MY GARAGEBAND PROJECT FILES ARE TOO LARGE.

I was told that this is way too big.

Who told you this? They are wrong.

is this the way it is?

This is the way it is. Audio take up about 10MB per minute per track, so 10 1 minute tracks is 100MB. 10 3 minute tracks is around 300MB, etc.

I have one project that is 7.9 GB

--HangTime [Will Compute for Food] B-)>

(P.S. please don't type in all caps, it's considered "yelling") --Hang B-)>

I have to correct HangTime here.

GarageBand records audio at the same resolution as CDs. That is 16 bit, 44.1KHz resolution. At that resolution, a mono audio track is 5MB per minute. A stereo audio track, because it consists of two mono channels, is 10MB per minute.

CDs can hold 73 minutes of music--that's 730MB, give or take.

If you make a 3 minute song, the final mixed down song in stereo AIFF format will be around 30MB. (you could choose to then convert it to a 3MB MP3 file).

However, your GarageBand project is much larger than that. Let's say you have ten stereo tracks of music in your song, and you freeze every track (converting each one to an audio file). That's 10 three minute stereo tracks at 10MB per minute, or 300MB total. Obviously if you have more tracks in your song, the total size will be even larger.

So in this example your GarageBand project would be 300MB in size, and the final mix-down which you export to iTunes would be 30MB.

As we've mentioned in previous posts, don't ever delete your GarageBand project with its individual tracks just because you have achieved a mix-down that you like. There's always the possibility that you will want to go back and re-mix the song, or re-use the audio material within in some way.

Burn your GarageBand project files to CD-R or DVD-R to archive them. Then you can erase them from your hard drive to free up space.

Other audio programs record tracks at rates up to 24-bit, 96KHz. These files are much larger than the ones GarageBand creates at its lower resolution. So if you are recording audio with other programs, such as Yamaha/Steinberg Cubase or Nuendo, or Apple Logic Express or Logic, your project files will be much larger than those that GarageBand would create.

But John said that he had 35 audio files at 3 to 5 minutes each. Now that is 100 to 175 minutes. So, assuming they are mono audio files at 5MB per minute, that would come to 500 to 875MB.

If you import a sound file, then cut it later, the sound file remains in the project file. So if you import 100 sounds and decide to keep 50, the file size will reflect the full 100 sounds. So, if you want to fix this, count how many tracks you are using. Select all and copy. Create a new project and add as many tracks as your previous project. Paste. (Note: You will lose any effect or volume settings) Now save. The file will be considerably lower in size.

What GarageBand needs is something that Director has... "Save and Compact" which eliminates unused files from the project.

If you import a sound file, then cut it later, the sound file remains in the project file.

No it doesn't. If you completely delete a region and save the song, the audio file is deleted from the hard drive.

I jsut tried it myself. I dropped an mp3 into the timeline, and it imported. I saved, quit GB, checked the package and found the Audio file. I then reopened the file, deleted the region, saved and quit GB. I opened the package and the audio file was gone.

I had a saved project with AIF files that was 7,5 megs in size. I deleted all the regions, then resaved it. The new version was the same size at 7.5 megs. Opening the file, the AIFFs were still there. I then reopened the new version, deleted the tracks (that were region free), then resaved, and it went to 235K.

Go figure...

I did a couple of tests.

Start a new file, import audio, save, and I a get 3.5MB file. Delete the regions, save, and I get a 200K file.

Start a new file, import audio, save, and I a get 3.5MB file. Delete the regions, save to a NEW file, and I get another 3.5MB file.

So depending on HOW we save dictates how it keeps or eliminates files.

Try not to use all caps, especially in your titles.

Yes, HT is right. If you want to keep things small, use only MIDI. However, even MIDI will create large files if you lock the tracks.

I just tested this. No it does not. When you delete the track, it will delete the audio file from the hard drive.