[LAU] how much is contained in the .ardour file

Leigh Dyer lsd at wootangent.net
Tue Jun 12 12:45:45 UTC 2012


On 12/06/12 10:05 PM, Joe Hartley wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:20:01 +0200
> Atte André Jensen<atte at email.dk>  wrote:
>> When working with ardour projects, I'd like to backup the project, in
>> case I'd like to go back a step in the mixing process. There won't be
>> added new audio files to the projects from now on. Will it make sense to
>> store old copies of the .ardour files? Are all information regarding
>> mixer levels, plugins and cuts in the audio files contained in the
>> .ardour file?
>
> Yes, the .ardour file stores all the information about the session,
> and it does make sense to keep older versions, but for easy session
> and backup management, it makes sense to take snapshots along the
> way and use those if/when you want to go back to an earlier point.
>
> Taking a snapshot creates an .ardour file with the snapshot name
> rather than the session name, allowing you to go back to that mix.
>

Yep, snapshots are definitely the way to go. I always make sure I take a 
snapshot of my session before I embark on some big change that I may 
want to completely scrap later. I think that copying and restoring the 
.ardour file manually would achieve the same thing, but it's definitely 
easier to do it directly within Ardour.

I was hesitant to use snapshots at first because I didn't understand how 
they worked, but as the name implies, they're just a copy of your 
session made at a specific time. Snapshots don't fork your project, so 
if you load a snapshot, make some changes, and then save, the changes 
are saved to your main .ardour file -- a save will never update the 
snapshot, though you can of course make more snapshots if you want to 
save changes without overwriting your main .ardour file.

Thanks
Leigh


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