"Clean Up" project -- does this make sense?

tl;dr: Export Alternative As Project + Clean Up = no audio files in the new project

 

I used "Export Alternative As Project" to have a new, leaner project to do my final mix. I had flattened all the take folders and joined a lot of regions beforehand, so I was expecting a fairly small project size, but it turned out to be 1.5 GB. That seemed like way too much space for simple audio (no samples were copied over), so I decided to try "Clean Up" just to make sure nothing extra was left. After that, the project was 4.5 MB and the Audio Files folder was empty! But the project would play. I discovered the regions were all pointing back to the original project's audio folder.

 

I don't know if that's a bug or I just don't understand how it's supposed to work.

Did you do a "Delete Unused files" in the Project Browser before the clean up?

What I would do is first consolidate the project (File > Project Management > Consolidate), which makes sure your project is self contained, and points to its own files in its own audio folder. Double-check what you're doing anyway in the Project Audio browser (double-check the audio files paths) before cleaning up.

I didn't check before I did the clean up to see if the regions were pointing to the right files (because I just assumed they were), but when I did the export again exactly the same way, they were indeed pointing to the files within the exported project.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

I believe the behavior depends on all the details in the "Save As" window, but I haven't had the time to test it thoroughly. Would be interesting to spend to the time to do more scientific tests.