Like many people suggest I always use a new folder for each and every project. I have recently noticed that inside the audio folder (within its particular project folder) remain many old unused audio files which I certainly am not going to need anymore. These audio files mainly consist of rendered MIDI events which I never actually needed and which did not get deleted when I intentionally discarded all new changes of my .cpr project file simply by closing it without saving. Later I realized that these audio files do not any longer show up in my Pool (probably because I never saved that version) and selecting “Remove Unused Media” does not have any effect whatsoever.
My question is how I can update the Pool of this particular project so everything inside that dedicated folder gets actually recognised by the Cubase Pool. I could then simply use the function “Remove Unused Media”, which should then indeed work as expected. I want to keep my computer clean and organized and really do not want to keep absolute trash of old unused renders. Manual cleaning is tedious and moreover dangerous as I could accidentally delete audio files which are used by my final project version. Unfortunately, they have removed the Clean Up function (maybe for the better as I do not know what it actually performed). Does anybody have another solution for removing unused media which is not recognised by the Pool?
I know I could use the “Back up Project” function and delete the old project folder, but I would rather not, as this would move the folder and thus destroy my file time stamps replacing them with the current date.
Guess this would be a use case for the cleanup function which I believe was discarded some versions ago (i thought it was dangerous anyway, have lost some files when I was new to Cubase in SX1 times and never -never! - used it again ).
Apart from ‘back up project’ there’s not much you can do I think.
You could also explore which previous Cubase version included the clean up function (I think 8 or 8.5), install it and use it just for that. As far as I remember how it worked it was scanning all .cpr-files, reading out all referenced audio files and deleting anything unused. Accidents could happen when folders were moved and projects haven’t been opened/updated since moving - the project files still reference the original file location which makes the clean up function believe the audio files in that new location don’t belong to any project and deletes them. They don’t go into the OS’ trash, they get deleted and are gone. Scary!
Oh wow you mean there’s no way of selecting unused media clips in audio pool, for deletion? I thought there was. Surely there must be. My current project is full of unused files I have no intention of using and was myself about to look into this. It’s a waste of hard drive space.
Or if not, is the workaround to go into the audio pool and toggle it so that you select all files with ‘0 uses’and then delete them from there ?
I guess I will not bother myself with such a half-baked function which never got optimized. If the files were to reside in the recycling bin after deletion, I would give it a try, but the way it used to work seems rather scary indeed.
Is there any possible way to force the Pool to rescan the current project folder? For testing purposes, I tried to move the folder hoping this would make the Pool rescan, but it did not.
I have found a somewhat functioning workaround: I open the project and open the pool. I click on import, navigate to the project folder, then select all the files in the Audio folder & repeat the process for the Edits folder. Now the pool does have imported all the audio files which reside in that particular project folder and I can use the “Remove Unused Media” function, which then actually removes the old trash files.
I did some further investigations and have come to the following conclusion:
All recorded/rendered audio files get referenced in the Pool right after having been recorded/rendered.
If the recording is undone [Ctrl + Z], the respective audio file is moved to the Trash of the Pool.
If the render in place is undone, however, this time the respective audio file remains in the Audio folder of the Pool.
If the project is closed without saving a message is shown “You have created new files since the last time you saved the project. Do you want to delete these?” If one chooses not to delete these files, they remain inside the project folder though no longer being referenced in the Pool as the project was intentionally not saved.
So far everything makes perfect sense.
I have found one issue though, which I am going to report in the forum:
If a Direct Offline Processing is applied using the respective window [F7] an audio file in the “Edits” folder is created. Undoing [Ctrl + Z] this will remove this audio file. However, once the project is saved and one wants to reset all the particular processes by deleting them in the Processing window, the audio files remain inside of the “Edits” folder even though they are clearly not being used anymore.
This is easily replicable by simply creating an empty project, importing any audio file with the “Copy File to Project Folder” function checked, then pressing F7 adding for instance “Reverse”. After saving & closing, reopen the project and now delete the “Reverse” processing also by hitting F7 (clicking on the trash can). The audio file will sound normal again. If the Reverse.wav file in the “Edits” folder is manually deleted, Cubase will ask you for this missing file even though it is surely not used anymore. The solution is redirecting Cubase to the original file stored in the “Audio” folder of the project. This sort of behavior seems like a bug to me. Even when using the Back up Project function while having checked “Remove Unused Files” the processed audio in the “Edits” folder will come along even though it is not used whatsoever. This seems like an indexing kind of error to me.
When the unaltered audio event is bounced (without any processing applied whatsoever) this issue gets resolved.
I wonder what happens if you used the Pool’s Import function to Import all of the files located in the Project’s Audio folder? And then use Remove Unused Media after that. Not sure if Cubase would just ignore the files already in the Pool & not import them or it might bring in a second copy of existing files. Either way it seems like none of these newly imported files would show as “used” and would get removed.
Maybe worth trying, but only on a test Project - not anything you care about.
I just tried this for testing purposes and it seems like this also does the trick. The only minor annoyance is that for already in the Pool existing audio files Cubase asks “Media [Filename] already in Pool. Do you want to create a new version or use the existing?”. You will have to click “Reuse” for every single one. I noticed this message box can be skipped by holding down the letter “R” (for Reuse) on the keyboard which is going to apply this to all existing one after the other.
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