Copying and pasting Garageband track data from a project file to another?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Copying and pasting Garageband track data from a project file to another?

I am recording my music using an iBook and Garage band in the room where I havemy musical instruments and MIDI equipment. Then, using a one Gb Kingston memory stick, I move the files to my brand new 24" Intel iMac in another room. When the files are on the iMac hard disk I copy and paste tracks from the recorded files to the final project file for adjustment.
Initially this works but after saving the final project file and reopening it again many tracks have been lost?
Questions:
1. How to avoid this problem in Garageband? Is it a bug?
2. Is it possible to extract the aif-files from the Garageband file and move them to another file by mouse dragging?
3. Or is it better to record the music track by track using another program (like Audacity) and mouse drag the tracks then into the Garageband?

Topias

Intel iMac 24" Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 20, 2006 10:28 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 21, 2006 3:29 AM in response to Topias

1. The way you are doing that, you are only copying pointers to the original file into your final project. As soon as you remove one of the single-track files, you'll get an error msg, and the recording is gone. To avoid this, you have to "Save as Archive" the final project each time you inserted a new recording!

2. Yes, it's possible, but a bit tricky, and you risk damaging you projects:
- Locate the source project in the Finder.
- Ctrl-click it and select "Show Package Content".
- Open the folder called "Media", and you'll see your recordings.
- Pick the ones you want and drag them into your opened targed project.

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Answer 2

Nov 21, 2006 8:27 AM in response to Topias

You might also be able to create a peer-to-peer wireless network and simply transfer the whole project (or archived project) to the other computer. No sneakernet necessary.

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Answer 3

Aug 11, 2007 1:44 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU for the information on going into the Package Contents and pulling those into a new project. Garageband crashed during a session, and then when I opened the project file, even though it said it was over 200MB in size, it came up with only a blank new track! Nothing else I'd recorded was there anymore. But then I read your reply to the other person's issue, and did as you said... voila!! There's all my tracks, saved as .aif files. It was a bit of a pain to reassemble, since there were lots of little chunks... but at least it's back to where I was now. Thankyou for your help!!!

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