Stupid question about File saves

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RWhite

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This may make me look like an idiot, but oh well... I'm asking about the difference between saving as a .BUN or a .WRK file. My Cakewalk projects are almost always digital audio data only, no MIDI. The Cakewalk documentation says that saving as a .WRK file does not save audio data. However when I do save it as .WRK and reload it later it seems to work fine, it just saves the actual audio data in a different directory from the rest of the file information. Now I just read another thread on this board that implies that .BUN files don't save all the project settings while .WRK files do. My experiance does not support this. Can someone give me a solid answer on this?
 
saving as bun.saves everything,audio, midi,and all project setting.only do this to backup your project to cdr or you will be wasting harddrive space.check out your users manual pro audio 9 info on chapter 4-32.normally all audio data is saved in the wavedata folder inside cakewalk when you save your song.if you need to take the whole project to a studio with cakewalk just save it again as bun. burn a cdr then delete only the bundled file from your harddrive,keeping the original wrk file and corresponding wavedata on your harddrive.hope this helps.
 
Cool, that is how I thought it worked. But do you really save space by saving as a .WRK file? I would think that the total disk space taken up by the combined files in \WAVEDATA should be the same as your single .BUN file. But it seems easier to me to manage .BUN files, i.e. delete them when you are done (and have backed them up) rather than hunt around for all the parts of your .WRK project.
 
The reason it saves space is that when you save as a .bun file you save copies of all the associated wave files within the .bun file PLUS you also have the "original" wave files in your wave directory. In other words, you essentially end up with two copies of your wave files on your hard drive. One copy in your wavefile directory and one copy within the .bun file.

When you save as a .wrk file Cakewalk only keeps instructions on where to find the wave files within the .wrk file - not the wave files themselves. Those are still maintained in the wavedata directory.

You could, in theory, save the project as a .bun file and then go back and delete all the original wave files. However, this is not only tedious, but Cakewalk's naming convention for wave files makes figuring out which files are which very difficult.
 
Once you've saved your project as a BUN file you can than erase the original WRK file. Once done you can go to the option Tools/Clean audio disk. Cakewalk then searches all your drives for wav. files that are not associated with a WRK file. as you have erased the original WRK file it will find all the wav files that were associated with it and you can then erase them all. (only do this proceedure within Cakewalk)

If you then go and open the BUN file it will place all the wav files back in the Wavedata file and give you back the original WRK file and you are back to where you started.

The other Tool option of Compact Audio Data allows you to group together all the data this currently on your screen and removes all the out takes that are still sitting in your Wavedata file. It does destroy any undo history you have but is a good way of gaining an extra few megs of HD space. It is therefore advisable to compact your audio data before creating a BUN file.

One of the best features of cakewalk is the ability to Archive a track. When you mute a track it is still officially playing but is muted. As it is still playing it takes up CPU useage. When you archive a track it no longer plays and therefore doesn't take up CPU use.

I keep all out takes on my screen and archive them so I can always go back to them if a need to replace a vocal line for example.

Cheers
John
 
What John says. Not to confuse the issue, but I found out something interesting by accident a couple of weeks ago. We spent about four hours recording one night and after about seven decent tracks the program crashed. I hadn't saved 'anything' and the wrk file was gone and not a trace of the song was apparent. I figured all was lost. I started to snoop around in the wave data files and guess what I found. Each track was there with the funny Cakewalk wav file names. I had to play each wav file until I found all the tracks. All I had to do was insert each file one at a time back into a song format and everything was as it should be. Whew!!!
 
Thanks a bunch everyone. Monty, I had almost the exact same thing happen about two weeks ago. My first and only crash in Cakewalk since I upgraded my system. Thought I had lost a nice guitar track I had just finished. Now after what you told me I'm going to go back and look for it again. Cool!
 
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