Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide288
Transfer Volumes Are volumes that are not sup-
ported for media playback in Pro Tools (such as
shared network volumes or CD-ROMs), or storage
volumes (hard drives) that have been designated in
the Workspace browser as Transfer (T) volumes.
Transfer volumes cannot be used to record or play
back media in a Pro Tools session. Designated
Transfer (T) volumes can be useful for transferring
session and media files between different
Pro Tools systems.
Databases
The information displayed in DigiBase browsers is
stored in individual databases. Pro Tools creates
these databases automatically for all mounted vol-
umes, including Transfer volumes, on your system
drive.
Pro Tools databases use three file types:
volume.ddb Stores media and session file meta-
data for a particular volume.
catalog.ddb Stores media and session file meta-
data for a user defined Catalog. Cataloged media
and session files are can reside on multiple vol-
umes, including Transfer volumes.
Wavecache.wfm Stores waveform overviews for
all audio files referenced by each session.
Volume Databases
For each volume (whether they be local hard
drives, removable media, or shared network stor-
age), a database file is created in a folder, on the
system drive.
On Mac, Volume databases are stored in Li-
brary/Application Support/Avid/Pro Tools/Data-
bases/Unicode/Volumes/.
On Windows, Volume databases are stored in
Program Files\Avid\Pro Tools\Databases\
Unicode\Volumes\.
Sharing Database Files
Database files can be shared among users. This is
particularly useful for Transfer volumes, eliminat-
ing duplicate processing (indexing) time.
For example, shared volumes (such as network
storage volumes) tend to be large, and indexing
can be a time consuming task. To avoid duplicate
effort, one user can manually index part or all of
the shared volume just once, then email the data-
base files to other users. Database files can be
added by placing them within each user’s Volumes
folder. Periodic manual indexing then keeps all da-
tabases current.
Sharing Catalogs
Catalogs can be created for a particular project and
then shared among multiple systems to help facili-
tate more efficient workflow. Catalogs are stored
as database files on your system drive.
On Mac, Catalog database files are stored in the Li-
brary/Application Support/Avid/Pro Tools/
Databases/Unicode/Catalogs folder.
On Windows, Catalog database files are stored in
the Program Files\Avid\Pro Tools\
Databases\Unicode\Catalogs folder.
For more information on volume designa-
tions, see “Audio and Video Volume Desig-
nators” on page 322.
If you delete the Database folder, all existing
database information is lost. To recreate a
deleted Database folder, re-index your stor-
age volumes (see “Indexing DigiBase Data-
bases” on page 292).