I've noticed that some of my sessions for whatever reason wind up in a back up folder.. others somehow wind up being their own folder.. ???.. not a clue..lol.. can I or how may I move my sessions for this album into one main folder?.. its a macbook pro btw..

drop drag doesn't work btw b/c the files don't display simultaneously in the same window.. if that makes sense..

also.. I've noticed that even after I deleted files.. the back ups still show in session folders, etc.. what about permanently removing a session?

I was talking with a friend the other day and he was asking about a similar issue, also once before again... I figured out early on with pro tools that what ever folder that you save a session to it creates an audio file folder and also a back up folder so you have to be mindful of when starting a new session that you back out from the previous session folder create a new folder named appropriately and then name the session and it will all be how it should be because when you go to create another new session the last folder you created will be what pro tools will default to each time. I found out the hard way and had 3 or 4 sessions sharing the same audio folder and separating them was a daunting task. I pretty sure this is the same with PC and Mac, I use both.




try to right chick on the folder (if you have a magic mouse) and select "copy" that will copy the fold entirely and then you can "paste" the folder elsewhere. Keep in mind pro tools won't "know" where the audio files are any more and when you start the session it will promt you to fix the issue some times the auto find will work but you may have to do some manually.




The backups are made each time you save the session or periodically if you have the auto save function on (if you don't you should) you will notice the dates of the files are different. once my friend called me and said all his tracks had vanished and where blank (still don't know how he did it) and wanted me to help get them back because there would be allot to redo and I pointed him to the latest back up and it restored all.

One more thing to simplify the possess of the folder thing, I created a folder on a separate drive (on my Mac book pro it's on a separate partition) and named it "PT Sessions" and each new session is named after the song and in it I save the session as the name of the song, this is what works for me and now I know where every thing is.

THIS is what I'd like to be able to do without screwing anything up.. just get all of a particular project to wind up in whatever folder I create for it and each entry is name of the track and you always know where stuff is gonna wind up.. so when you need to pull up a session that you haven't worked on in a really long time.. it doesn't seemingly take FOREVER to find.. because they're always together..lol

That's what I do as well. The folder that the Session file is in contains all of the Session's folders and subfolders. Pro Tools keeps a relative positioning scheme in place, not an absolute path. At least with Session files. This is how it knows where to look for your audio files, even if it goes to another drive.

You can test it for yourself to gain confidence in the "system". copy and paste that parent folder - the one mentioned with the song name and contains the actual session file and it's folders - into another directory. Then rename the original song/Session folder. Next, open the session that got moved to another directory. All of that session's data should be there and visible inside of PT.

One tiny little caveat. Until you open the Session in the new location, the Session should not open in the "Open Recent" Session list. To do this, you would have to use the Save Session As... functionality within Pro Tools. If done, it will obviously have had visibility in to the file moving activity. What I don't know is if every single file is duplicated or not. Things like any/every 3rd-party files like some plug-ins create. I've actually been meaning to test that. (Nectar, for example, lets you choose the location for some very session specific data, and I make a sub-directory within the Session's folder.)