[64studio-devel] [64 Studio] #262: Ardour can't load projects from USB memory sticks

[Daniel James]

Hi Quentin,

> What could pose a problem is that the references could be different for
> different pcs, as it might mount the USB drive on another location in the
> OS, in return killing the links to the files.

Maybe, but projects should be self-contained, otherwise you could never 
move them between machines.

I have just copied the project in question from the USB stick to my 
/home/daniel directory, and see the exact same errors. So I think this 
problem is not intrinsic to USB sticks.

The Ardour log output is:

[ERROR] Session: XMLNode describing an AudioRegion references an unknown 
source id =18446744073090267845
[ERROR] Playlist: cannot create region from state file

repeated hundreds of times (with different ID numbers) until I kill Ardour.

If I search for this particular ID in the Ardour project file, I see 
this line:

  <Source 
name="/mnt/data/karsten/sounds/KlicksKlacks/klicksucuts1.wav:0" 
id="18446744073090267845"/>

So obviously the problem is that the source files under /mnt/data on 
Karsten's machine were not copied to the USB stick when the Ardour 
project was. Even if they were copied, the links would have been broken, 
as they reference Karsten's local filesystem. I never ran into this 
problem before, because I always keep my WAVs under the Ardour project's 
directory.

If you right click on an Ardour track (I'm using the Debian packages of 
Ardour 0.99.x) and do an 'Import -> Insert external sndfile' then the 
sound file is not copied inside the Ardour project directory, leaving it 
to be orphaned when the project is moved to another machine, on a USB 
stick or via any other device.

I can see why sometimes you would not want the imported files copied 
inside the project directory, to keep the size of the Ardour project 
down and therefore save on duplicated hard disc usage. But this comes at 
a serious portability cost of course. I guess it should be a user 
preference setting in the Options Editor - what do you think, Paul?

Cheers!

Daniel