Imported files from analogue tape scan are maassive and creating *huge* projects

[DiBosco]

Folks,

A while back I got someone to scan some analogue multitracks for me. They supplied them as three lots of twenty-four wavs of the whole tape reels.

If I remember corerectly what I did was import them all at the same time into Logic then snip them into all the different songs and save them as projects. Again, twenty-four tracks at a time.

I recently transferred them to a new machine and noticed that the Logic projects are huuuuuuge. Over 7G, so I have twelve or so songs all with this massive file sizes.

When I go into the browser function (the thing you get by pressing F that brings up the menu at the far right hand side of the main screen in Logic ) I can see all these wavs are 292M which is clearly way too big for a three minute song. I have retrimmed start and end of the song to remove the excessive thriteen bar lead in and twenty odd bars of silence and still the file sizes in the Logic browser are the same at 292M.

Can anyone think what I have done wrong here and how I can reduce these file sizes to get these insnaely large projects down to a reasonable size please?

Thanks!

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by DiBosco

[des99]

You've trimmed the audio regions in the main page, but the audio files remain the original source, full-length unchanged files, and you've probably copied them multiple times in different songs too.

Remember, just trimming audio regions is non-destructive, it doesn't alter the source files in any way. What you probably want to do is leave your source audio files in one place on your system, don't copy those into your project folders, and just export/bounce the trimmed sections into each project they belong to, so each project's audio files are just the sections of the original audio files for that song.

[DiBosco]

12 minutes ago, des99 said:

and you've probably copied them multiple times in different songs too.

 

Oh yes, I do not doubt this!

12 minutes ago, des99 said:

but the audio files remain the original source, full-length unchanged files

I was ignorant of this. Had assumed that once I'd trimmed them all the deleted stuff would be gone.

12 minutes ago, des99 said:

What you probably want to do is leave your source audio files in one place on your system, don't copy those into your project folders, and just export/bounce the trimmed sections into each project they belong to, so each project's audio files are just the sections of the original audio files for that song.

The issue is that I am a long way down the road of mixing them now and it would be a massive job to start over. I guess I'll have to live with it and just get them off the local drive as soon as they have gone off to be mastered.

Thanks for the help. If I do this again I'll have learnt a lesson! 😄

Edited November 15, 2022 by DiBosco

[des99]

Yes, although it can be "fixed" (and it's not too hard), it's probably easier to leave them as is. 👍

Edited November 15, 2022 by des99

[fuzzfilth]

I agree. You can fix this, but it's not worth the time, effort and energy. Don't look at these numbers and you're good to go.