renaming media files from within Vegas

wikkidperson wrote on 12/23/2003, 8:16 PM
I use Vegas 4.0 to record songs with many, many tracks. A bunch of my stuff was imported from ADAT tapes by someone else, who used generic track names for the stuff. What I have now is .veg files with a whole bunch of generic names, and file folders in my hard drive full of these and good takes I've recorded, as well as discarded ones. If I want to get organized and delete all the unused crap, it would be helpful if I could rename all the media files in each .veg file to some scheme, and delete the rest. I assume that if I rename files in Windows, Vegas won't be able to find them on its own. I find that within Vegas I can only see how to rename Active Takes, not the actual files. Is there any way around this?

Comments

wikkidperson wrote on 1/13/2004, 10:19 AM
Does anyone know anything about this?
vanblah wrote on 1/13/2004, 12:04 PM
Make backups if possible.

Open the .veg project and Click the "Broom" icon in the Media Pool. This removes unused media from the project file.

Then save the project to a new location making sure you have checked the "Copy and Trim media with Project" checkbox. This will only copy active/used media.

Delete the original directory.
Chienworks wrote on 1/13/2004, 3:56 PM
For future projects, it's always helpful to create a new dedicated directory for each project before you begin and place all media for this project into this new directory. It really simplifies housekeeping enormously.
wikkidperson wrote on 1/16/2004, 5:26 PM
Interesting. I tried this, and the new folder was free of all the extraneous files. Cool. What's with the files being .w64 now instead of .wav? Is there any difference? I notice they are the same size still, but hope there has been no compression or reduction in quality as a result of being .w64. I've never heard of .w64 before.
Chienworks wrote on 1/16/2004, 5:52 PM
.w64 is SONY's version of .wav with 64 bit header information instead of 32 bit. This allows the files to be enormously huge instead of limited to 2GB. Other than the header, they are absolutely identical to .wav files and contain exactly the same uncompressed bit depth, sample rate, and channels as your original .wav or .avi file.

Sadly, they can only be opened by SONY's software. When saving trimmed media files with the project Vegas strips the audio out of all the .avi files and saves them as well as the original .wav files all as .w64 files. This means that once you have used this function, the new files will only work in SONY's software and can't be used anywhere else. All is not lost however, You still have the original files intact until you delete them. And, if you need to recreate a .wav file from a .w64 file you can load it onto the timeline and render it as .wav again.

Still though, several of us have been lobbying for an option to have this function save to .wav instead of .w64.
wikkidperson wrote on 1/16/2004, 6:23 PM
I see. I noticed that it wouldn't open in anything but Sony stuff. Because I can load them into Sound Forge and Save As .wav, I'm not too worried, but would prefer them to be .wavs to begin with, so I'm with you as to the wisdom of lobbying for this.
wobblyboy wrote on 1/17/2004, 12:13 PM
I just renamed a wave file in Vegas. When I checked the properties it was still a Windows Wave file?
Chienworks wrote on 1/17/2004, 5:08 PM
wobblyboy, maybe i'm not following you, but why wouldn't you expect this to happen? Renaming a file doesn't change it's type. It is still a Wave file no matter what you name it.
wikkidperson wrote on 1/18/2004, 7:03 AM
But is you "Save As" the .veg file in a new location as we were discussing above, and you click the "trim and copy files" box, then the newly copied and moved files will be .w64 files.
wikkidperson wrote on 1/18/2004, 7:05 AM
It's only when you move your files and project file by using "Save As" with the "trim and copy files" box clicked that you'll end up with .w64 instead of .wav.
Chienworks wrote on 1/18/2004, 1:10 PM
Ummm, yes. Isn't that what we've been saying all along?
pwppch wrote on 1/19/2004, 12:52 PM
>>Sadly, they can only be opened by SONY's software.
This is actually changing now. Stienberg supports our w64 format in Nuendo 2.0 and will be adding it to their other hosts.