Project clean up…

[ahdee]

Hi All,

I am currently saving my projects to my 1TB OneDrive. Even though 1TB may sound plenty, Mixcraft (I am on 10.5 Pro) projects take up a lot of storage space and I would like to know what are the options one can have to clean up the projects which are finished and free up some precious online storage space. My understanding is that Mixcraft keeps many files around for backup and undo purposes. For example, when I am done with a project, I have already chosen the snippets of various takes of recordings that I use for comping, I don’t need to keep the rest of the recordings and takes.

Appreciate your advice and suggestions on this.

Thanks!

Regards,
-Ahdee

[jwarv]

Personally, I go through all my backup folders manually and delete all but the most recent backup file. You will start to see a reduction in storage. Also, you can click File, then "copy project files to" which walks you through the process. This will steam your project down to the essentials. Then you can discard the rest.

[ahdee]

Thanks for the suggestions. I did some looking, the size of my backup folders, even though they contain many backup project files, the total size is miniscule when compared to the audio take files. Just deleting those unwanted takes and saving the project does not seem to cause it to "garbage collect" and change the folder size. However, as you pointed out, copying the project to a folder seem to only copy what remains in the project to the new folder. I would then delete the original project and keep this cleaned up one. It seems a bit laborious and potentially error prone, but it seems to be able to reduce the project size significantly. I wish Mixcraft would provide a simpler, safer and cleaner way to do this!

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Mixcraft doesn't automatically delete unused files, because people might want to go back and find an alternate take of a recording. We err on the side of data preservation.

Greg

[Acoustica Greg]

There is a preference to delete unused recordings, but that only occurs if the project is never saved. It's for people who open up Mixcraft, record something, decide they hate it, then quit Mixcraft without saving.

[jwarv]

Thanks for the suggestions. I did some looking, the size of my backup folders, even though they contain many backup project files, the total size is miniscule when compared to the audio take files. Just deleting those unwanted takes and saving the project does not seem to cause it to "garbage collect" and change the folder size. However, as you pointed out, copying the project to a folder seem to only copy what remains in the project to the new folder. I would then delete the original project and keep this cleaned up one. It seems a bit laborious and potentially error prone, but it seems to be able to reduce the project size significantly. I wish Mixcraft would provide a simpler, safer and cleaner way to do this!

I guess I would always opt to be the arbiter of what stays and what goes. Seems like allowing something else to decide could be more risky than having to DIY.

[ahdee]

May be I am going about this wrong, the problem is matching up which audio files to which takes/clips within the project. There is a lot of room for error there in deleting the wrong ones inadvertently. It happens to me before and Mixcraft would just keep searching for those missing files on start up.

To Greg’s point that user may want to go back and find an alternate take to the recording. I would submit that within the same session, I may undo a delete to restore a take which was just deleted, but I am not sure if I could even recall let alone attempt to find or undo some earlier deleted takes after a few more sessions of takes or edits. I think Mixcraft has just a single journaling queue and if so, I don’t think one can even use the undo function for this purpose without causing other undesirable effects.