Can I save the project with only the active tracks?

[Jeff Leites]

My data folder keeps growing because of deleting and rerecording tracks, and tweaking the tracks when mixing.
Is there a way to save the project with only current tracks in the data folder?

[Irish]

As far as I know (though I'm open to correction), when you save a project, what is saved is the current tracks.
While you are working on the project, Audacity saves data files in a temporary folder, so that you can undo/redo everything, but it deletes this folder when you save the project. What I'm not sure of is whether the data files belonging to deleted tracks are left in the project data folder or deleted.

One way to check would be to save your project with a different name and compare the sizes of the two data folders.

However, if you are in a situation where you are concerned about disk space, you could be storing up trouble for yourself. The experts are constantly reminding posters that Audacity needs LOTS of clean de-fragmented disk space to work with, and you may run into problems trying to save your project if you run out of space.

Rule of thumb: If you have to worry about disk space, you haven't got enough.

PO'L

[kozikowski]

10%. If you can't maintain 10% free space on all your mounted drives, then your project is too big. If you're doing fancy-pants multi-track real time production, the number goes way up. We start to notice speed and data problems with a drive 70% to 80% full. This is assuming a 40GB, 60GB and 80GB system drives.

You can make this much worse by having a highly fragmented drive or trying to do live production on a super drive -- 750GB or larger. Both of those are deadly slow.

"How come my show skips and runs at the wrong speed?"

Audacity always does everything internally uncompressed. Figure about 700MB per hour of stereo show. Minimum.

If you play your cards just right, you can fill up your drive with a live capture or other inadvertent error and jam it so you can't take anything off. Go ahead. Ask me how I know that.

Koz

[Jeff Leites]

Maybe I don't understand how it works, but my last project had 8 audio tracks. When I look at the Audacity data folder, it contains 2 folders with hundreds of files, mostly 1037k. The data folder itself is 237 meg. My thinking is that it's saving more than it needs to save. I can always off load the project to a CD if I want to save them after the final mix.

[Irish]

Those hundreds of files contain all the information Audacity needs to recreate your project, complete with all 8 tracks, when you re-open it, and yes, it is a huge amount of data. The .aup file tells Audacity how to put the project together from the data files. If any of those files are missing, renamed or not where the .aup file thinks they should be, then your troubles can range from missing bits of audio to having no project.

For this reason, once you have your final mix, export everything as WAV files. You can mix and render the tracks to a single WAV or, if you want to be able to re-create the project again, export each track as a separate WAV. Then you can delete the project and its data folder, and free up the disk space.

PO'L

[kozikowski]

Even with all the Projects and WAV files and all the king's horses, the UNDO service vanishes when you close the project. That's why you want to keep perfectly virgin capture master WAV files available in case you have to start over.

This is also the reason it makes our teeth hurt when people keep insisting on exporting partial or final work right on top of original capture masters. That's like burning the bridge and you're still on it.

All this takes drive space. You can't edit good quality from compressed masters, and MP3s turn into peanut butter in a hurry.

Koz