Audio File Management - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

Warren discusses the importance of file management when recording digital audio. This is an often overlooked topic, but it is extremely important and will help all recordists, beginners and professionals alike.

Produce Like A Pro is a website which features great tips to help the beginning recordist make incredible sounding home recordings on a budget.

[JoeyOconner]

I was moderately new to recording about 2 years ago, I had a computer that i recorded on for years, i recorded straight to the same hard-drive and for some reason it never even crossed my mind to make back-up's. I've accumulated year's worth of recorded songs/ music ideas, all to which i poured my heart and soul into every Guitar/ Bass/ Drum track, the countless amount of hours i spent recording in my hot room just to get it all right. One day i wanted to see if i could polish up one of my songs. when i opened the project on my DAW it was went to check my other I went to check everything/ everywhere/ files/ My hard-Drive failed and it erased and corrupted almost everything on it. I have never been more heartbroken in my life i think i had a panic attack, I just walked away from the computer i couldn't sit down, I had to take like a 5 mile (sobbing) walk just to calm down. It felt like building a house to perfection just to see it burn to the ground. Never again!! will i make those mistakes, ive got a new computer, ive got back up external hard-drives and im ready to rock n roll!

[YAYYEE]

Ive lost so much music that i do everything u said and sometimes burn to DvDs, its old school but if your drives go down or get stolen you still have the DVD data copies

[DanielKarlMorgan]

I have learnt more from your channel about good practice using Logic than I have in my entire life! Highly recommended.

[jdubbs]

Warren, Please do a new Deep Dive video on this topic. Show us in real time naming your files, what backup tools you are using, how you archive and store your drives, show us in real time the files you are archiving to a drive and how you choose the files to be sent off to mastering. If you are sending files over the internet, please share that method as well.
Thank you for all you do and all you share with us!!!

Keep Doing That Voodoo That You Do!

[latenightluke]

Using backup services is also a good idea. Backblaze will send you a harddrive of your lost work if your computer crashes. Curtiss King has a great video on it!

[enifyako]

I have actually just recovered from a total hard drive failure. Starting out I couldn't afford to buy several several hard drives for recording, as I a) wasn't sure it would amount to any more than a hobby, and b) never quite had the funds. My mistake, though, was thinking that using almost purely the internal drive for all my work would suffice. I had tracks here and there moved to external drives, but nothing backed up, and every time I had enough money to spend on plenty of storage, I got too excited about this or that thing, a plugin here or an effects pedal for guitar there. I spent $150 on a DAW upgrade days before the hard drive failed. Now, thankfully, I've recovered literally every project on the drive in their entirety, but it's an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone and hope to never have again. The likelihood that you will lose the last five years of your work as you're looking directly at it is in all senses one of the most terrifying things to ever encounter. I lost a mastering job over it, because I lost the ability to recall. So, this is a prime example of why there is no reason at all not to invest in the data storage from day 1, or day 1, 825 in my case, and never have to deal with total data loss in your career. I mean it was by sheer faith in that sad old hard drive alone that I made it out with everything, and that is no way to run a business. Learn from my mistake.

[davidallenhammond]

Just found this while searching for backup methods.  I just bought Synchronizer Pro X and am going to mirror my recording drive (which is external). I'll post some questions I have in the academy.  Thank you Warren, this is important info.

[JohnnyBeane]

Great advice! I've had a drive crash & did the recovery thing & it was just a nightmare!!!

[mr.yellowstrat]

I can't find an organized tutorial for PC on swapping files and plug-ins to the external drive to save my life. Which files to leave on the internal, which files to delete from the internal once you've copied them to the externals, do you copy the application and .dll, and routing your daw to draw the plugins from the external and not the internal, etc etc

I know there's a thousand ways to skin this cat, and I'm piecing it together from bits and pieces of videos and blogs, but I know this channel could really do this topic justice with an updated longer in depth tutorial on this topic. 🤘

[christiancanalita]

So helpful....thank you! Can you do a video on how you consolidate the files?

[GrtfulDude]

Also nice idea to - duplicate playlist - before consolidating so you save the edits accessibility (in case you hear something later.) Thanks for starting the dialogue Warren!

[bloodlord]

I use my plugins on my external Hard drive and transfered  them there to save major space i don't really have. The big pain was going into registries and changing the install path for some plug ins to work.

[stephenboykin]

Warren, first off this is a great subject. One of the most overlooked subjects in all digital arts is file management. I wanted to ask you if you have any specific templates that you use when starting a recording. I have worked with composers who have very detailed templates depending on what type of project they're working on. If so can you share one or a few with us?

[davidmood]

Hi Warren, when you finished a project and consolidated all tracks, do you just keep and backup this clean version, or do you still keep a copy of the raw project (with maybe hundreds of takes that were not used in the final) as well?
Many thanks for your videos!

Also, a tip for Windows users: SyncToy (freeware) does what Synchroniser Pro does on the Mac. It works very well and is easy to use. I use that do backup everything.

[Doctaj]

what are you doing in 2018 for file management? cloud storage backups?

[OtakuBase]

I dont know is it right to ask here but, how do you orginize your projects? Do you create different tracks for verse, chorus, for each intrsument, like "Lead gt verse" "Lead gt chor" etc. Or is it just you have tracks like "lead" "rhytm" "bass" "vocal" and all the parts of the song are merged? I prefer to have different tracks for different parts of the song and it's interesting how you managing this.

[DoItYourselfMusician]

Do the major labels leave music recording sessions sitting around on hard drives or do they use some archive method like burning all the files to a CD or DVD? Having a few drives full of music myself I sometimes wonder if it would be better to have all of my files, session notes etc backed up on discs because then I wouldn't need to try and figure out what old drive it was on. It might be more convenient.

[JayGoreGuitar]

Do you consolidate before or after your bounce? Is there a benefit to consolidating before the bounce?

[ChrisBasenerGuitar]

Hey Warren,
Do you have any recommendations for external hard drives. Excellent content. Dig your sessions with Tim Pierce too

[nu-visionstudios-jasonalem]

Would you be able to go into more detail and expand on this subject? In particular about your process for future proofing a session to be able to open it in the future. With track commit and freeze now allowing this to be much faster and easier what is your take on this? I have been trying to figure out a method for myself to be able to do this efficiently. A side from plug ins not opening in the future I have experienced sessions not even opening.