User guide

Tracktion 4 Reference Manual
14
Using Folders To Manage Projects
When you rst run Tracktion the tree view on the left of the projects page contains two folders, the
“Active Projects” folder and the “Library Projects” folder. You can create your own folders here, allowing
for greater exibility in organizing and cataloguing your projects.
To create a folder:
• Click the
create folder.. button in the control section (Fig. 1.1.2).
• Enter a name for the folder at the prompt.
• Click OK.
The new folder will appear in the folder list as a top-level folder. Moving projects into this folder is
simply a case of dragging them over the folder list entry.
In addition to top-level folders, you can also create sub-folders. It is even possible to create sub-fold-
ers inside sub-folders.
To create a sub-folder:
• Select the folder that will contain your new sub-folder.
• When the folder is selected, click the
create sub-folder.. button in the properties panel (Fig.
1.1.4).
• Enter a name for the folder at the prompt.
• Click OK.
Another easy way to impose order on the projects list is to re-order it. You have already seen how
projects can be dragged between folders; in addition to this though, you can change the location of a
project in the list by dragging it to the desired position. This simple trick can be handy with long project
lists, as frequently accessed projects can be put near the top, thus avoiding the need to scan through
the list for them.
Library Projects: A Special Case
By now you are probably wondering what the purpose of the Library Projects folder is. Typically, this
folder is used to store material that may be shared between a number of projects. In particular, library
projects could be created to consolidate material such as sample libraries and MIDI les that may oth-
erwise be spread across various directories and hard-drives on your computer.
Adding samples to a library project can also help keep project archives as small as possible. Nor-
mally, when exporting an archive, all material used in the project or edit will be included in the archive
le. Often this can lead to very large archive les. If a project contains material that is also present in
a library project, this shared material can optionally be left out of the archive. Commonly used material
such as percussion samples, that might otherwise be archived along with many different projects, can
therefore be easily excluded from archives. Similarly, when transferring large projects between col-
laborators, library projects can provide a mechanism for including only material that has changed in an
archive.
Figure 1.1.4