naming the actual .wav file in the clips pane

[mixmkr]

how do you do that? When I look in the audio folder, all you see are useless numbers for the individual .wav files. It'd be nice to be able to name them for what they actually are. Yeah, I see you can name them (the clips)in the clips pane, but when you look in the audio folder, nothing has changed... (or looking in the clips property tab)

It'd be useful when I might want to use the track in another program, but how would I find it amongst 50 other audio files when they are all just numbers?

 

[Dogman]

how do you do that? When I look in the audio folder, all you see are useless numbers for the individual .wav files. It'd be nice to be able to name them for what they actually are. Yeah, I see you can name them (the clips)in the clips pane, but when you look in the audio folder, nothing has changed... (or looking in the clips property tab)

It'd be useful when I might want to use the track in another program, but how would I find it amongst 50 other audio files when they are all just numbers?

I've had to just save the file as....to make sure it's got teh proper name.

 

[K-dub]

I think there is a way to get the program to give the files "logical" names, so that they are immediately understandable by looking at them in the audio folder -- it was part of the upgrade several jumps ago.

If I get a chance later, C, I look into it and let you know if I find anything.

Kev-

 

[Bambi_B]

Me too! Emergency- hard drives filled ! Here's an idea,..

mixmkr,

I was just going to post on the same topic. In my case, (using Home Studio2XL), the hard drive is full- 49MB left on an 80GB drive! I also have all but 6GB of the second 120GB drive filled. And now I'm stuck and unable to do any more recording until I move substantial quantity of files to DVD.

As you say, with the *.wav files, there's nothing but the frustrating track numbers. I don't understand why it doesn't save these by name.

However, as there is, for each file a *.cwp project file- these are about 13K each, and these prject files have the names I gave to these recordings. To get a grip on this mess, I thought to make a directory of the cwp's in chronological order and then in another directory put the *.wav files in the same order. The idea is to be able to match up named project file with the track *.wav file by date and time.

So, if this works, I can call up the DVDs' contents in 2- parallel Explorers and open the tracks by matching the named files and *.wav files by dates and times.

I'm going to try this and if it works, I'll be making about 30 DVDs. - - A serious Spring Cleaning!


Cheers,

Bambi_B

 

[mixmkr]

here is what I have come to find out. you MUST name your track before you record, then the .wav file will reflect the track name. However, if you have multiple clips in that track, you'll be kinda out of luck there though.
Renaming the .wav files is a no no...because the cakewalk session file will then not be able to find the .wav files...unless you start doing the duplicate .wav file dance, etc....
I think this is a cakewalk omission, but not really that tragic. At least you can keep them in a per project folder, and that helps a lot. The other thing, I haven't tried is using a 3rd party editor.. in the "tools" tab ...in which I have Adobe Audion, and I believe you can "save as" and that might work. I might try it... at some point!

 

[jscotty]

The best solution is to export the tracks from the main window. There is a feature that will allow you to export your tracks as separate WAV files. As you add stuff to the timeline you will want everything on it to remain in one piece. Going back to the original source files can become a bit tricky and confusing because every time you start and stop or record another take of something, it shows up as a separate file.

So lets say that you record your vocals and then you want to go back and punch in more vocals. And then you want to go back and punch in the guitar solo, the tracks will look continuous on the timeline, however it will consist of multiple files that are much harder to manage rather than simply exporting each track as a finished product.

Most recently, I did about 50 takes with the lead singer to get the song from start to finish. Then I exported that particular track to a wav file when I archived it so that all of my corrections, retakes, etc. were rendered into a finished product.

 

[mixsit]

..So lets say that you record your vocals and then you want to go back and punch in more vocals. And then you want to go back and punch in the guitar solo, the tracks will look continuous on the timeline, however it will consist of multiple files that are much harder to manage rather than simply exporting each track as a finished product.

Another option and a similar way to clean up in the project or for exporting/renaming is bounce to clips', or tracks'.
Even with logical text names, all those bits and pieces are going to be quite a chore.

 

[rayc]

Bambi B,
Can't you pull up the project, save it as a bundle & burn the bundle to CDR? That's what I did when working with a smaller hard drive & still do to transfer files between computers. Once it's save as a bundle (includes wave audio, etc etc) & burnt to a disc you can wipe the project off the HDD then just pop in the CDR when you want to continue the task later -0 though you'd have to burn a NEW bundle with any new audio you pull in.
Alternatively, do the bundle thing to a USB external drive, ( I do that as a safety b/up anyway).

 

[Bambi_B]

My $50/ 3 hour solution to generic track names in HS2 XL

rayc,

Thanks for your reply- and I did do something almost exactly as you suggest. Because I had the HD space problem, and couldn't even make DVDs because of the lack of swap file space, on Friday I went to Fry's Electronics and bought a Seagate 160GB USB external drive. This was a pretty amazing value- $50.

I'd done a silly thing as I ended up having 390 tracks in four different folders. As HS2 names these tracks with the generic track and number label starting with "1" in each folder, I had up to 4 tracks with an identical name: "Track 1, Rec (26).wav" for example and of course only the *.cwp had the name that corresponded.

My solution was to create 4 folders on the external drive named similarly to the original folders on C: and E: and copied all the *.wav files into the new folders. This was to prevent conflict between all the tracks- up to 4- with the same name. Then, I took the "Cakewalk Projects" folder on C: with the real track names and copied all those 13KB files into each of the 4 new folders. Displaying the folder contents in Explorer organised by "Date modified" it put the named *.cwp file name next to the generic track name every time. Since each folder contained only part of the corresponding *.wav files, I deleted the *.cwp files that were not associated with and *.wav in that folder. I deleted 1200 files because of this duplication.

In other words, by asssociating the *.cwp and *.wav by date- and time in the case of multiple tracks from the same day, I have a list with all the associations of name and track together. In "Date Modified" display, the named file is followed or sometimes immediately preceded by the corresponding generic track name. I then was able then to delete the 110GB of files off my two internal drives.

The next task is to copy all these onto DVDs- gulp- about 30- using this same way of listing. It's not a perfect system as I can't click on the named *.cwp and have the correct *.wav come up, but I can do it manually and still know the "real" name.

From now on, I'm letting the *cwp files go to "Cakewalk Projects" folder and the *.wav to the "Audio Data" folder on drive C: and when finished editing I'll copy them onto my second drive in pairs to maintain the association. I'd been doing something else even more stupid in that I was always saving by name to a second drive "E:". That did create a *.wav file with the real name, but as HS2 was also saving a full *.wav file in "Audio Data"- in effect I have two full *.wav files for every track, one named, one generically numbered! If I used "export to audio", I'd gain a third *.wav file! -Absolute stupidity on my part!

It was silly to have worked this way so long but at least I know I have everything and can associate it by name.

I think the way HS2 calls the *.wav files by a generic name that can appear again and again in each audio folder is just idiotic. When a track is saved by a name, the *.wav automatically should have the same name. Do all recording programmes work this way? My old CoolEdit was far more sensible and didn't have the silly separate project file and *.wav file.

Now I can finish my 13 hour opera on the life of Anna Nicole Smith: " Büsendammerung ".

Whew!


Cheers,

Bambi B