how do you work with vdat?

[tomylee]

I dont seem to understand it yet, the sound is superior, but I would really like vdat to save tapes with the project and load them when the project is loaded...

Instead at loading projects that had vdat sessions in it, it creates a bunch of new files with the same name as the saved one but in a different folder, of course those files are empty then.

I can load the actual tapes but the other files created at every session start can fragment the disc alot and it takes tons of space...

is this a

bug?

[dante]

I didn't have this issue when using VDAT to do this scoperise article

http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_07/vdat.htm

Basically I treated the VDAT tapes as independant from the project, but if anyone knows otherwise about any relationship between tapes and projects, it would be a usefull addition to the article. What I have written so far is fairly basic...

[tomylee]

right now I got some kind of success, it loads as desired, but I had to put the vtp files into both standard project folder and the /app/bin directory, which is weird, isnt it.

now if I would have gotten 10$ for each hour I spent with troubleshooting my scope environment, I would have gotten a free xite 1 for sure, some of you here might have gotten millionaires I guess...

anyways, I still use it, which also speaks books

edit: actually the sfp 5 seems to look for the vtp files in the folder that you were active the last time, in my case I was optimizing now my startup project and this one saves in a very special folder, loaded my vdat project and it looked in just that folder where I saved last, and created its useless empty files there, then I tried to save the vdat project in another location where the vpt files are already and it worked again. very strange behaviour.

Now I have to look out for files randomly created on ma disk...uhhh....

edit2: now i know it for sure, it actually writes the files of any vdat tape (empty useless files) into the folder where the last project (any project with vdat I guess) was saved to, so vdat probably thinks I always wanna save my vdats with my project, which is ok, but then vdat should not write older tape dummies into new project folders, because that is not where they belong, as I always save scope projects in the folder of the cubase project...

This is very lame, I cant even stop it to write files, I mean I would be ok if I just had to make a link in the notepad, which is a nice addition in 2010 Oo - but I have to be on the hunt for the random placed dummie files...

now tell me dont you have this problem too!?

[dante]

My tapes just stayed where I nominated after pressing the 'Create' button, ready to load next session.

[tomylee]

My tapes just stayed where I nominated after pressing the 'Create' button, ready to load next session.

yes they stay there, I dont say they get moved, but try following:

create a tape, record something into it, then save the project in a different folder than where you created the tape, reload the project. Now do you have to manually load the tapes again? and do you have empty files of a newly creaded dummy tape in the folder where you saved the scope project?

I have.

[tomylee]

bto do you use scope 5.0? I do.

[garyb]

if you move them, you must edit the references in the .vtb file.
use notepad and make a safety copy fist, in case you screw it up.

[tomylee]

if you move them, you must edit the references in the .vtb file.
use notepad and make a safety copy fist, in case you screw it up.

I did not move them - the notepad I meant was the scope one for reminding me in the scope project what tape I would have to load where, not a nice solution but I would have been ok even with that

again I did not move them, I save them to one folder on my disk for example c:\vdat main then save another project to c:\scope projects and when I load the first project with vdat again it creat empty vdat files in c:\scope projects - if I then copy the vtb file from c:\vdat main to c:\scope projects it works until I dont start a new project which I would save at c:\cubase projects\projectx\ - because if I then get back to the first project, vdat will create empty files in the completely different folder of c:\cubase projects\projectx\

I searched the forum gary, I know it does not work if you move the files away from the vtb files, logically, but this irrational behaviour in my case(only my case?!) I just dont understand

EDIT:

Vdat spams my hard drive, whenever I load a project with a vdat in it, chances are about 90% that it creates empty tracks with the set size in any random location on my hard drive

with my explanations I just wanted to show a way to understanding what exactly happens, and it lookes like when a scope project with vdat plugin is loaded, vdat does not search for the tape in the directory it was created and with which it should have saved in the scope project, but it always looks where any OTHER scope project was saved last...

So if I create a vdat file (with tracks of course) in folder A, but save the scope project in folder B, then I have to load the vtb file from folder A to folder B in order to make vdat find the files it is looking for at next project load.

That would also be ok if vdat would always look in the same place, but it does not. Lets go ahead:

Now I create a new project, i mean just any project, and save this one in folder C. Now I load the project with vdat from folder B and what happens? Vdat writes tape tracks and a tape file in FOLDER C!

completely irrational behaviour, to make it work again I would have to copy the tape file (not the tracks) from folder A to folder C...ad infinitum

Now this problem probably does not occurr if you have vdat files and scope project files ALWAYS in ONE folder

what that gets very messy after quite some time, too much disorder, I have special folders and places for all kinds of files, today I created my vdat main folder, there all my future vdat files should be saved and created in. I have a separate scope project folder and one for my sequencer, sometimes I save scope files together (in the same folder) as my cubase files for convenience

this ordinary work method wont work with vdat at v5 that i have - maybe this is fixed with 5.1, so tell me do you have the same problem there?

[garyb]

fisrt off, if you know what i'm talking about, fine. i'm only trying to help. mostly, i'm not much help at all to people, but sometimes i manage to say the right thing. if i don't say the right thing, excuse me for trying.

second, i've never seen vdat format "tape" if one doesn't request it to, so that's strange.

if you make the tape in a project and then save to another folder, as far as vdat is concerned the original location of the tape when it was formatted IS the proper location, regardless of where the project was saved to.

i'm sure that the lengthy explanation i just gave has nothing to do with your strange problem, one that, if i understand you description properly, i've never encountered before. i'm not denying that it may have happened, i can only offer support in the limited capacity which is my experience, or at least things i've heard from others. please forgive my ineffectiveness. please do not beat me for speaking.

just having the vtb file with the wav files is not enough. the vtb file is a list of folder addresses telling the vdat device where the files are. if the vtb file describes a location that the files are not in, you'll load blank, unrecordable tape. to the Virtual ADAT it is as if there was an unformatted SVHS tape in the transport. the .vtb file can be editted with notepad, word, etc. as i said, this may have nothing to do with your problem, if it doesn't, i apologize.


-btw a fragmented hd full of audio files is not necessarily a bad thing. hds aren't read like a phonograph record and we're not in win95 anymore.

[tomylee]

your support is very welcome gary, I remeber you giving very good tips and thoughts about problems, so no beating and at no point any offense was intended or meant, if any was there

to my problem: the vdat files load perfectly when I press "open" in the vdat settings area, and point it to the location where I saved the vdat...no problems loading those files ever, the only problem I have is that it does not autoload with the project.

When saved with the project vdat just does not remeber where to look for the vdat file after the next load. It does just in very rare cases, which I tried to describe, I wonder if nobody else has this exact phenomenon occurring

I tried to install scope over my installation to check if anything got damaged, but this changed nothing, could it be that I have a version of vdat that does not work with 5.0 well? Is there a special 5.0 version?

Edit:

Im making such a noise about this because imho this thing sounds superior to my daw, and I thought about doing a whole project wich cubase just doing some control voltage stuff that steers the modular, so timing would be perfect, to bad modular does not have extensive sample playback and mangling capabilities (would need some cv inputs for a modular sampler...I hope redmuze makes this for flexor..)

Strange that you never heard of this - cant you even reproduce it? Do your vdat files always load perfectly along with the project? You dont need to specify where the vdat files are, after the project load and in case you do need, you dont have any empty vdat files created in some other folder you saved your project in last time?

This thing should be easily reproducable imho..

[dawman]

I am just getting back into VDAT for the playback of mastered
background vocals.
I will be sharing everything I have discovered in the next couple
of weeks and be happy to share what I find.
I use to use projects with VDAT loaded blank, then call up the
string of tunes which I could start & stop with my hardware
transports live.
This time around I am trying to use external USB 3.0 drives to
store and recall the VDAT files, and I am seeing this is no longer
possible so far.
I will try and figure out how I can save the entire project for recall,
but in all honesty I would prefer just loading an empty VDAT, then
opening up the wav. files on an external drive.

I will check back with any workarounds I figure out.

[garyb]

i do not usually use vdat, since the convienience of the sequencer's editing has won me over. as to needing to load tapes after opening a saved project, yes, you may need to do that, although i don't remember it being that way. if you are saving the prohect to a dfferent directory than that of the original vdat tape, then i might not be surprised if it behaved like that. it's an annoyance, huh?

[dante]

Seems like there is 2 issues here :

1) Reopening saved VDAT tapes (would be good if Scope does this automatically with Scope Project load)

2) VDAT creating NEW BLANK tapes on Scope Project load (or if you 'save as' your Scope Project to a new location).

I think issue 1) is something we can workaround, but 2) above is a different story, a space chewing bug. So I will try reproducing this. Will be usefull info for article whatever happens.

if you move them, you must edit the references in the .vtb file.
use notepad and make a safety copy fist, in case you screw it up.

This could be a usefull tip / tool to use for investigation. Not being at my DAW to confirm - but (big assumption needs testing here) lets just say if you do a 'Save As' of your project, that Scope re-writes the VTB substituting in a new path. But the WAVS dont exist at that path, so next time you open project, Scope sees that the WAVS are not where the VTB says they are and kindly creates them for you !

[tomylee]

I will try and figure out how I can save the entire project for recall,
but in all honesty I would prefer just loading an empty VDAT, then
opening up the wav. files on an external drive..

why would you prefer to load an empty VDAT with an existing project? Are you telling me you wold prefer to delete the vdat module before saving to be able to load an empty vdat at project load, for loading a tapefile that you have to remember - If you have 2 jears old projects and more you would definately had preferred that the project saved the location the vdat file (and tracks) were saved.

[tomylee]

2) VDAT creating NEW BLANK tapes on Scope Project load (or if you 'save as' your Scope Project to a new location).

exactly, I was trying to work around this by loading the vtp-files into that directory, so that VDAT knows where to look at. While this sometimes works, I still get very strange results. Today after booting up and loading the vdat project im currently worked on it loaded empty tape files to \\documents&settings\"myusername" which is very strange - what do all those random folders that vdat looks for vtp files have in common? because if vdat does not find any linking files there (the vtp files) it just creates tape tracks an a new vtp file with no link inside there

[tomylee]

2) VDAT creating NEW BLANK tapes on Scope Project load (or if you 'save as' your Scope Project to a new location).

exactly, I was trying to work around this by loading the vtp-files into that directory, so that VDAT knows where to look at. While this sometimes works, I still get very strange results. Today after booting up and loading the vdat project im currently worked on it loaded empty tape files to \\documents&settings\"myusername" which is very strange - what do all those random folders that vdat looks for vtp files have in common? because if vdat does not find any linking files there (the vtp files) it just creates tape tracks an a new vtp file with no link inside there

edit: my workaround for now: none, look up the newly created files by opening the file in the editor and looking at the save path each time I load a project with vdat, delete those files in that patch and manually load the project file in the right path after that.

very annoying, the sound is superb, the workstyle somewhat old school which gives my sound the rigt edge imho, very nice addition this vdat is to my studio. yes my sequencer can do alot more, but more is not always better, often electronic music is defined by the path it was created, the way is the destination. (der weg ist das ziel)

cheers
lee

[tomylee]

new findings, after trying to get scope to work with vrc-s and messing and messing around with the system vdat wrote files this time in windowsroot\system32 LOL...

it really seems to write where, well yes where?! where scope exe probably looked the last time, and I tried to run scope on 1 processor, very strange

[garyb]

no, i've never seen this behavior. that's crazy.

well, i don't know what is going on with your system, but if that's the only problem, then the fix should be easy. unload vdat before you save the project so that vdat won't try to load anything when you open it again. sometimes, it's better to let the machine work the way it wants to. loading a tape manually when opening a project is not really a big imposition. hopefully it gets fixed soon.

[tomylee]

no, i've never seen this behavior. that's crazy.

well, i don't know what is going on with your system, but if that's the only problem, then the fix should be easy. unload vdat before you save the project so that vdat won't try to load anything when you open it again. sometimes, it's better to let the machine work the way it wants to. loading a tape manually when opening a project is not really a big imposition. hopefully it gets fixed soon.

thats a solution, simple and easy, I did not have the muso to find it, so thx...

maybe I should tell sc about this

[garyb]

thx...

maybe I should tell sc about this

i wish i could suggest better.
yes, let them know. they have a huge list to conquer, but they can't fix it if they don't know about it.