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Making a copy of a project

27 January, 2024 - 14:26 — DavidJS

What is the best way to make an editable copy of an existing project? I want to keep the original project and be able to edit it in the future. But I also want to experiment on the copy (which will have a different name) without it affecting the original version at all.

I always seem to get in a mess when I try to do this sort of thing and my original starts complaining about missing files etc. So what is the proper way to set up the new version?

David

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qtractor
27 January, 2024 - 15:49 — rncbc
rncbc's picture

one way I would suggest:

  1. save your original project/session as an archive/zip (*.qtz file extension suffix); that would bundle all stuff in a bundle for safe and archival purposes;
  2. then you can duplicate it (Save As... again) into another working project/session, possibly to another-name.qtz file to serve as baseline;
  3. after making this new baseline.qtz file, it probably makes sense to now save it again as a regular non-archive/zip file. with the *.qtr suffix back again as usual but now you get a brand new base session directory as a working copy of everything from the original session.

get the idea?

27 January, 2024 - 16:35 — DavidJS

Thanks - that is easy and logical. I'm not sure why I hadn't worked it out for myself - stupidity, probably!

David

27 January, 2024 - 17:32 — rncbc
rncbc's picture

glad it makes sense

as general remark, "stupidity" is here defined as "fierce resistance to intelligence", and the case at hand is way far from it :)

cheers

27 January, 2024 - 19:24 — DavidJS

I dunno, perhaps my stupidity is greater than you/I imagined! I just tried the process, and when I tried to open the copied .qtz file I got a "Session could not be loaded" error.

I think perhaps I have misunderstood something about the required directory structure. Suppose I have a file called Project.qtr in a user folder called Qtractor/Project/. All of the files used by Project.qtr are also in this folder. I save the project as Qtractor/Project.qtz, and then copy it to Qtractor/ProjectTest.qtz .

If I then try to open Project.qtz, I get a message saying that the folder already exists, and asking if I want to overwrite it - which sounds OK, although I haven't tried it.

But if I try to open ProjectTest.qtz, I get a message saying "Session could not be loaded".

Can you tell me where I'm going wrong, please?

David

27 January, 2024 - 21:07 — DavidJS

Ah - I think I've found the answer.

My mistake was in copying (and renaming) the first ,qtz file, rather than saving the original project as a second, new .qtz file, which is of course what you actually wrote in paragraph 2. of your original response.

Please accept my apologies for not reading your instructions carefully enough, and thanks, as always, for your help.

David

28 January, 2024 - 05:42 — windowsrefund

Personally, I tend to do this outside of Qtractor itself. In short. the pseudo work flow looks like this...(unix knowledge assumed)

cp -R path/to/old/project/dir path/to/new/project/dir
vi path/to/new/project/dir/$file.qtr

Now update the path between the <directory> and </directory> nodes accordingly as this is where the .mid and any .wav files are expected to exist.

This approach is far more predictable IMHO and also assists with project renames.

29 January, 2024 - 21:33 — DavidJS

This is helpful, in that it clarifies exactly what is happening, although Rui's suggestion is marginally simpler. I think the results of the 2 methods are identical.

Thanks for the input.

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