XO Wave: Understanding Sessions

XO Wave organizes all the information it works with into folders called sessions. Each project you work with, such as a CD Mastering project or a multi-track recording, is typically associated with one session. Most of the time you won't need to understand the details of the session folder, because XO Wave keeps it organized for you. However, it's useful to understand how XO Wave organizes your work in case you need to do something special. It's also useful when you are working on a large session or when you need to save on some disk space.

Architecturally, XO Wave always has either one or zero open sessions. When you close a session, XO Wave brings up the Select Task window, to create a new session, open an existing session, or quit -- because without an open session XO Wave can't do anything else useful.

How Sessions Are Organized

With the exception of synchronized movie files, all data associated with a given session is stored in the session folder. For example, when you import an audio file, it is copied (or moved) into the session folder and a new (small) file is created with "overview" information for quickly displaying the audio when zoomed out. Every session will also have at least one .xo file (normally with the same name as the folder containing it), called the session file, which stores information about how to play back the audio files and window arrangement. Additionally, XO Wave creates at least one file for each CD Master, and various additional files as it works. Unlike other workstations, however, XO Wave does not create fade files. For more on fades, see our Fade window documentation.

Because video files may take up considerable disk space, XO Wave allows synchronized video files to reside anywhere on the system. This allows video files to be used for other purposes without requiring them to be in a special place. If you move or delete the file, XO Wave will still be able to open the session. You can tell it the new location of the the movie by simply selecting File:Movie:Open Movie and finding the file in its new location.

Because XO Wave is very flexible, sessions vary considerably. Typically, a session will correspond to a particular editing project, a particular mastering project (CD or podcast), or a video clip for which XO Wave is being used to edit the audio. To learn more about the session folder and its contents, see our File Formats tech note.

Saving Disk Space

Because sessions can grow large (a 70-minute CD Mastering session is likely to occupy 1.3gb on disk, with all the source audio files and a single generated CD Master output file), and to facilitate non-destructive experimentation, XO Wave offers Versions, which provide the capability to work on multiple "live" variants of a project within a single session. Since multiple Versions are part of a single session, the input files need not be duplicated. XO Wave's Versions can be managed with the File:Versions menu item.

If you are concerned about disk space, you can delete CD Masters from the Manage Saved CD Masters window. To open this window, select File:Burn CD:Manage Saved CD Masters. From there, select the CD Masters to delete and click the Delete button.

Another way to save disk space is to remove unused files from your session. Sometimes, such as after recording multiple takes, you end up with files you aren't using and no longer need. To get rid of the extras, use Remove Selected Files from Session. Note that this command always removes any Versions from the session as well.

• Open an Edit window if one is not open already. You can do this by selecting Windows:Edit Window.
• Clear the Undo List to make sure that as many files as possible are available for deletion. You can clear the Undo List by selecting Clear Undo List from the Region Bin Menu. The Region Bin is located on the right side of the Edit Window. If it is hidden, select View:Show/Hide Region Bin. Note that the Region Bin Menu can also be accessed by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) in the Region Bin.
• Select Find Unused Files from the Region Bin Menu. This will show and select all the files in your session which are not used in a playlist, the Undo List, or the Copy/Paste buffers. If you want to keep any of these files in the session, be sure to de-select the files to keep.
• Select Remove Selected Files from Session from the Region Bin Menu. Click Ok in the resulting window. Another window will appear, explaining that the selected files have been moved to a new location inside the session folder. It is safe to delete this folder or move it to another location.
• After files have been removed from a session, all your existing version files will be removed as well.