If you’ve ever worked in Pro Tools on a session that has a ton of tracks, playlists, edits, and regions then whether you know it or not you are creating one massive session with a bloated Audio Files folder. Pro Tools saves everything you record, no matter if you delete it from the edit window or record over it. The file is still there on your hard drive (and visible in your Regions bin). This can take up much needed space on your audio drive. Today I’m going to show you how to quickly and easily shrink your Pro Tools sessions and get rid of all the excess fat.
Select The Unused Regions
This will all take place from the Regions bin drop down menu. Make sure your Regions bin is visible and click on the drop down arrow on the top right of the bin. Arrow down and choose Select and then Unused from the menu.
You’re region bin should now show a bunch of highlighted names. These represent all pieces of audio and MIDI that Pro Tools is currently not using in your edit window. Keep in mind that audio on hidden playlists will not be selected as these are still “used” regions. Just not currently on top of the track.
Clear Unused Regions From Your Session
Now we need to tell Pro Tools to clear these regions out of our session. Go back to the Regions bin menu and choose the Clear option. A warning message will pop up asking you if you are sure you want to clear these regions. It will give you a choice to either clear them out of this session folder or delete them permanently from the hard drive. Typically it’s best to select “Remove” rather than delete. Only because it is possible that other sessions are pulling the audio from here and will be confused if it just disappears.
When Is This Helpful?
This processes is most helpful when wrapping up a recording or mix session. You’re pretty much done with the song and you just want to trim down the session size either for your archives or for sending the session on to a mixing engineer. Clearing out unused audio regions will give you a much leaner and easier file to backup/transfer over the web.
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OK, the last few times I’ve had a Pro Tools question floating around in my head, you ended up posting something on the exact thing I had a question about! This one is no exception!
I’m confused on how this actually saves drive space if you are choosing not to delete the files. What am I missing here?
Also, what does “Unused Audio Except Whole Files” mean? Thanks, Graham!
Glad I’m reading your mind on Pro Tools questions! OK, first question. Technically if you do not delete the unused audio you are right, the sessions haven’t actually freed up space on your drive. What is helpful about doing what the article suggests is that now you have a trimmed down session file that doesn’t need as much audio to pull from. Thus, when you backup your session (like I mention in the PT Boot Camp) you’ll actually be backing up a much smaller session with fewer audio files.
Second questions. Unused Except Whole Files simply means it will select all unused audio except complete regions (i.e. a whole take). It means you can select and delete all the cut up and tweaked audio that you aren’t using but still hang on to whole files that you may want to drag back into your session again.
I don’t think this will really save any hard drive space. I delete the audio from the file. I can’t think of a situation where another session would be pulling from this session file, unless you recorded all the songs in one session, which I wouldn’t recommend.
I did a video on this where I deleted all the unused audio, and it freed up a TON of hard drive space.
http://www.homestudiocorner.com/2009/12/25/session-file-management-in-pro-tools-video/
Joe – It will save hard drive space if you are trying back this up to a separate drive. It just gives you a trimmed down version of the session. If and when you are confident to actually delete the unused audio, then I of course say go for it!
As I don’t like to click around during the mix, some usefull shortcuts:
- “Shift” + “Command” + “U”: selects unused files
- “Shift” + “Command” + “B”: deletes the selected files
Might save you those few extra seconds.
Love shortcuts!
Ah…okay. So if you’re using “Save Copy In” it will only copy the necessary files. Gotcha. Once I’ve initially backed up the session, I’ll just copy over the newest session file and the newly created audio files to the backup folder any time I work on the song again. Then, when I’m finally finished with the entire thing, I’ll get rid of all the unwanted/unused audio files.
File management…a necessary evil.
Is there a way to get rid of the playlists, except for the bits and pieces that are being used in the visible tracks? I’m worried that when I send the condensed session to my mixing engineer, who doesn’t use Pro Tools, the playlists might cause problems. Thanks!
If you are sending tracks to a non-protools studio it’s honestly easier to consolidate all the tracks from the beginning of the song and export out the wave files. Then you can do the same for the playlists you want, as alternate takes.