Saving multiple .asd files pertaining to same .aif, and categorizing w/ tags
I've been on a bit of a hiatus from Live since delving further into Max, but about 5 years ago when I started multiple forum posts on this issue but hopefully now there's a solution in site.
First question:
Is it possible to create multiple .asd files (to store separate loop points, even save custom transposition settings, automations, etc.) to point to the same audio file on your computer. In the past I used to just consolidate each of these clips into their own separate .aif samples (mostly so I could take advantage of iTunes categorization and re-sorting by id3tag field) but this is costly on storage and time. On this thread, the user Robin states towards the end that he created a script that achieves this, but the link is broken...
Question 2:
If indeed it is possible, could we somehow create an iTunes-esque window to categorize, arrange and search thru/re-order-on-the-fly a massive collection of these clips (not actual audio files, but .asd)?
This is probably more appropriate for the Ableton forum, but I've tried resurrecting those threads to no avail... Hopefully someone here has deeper insight into Live's API features and is willing to chime in!!! Thanks,
G
Easiest would be to indeed have several .asd files with slightly different names. When the time comes, you can then rename the appropriate .asd file to the proper name so Live will match it with the audio file. But do you want to do this in Max? It seems easier to do such a thing in Xcode or something like that. This involves renaming files and displaying them in a list. Seems a programming language with a more intimate relationship with the operating system would be more in order than Max. This would be quite trivial to write in Objective-C, or C++ or Python. I personally would not go the Live API route for this, because simply renaming .asd files would work exactly the way you describe it and the Live API does not have any provisions to match differently names .asd files to .wav or .aiff files.
Re-naming .asd files doesn't seem like a realistic solution, especially with my desire to keep the same drag and drop functionality that I was getting by consolidating separate .aif files so I could arrange them in iTunes playlists and sort by id3 tags.
Does anyone know of a way to have multiple .asd files saved for the same audio file, that would allow immediate drag and drop (from finder window, ableton clip browser, max file browser or other 3rd party iTunes-esque file organizer) into Ableton?
If not, the only way to continue having the advantage of quick and easy searching through clips ("digging" I believe is the old school DJ term) and immediate drag and drop to Ableton is to consolodiate separate clips... There's got to be a better, more efficient (storage space and time consumption-wise) method to achieve this by now?!?!?!
What about applying metadata to .alc files? I should probably start a new post for this, but I've figured out how to take care of the disk-space issue by saving multiple .alc files inside of Live's User Library/clips folder, but this still leaves me in the dark when I want to use more advanced search methods (organizing/re-sorting by metadata fields). Can Max apply/view/poll for custom metadata tags and use something like jit.cellblock to browse and re-sort them?
Thanks,
G