preference) to create a new folder as such:

\Originals 2016\Turn and Stare\_2016\Turn and Stare_2016.RPR.

You might hear this in a few weeks if you are listening to my posts at the clinic.

Let me move to my PC and explain what you are going to have to do next.
 
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Robus said:
You have all those songs and their associated files in the same folder? If so you have some cleaning up to do. You should first settle on a system of organizing your files and stick to it. Here is how I do it. I have a folder for all my original music. Within that folder there are subfolders titled:
\Untitled\Untitled 2016 and
\Originals\Originals 2016.

When I record some riff that might become a song, it goes into its own subfolder of the first of those folders. Never, ever begin a new prohect without creating a seperate sub folder for it. Reaper will do this automatically if you check the "Create folder" box under "Save as."

For convenience I title a new project and its sub folder by the date on which I begin it. If I were to begin a project today:

\Untitled\Untitled 2016\8_24_2016\8_24_2016.RPR.

When a project gains a title and gets closer to completion, I will use "Save as" and the "Create folder" and "Copy files" (not "Move files"--my preference) to create a new folder as such:

\Originals 2016\Turn and Stare\
_2016\Turn and Stare_2016.RPR.

You might hear this in a few weeks if you are listening to my posts at the clinic.

Let me move to my PC and explain what you are going to have to do next.
Click to expand...
LOL, no. They're all in different folders within "sessions" but there's about a million folders in sessions now and some of them already have subdirectories with different re-workings. I just wanna move my projects that are going to be completed and nearing completion somewhere else.

I'll probably start concentrating on this bunch more then instead of just coming up with new shit all the time too.
 
Continuation: Do what Greg said. ;)

Except, don't forget to check the appropriate boxes under "Save as" if you want Reaper to create a new folder and copy or move the media files to that directory. If you don't check any of them, Reaper will create the new .RPR file in the current folder. If you do that but don't check "Copy media" or "Move media, your .RPR file will go in the new folder but the existing media files will remain where they are. Then you will have a godawful mess, with older media files in your "Amaj with interlude" folder and any new ones you might create going in your "vommit sammich" folder.

It may be LOLS-worthy to think of having all your stuff jumbled together in a single folder, but that is exactly what Reaper will do by default. It's easy to find yourself in that situation if you start a new project and absent-mindedly click "Save" before assigning the project to its own folder. The mess that results is epic! Not just your RPR files, but all the media files associated with those projects, will be jumbled together in a single folder. Then guess what happens if you should use "Clean up current directory" to delete unused media files of the current project? You will have nuked the media files of every other project in that directory. Ask me how I know!
 
I work on two different machines - weekend machine and weekday machine - so I'm always copying files back and forth. Occasionally I find ones gone walkies if I've forgotten to save as when I first started the project.

I just make sure that the file path to my recording directory is identical on both machines.
 
Not pertinent to your question, but since I mentioned potential disasters that can happen if you let Reaper handle folders and files by default, here's another. Let's say I create the basic tracks for "Turn and Stare," then Dave sends me drum tracks and Nick sends me vocal tracks. I download those into a folder and sub folders that I create for that purpose, then use "Insert" and "Media files" to import them into the project. Reaper will move those files into my \Turn and Stare_2016 folder, right? Wrong. It will associate those files with the project, but the files themselves will remain in the folder where I downloaded them. I have to tell Reaper to copy or move the files into the project folder. There is an option somewhere under "Preferences." Otherwise, should I delete or move that download folder, I will have lost the drum and vocal files. Ask me how I know! Then follow apologetic messages to your collaborators asking them to resend the files (it didn't actually come to that, but I did have to re-download some drum files--once). And the good news is, you only ever make such a mistake once!
 
JDOD said:
I work on two different machines - weekend machine and weekday machine - so I'm always copying files back and forth. Occasionally I find ones gone walkies if I've forgotten to save as when I first started the project.

I just make sure that the file path to my recording directory is identical on both machines.
Click to expand...

I'll bet every Reaper user has a default folder somewhere with odds bits and pieces of a billion projects that came about just that way. The way Reaper handles files and folders by default is messy anyway. For example, it will not automatically create a sub-folder for the media files of a project. By default those go in the same folder as the .RPR file. The disaster potential in that scenario is there, especially if you should decide to create a new version of the project, "vommit sammich redux" without using "Save as" and "Copy media," and then use "Clean directory" to delete unused files. You have just nuked the original vommit sammich.

Synchronizing two computers is an issue I'm dealing with right now. As you say, it starts with creating identical directory structures on each. I had a good system for keeping my old desktop PC and my laptop agreeing with each other. I've just moved to a new Windows 10 desktop, and it no longer works. I'm sure there are firewall settings that need to be sorted out, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
 
Lol. Jesus Christ. I'm not anywhere near computer savvy, and in 10 years of using Reaper I've never once experienced any of these traps and pitfalls robus is describing. It's not this fucking hard.

Going forward, every time you start something new, make a folder for it and save it there.
 
I've never worked with any collaborators so I've never come across that one. Its worth knowing about though.

I'm just "saving as" a bunch of projects for full songs now. It works very well - even saves all the impulses you're using in a nice tidy sub directory.

Like Greg said, you get around the other problem by making sure you save alternate versions in a new sub directory so you don't kill the original project when you clean the directory.
 
I have actually made more than one of the messes that Robus is describing. I habitually forget to save a new project before recording a track or two, in which case the audio files go hell-knows-where (either on a different drive in My Documents, or to my outermost ReaperMedia directory).

Recently I created a new folder called ForgotToSave, and made it my default media directory in Reaper. So any time I pull my usual stunt of recording to an unsaved project, the media goes there and I know where to find it.
 
First thing I do when I start a new project - create a new folder, take the template I start with and save it to the new song name-date in the new folder. Ever day after that I open that project, I save it to as name-new date - all the versions and the associated files for that song end up in the same folder, and I render to it as well, just being careful on file names each time.
 
mjbphotos said:
First thing I do when I start a new project - create a new folder, take the template I start with and save it to the new song name-date in the new folder. Ever day after that I open that project, I save it to as name-new date - all the versions and the associated files for that song end up in the same folder, and I render to it as well, just being careful on file names each time.
Click to expand...

That's another pro-tip: Render the unfinished song or parts of the song if you are going to leave it and move on. Save the rendered file in a directory created for that purpose. Months or years later, should you find yourself at a loss for song ideas and decide to revisit old unfinished projects, it's much quicker to browse through a directory of mp3 files than to load up the Reaper files.
 
Robus said:
CIt may be LOLS-worthy to think of having all your stuff jumbled together in a single folder, but that is exactly what Reaper will do by default.
Click to expand...

Is that still the default?! I'm short probably 6 months worth of raw tracks because it was doing that (and I told it to "clean the project directory"), now I double-check the project folder as soon as I save a project the first time to avoid it. I didn't realize the default storage on clean installs was still the bulk folder tho!
 
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