Clips are either linked to wrong files or in and out points changed

[feliped95630734]

Hello

I am in the habit of working in premiere, and I think I might not totally understanding the linking and file structure of audition, so keep that in mind when reading this post.

I have been working on a series of radioplays for a 4 episode animated series.

I recorded all of the VO in Audition. 

I am in the habit of saving versions of everything. This means that the file I used to record all of the V.O, I then did "Save as" to make a copy, and turned that session file into the first radioplay. As I kept iterating on the radioplays, I would save subsequent copies of the same file (Ep01_v01... Ep01_v02... etc). I did this all in one folder called "Project files." So, episodes 1, 2, 3 and 4 and all of their different iterations live in the same folder, as do their session folders.

Everything was working fine for the last 3 weeks. However, today I open up the files, and they sound strange. All the clips seem organized exactly the way I did it, but when I play it through, it sounds unintelligible. Either the clips have changed their in and out points, or they relinked to the wrong files.

So my problems are this:

1) I dont fully understand the nature of the problem. My first theory is that because there seem to be multiple files with the same name, that the clips are linking to the incorrect file (for instance, there seem to be multiple files titled track_01_002). However I don't understand why this relinking would have spontaneously happened today, when I never moved any files or changed any folder structures. Whats more, doing a quick "relink" attempt, I cant seem to find any files to relink to that fix this problem.

2) There doesnt same to be any easy way to relink files in the file window. I can right click on clips in the multitrack editor and try to relink them, but i cant do a blanket relink of a file to quickly change all the clips that reference a single file.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be? Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to quickly troubleshoot this issue with the tools available in audition?

Thank you!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

There is only one really safe way to work with sessions, files and folders in Audition - and that's to have a separate folder for each session, with all of the files for that session, and the session file itself, within it. And all the files should have unique names. And there shouldn't be anything else in the folder. Audition will (well. it should...) automatically add number extensions to files if you have identical ones in the same folder, and this should be obvious at the point they get created and first appear in the Files list. If files for a session aren't in the session folder, Audition will ask you, at the point you save the session, whether you want to include a copy of them within the session folder, and the answer is normally 'yes' if you're playing safe. What Audition does if a file of that name is already there, I'm not entirely sure - because you are in very strange territory at that point, and I wouldn't dream of ever being in that situation. I'm afraid that this is one of those times when just charging ahead with a project and assuming that the software will sort itself out really isn't a very good thing to do - you need to pay careful attention to the structure of your assets.

Under normal circumstances, session files are reasonably well-behaved. But unfortunately there have been enough reports of them doing strange things, and clearly getting themselves corrupted, for me to think that you need to be really careful with them - hence my outline above of how not to get yourself in potentially hot water with them. As for why this has suddenly become a problem - I suspect that this might be because Audition has run out of available renaming options as you've added more files.

[SuiteSpot]

This may or may not be related but something to note is that the sesx references the media files in two ways

1. an absolute path

eg "E:\Suite Spot Studios\Alan Podcasts\McKinley\McKinley\McKinley_Recorded\Vox Take_002_1.wav"

2. a relativePath="McKinley_Recorded/Vox Take_002_1.wav"

So if for any reason Audition can't find the media using an absolute path it will fall back to looking in the relative path

This is certainly one way that a media file of the same name could be picked up and when the session is saved it will be that file's absolute path which will then be used.

The other thing is that even if you move (or copy) the sesx to another location it will still try and use the media in that absolute path (and in the case of copying not the copied media).

If you are at all confused by that (and even if not) then take SteveG's advice and keep sessions in seperate folders.