Hey everyone,
In earlier versions of Mixbus, regions created during a 'consolidate range' operation inherited the filenames of the tracks they reside on. This made it super easy to create raw stems following complex editing. Just highlight a range, select the tracks you want stems from, and consolidate range. Then you can open a file browser, grab the newly created files from the interchange folder and send them to your friend for import into any other DAW, knowing that everything lines up and that each file will have a logical name. This was really fast and efficient for me, especially if someone decides months or years down the line they want to remix from the ground up, or if clients want to take the raw, edited audio with them after a tracking session.
For the last several years, this practice has been discontinued. Now MB renames all consolidated regions using only the name you enter in the dialog box followed by a number (starting at 2). The newly created filenames give no clues to their contents, because MB now discards all information from the track name and the original region name. Their file contents can only be identified by listening to them. If you do more than one consolidate operation on the same session (even weeks or months apart) and are not scrupulous in inventing a new name for each operation, you will go further down the rabbit hole, ending up with an interchange folder with tens or hundreds of files, all named some variant of 'Consolidate', each offering no clue to their contents. This can get really out of hand:
![[Image: Screenshot-2023-10-13-16-05-43.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/Vs031y4K/Screenshot-2023-10-13-16-05-43.jpg)
Who wants to guess which of these files contains a single gong sample after 4 minutes of silence?
I can't discern a logical order to the numbering either (ie, consolidate 2 is not necessarily the second highest track of those visualized in the editor window, but an apparently arbitrary region). Nor does Mixbus display these consecutive filename numbers in the editor window, each region is simply shown as 'Consolidated':
![[Image: Screenshot-2023-10-13-16-05-14.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/RVcy6ckf/Screenshot-2023-10-13-16-05-14.jpg)
So if I want to find the file on my drive, I have to open the region properties dialog to see the complete filename. This gets really old.
Since I often collaborate with folks outside the MB ecosystem, consolidate regions is often the quickest way for me to produce high resolution raw stems after an editing session, but the current filenaming practice makes this excruciating, since I have no idea what instruments are in these tracks without listening, and the engineer receiving these stems may not even know what instrumentation and microphone sources they should be expecting. The option to add a tag to newly created filenames following consolidate operations is nice, but I believe these files MUST continue to inherit the name of the track they reside on.
P.S. I'm aware there are other options for stem export, but I know of nothing as fast as 'Consolidate range' for getting raw lossless PCM containing all edits and cross fades. Correct me if I'm wrong.
In earlier versions of Mixbus, regions created during a 'consolidate range' operation inherited the filenames of the tracks they reside on. This made it super easy to create raw stems following complex editing. Just highlight a range, select the tracks you want stems from, and consolidate range. Then you can open a file browser, grab the newly created files from the interchange folder and send them to your friend for import into any other DAW, knowing that everything lines up and that each file will have a logical name. This was really fast and efficient for me, especially if someone decides months or years down the line they want to remix from the ground up, or if clients want to take the raw, edited audio with them after a tracking session.
For the last several years, this practice has been discontinued. Now MB renames all consolidated regions using only the name you enter in the dialog box followed by a number (starting at 2). The newly created filenames give no clues to their contents, because MB now discards all information from the track name and the original region name. Their file contents can only be identified by listening to them. If you do more than one consolidate operation on the same session (even weeks or months apart) and are not scrupulous in inventing a new name for each operation, you will go further down the rabbit hole, ending up with an interchange folder with tens or hundreds of files, all named some variant of 'Consolidate', each offering no clue to their contents. This can get really out of hand:
Who wants to guess which of these files contains a single gong sample after 4 minutes of silence?
I can't discern a logical order to the numbering either (ie, consolidate 2 is not necessarily the second highest track of those visualized in the editor window, but an apparently arbitrary region). Nor does Mixbus display these consecutive filename numbers in the editor window, each region is simply shown as 'Consolidated':
So if I want to find the file on my drive, I have to open the region properties dialog to see the complete filename. This gets really old.
Since I often collaborate with folks outside the MB ecosystem, consolidate regions is often the quickest way for me to produce high resolution raw stems after an editing session, but the current filenaming practice makes this excruciating, since I have no idea what instruments are in these tracks without listening, and the engineer receiving these stems may not even know what instrumentation and microphone sources they should be expecting. The option to add a tag to newly created filenames following consolidate operations is nice, but I believe these files MUST continue to inherit the name of the track they reside on.
P.S. I'm aware there are other options for stem export, but I know of nothing as fast as 'Consolidate range' for getting raw lossless PCM containing all edits and cross fades. Correct me if I'm wrong.
