How does clean-up work? I thought it would remove .wav files that i have removed from my projects, since often you record a ton of stuff and then later on you clean up the project and only leave the parts you want. Instead it deleted all the .wav’s that were still referenced in my latest project, same with some other .cpr’s i loaded up to test.
Needless to say, this function is really dangerous to use since it doesn’t even check if the project is using those .wav’s.
Fortunately i havent really recorded anything too serious this year which isnt backed up already, except for this latest project which would have been nice to continue on, 3 days of recordings lost…
What i did was this; first i checked /my documents folder and it removed 80MB or so, not too impressed with removing just 80MB considering i often do very long recordings (10 mins+), i know i had tons of these deleted especially from my latest project, so i changed the directory to c:\ and it found 8GB something, if i remember correctly these files were in /my documents too which i thought was odd…
The “cleanup” function should work as you described. It should delete the files, which are in the relevant folder, but not used in the project.
Because of the fact, this sounds serious, I would like to reproduce your scenario. Could you describe it in more detail, please? What operating system do you have? What version of Cubase exactly do you have? Did you use Cubase default folder to store your project, or do you have another one? Did you move the project folder between the recording and the cleanup?
I use Windows 7 x64. Cubase Pro 8 8.0.20 build 468. I use several different folders, one is in /my documents i also have project folders on two other HD’s.
i see that there’s an update that i dont have. I will update and try to reproduce this bug again.
Always record into a separate folder, for each project.
Cubase only knows what files are used in the current project, if you tell it that your root folder is the project folder, then it likely will remove any wav file not used in the project.
A much safer way is to use the backup function in cubase, and that way move the files used in the project to a new location.
Let’s say your projects look like this:
c:\cubaseAudio/song1/
c:\cubaseAudio/song2/
c:\cubaseAudio/song3/
If you open the project song 1, and do a cleanup it should only remove unused media from the song1 folder.
I use the backup function in Cubase instead, and would backup c:\cubaseAudio/song1/ to a new folder called c:\cubaseAudio/song1-1/
I would then when i’m sure everything is ok, move c:\cubaseAudio/song1/ to a different/external drive.
My recording drive now looks like:
c:\cubaseAudio/song1-1/
c:\cubaseAudio/song2/
c:\cubaseAudio/song3/
Sorry for my simple explanation, I just want to point out how important the file structure is, and how Versions and Revisions in folder names can be of great value, when you years from now want to find THAT take again.
Now come up with your own way that makes sense to You, and never loose any audio again
I think Steinberg should fix this issue, why not have Cubase create completely original .wav file names so that it more easily can recognize files that are in use.
Instead of audio_01_01.wav it should do a unique name like audio_01_01_abcd1234 or similar, and why would it cross reference just the latest project, it should obviously first check all .cpr files, then check all the .wav’s to see if there are ones that are no longer in use.
This cleanup doesnt come with any warnings, at least i couldnt see any…
I guess from now on i really need to remember to name my recordings with unique names, hopefully that will make it easier for this cleanup to not delete files that are in use. But imo, that thing should be automated, it shouldnt be up to the user to make sure files are not deleted by Cleanup, such a tool must be totally safe to use, goes without saying i think.
Its all too easy to have Cubase delete WAV files from other projects on your hard drive if you dont work out how Cubase references files. I also think it should be cleaned up by Steinberg but theres always something sexier on the feature list.
In particular Saving Templates is a big danger. There is no option to save a template without the associated audio while in a project. This means if you create a new song using that template and empty the trash or cleanup you will likely zap all of the audio in the project that you made the template from. I"ve written this in the Feature Request section at every iteration of Cubase release for the past few years but no-one cares it seems!
