Copying songs directly from the SD card

[Phil Tipping]

Hi Vinnie. Correct, assuming you have one of the target songs loaded and you've used the same quality setting for all of them, and that no tracks are armed.
With nothing armed, the time is in 'track-hours' based on the current quality settings, so you're correct to divide it by the no. of tracks (allow 2 for stereo) to estimate the 'hours' remaining. Once you start arming tracks, the machine does the calculation for you so the value is 'hours', based on the no. of armed tracks.
There's a slight complication due to the max file size allowed for any one track (4GB on larger cards). It ignores this limit when nothing is armed, but once you start arming tracks it takes the limit into account. So if you have a lot of space, the value can drop significantly when you arm one track, and then remain constant as you arm more... until there is less than 4GB remaining, when it will start dropping.
Note I'm only guessing how it all works as I've never filled a card up, but it seems to explain the behaviour.
Edit: a few tips:-
Make sure you interpret the display as hours & mins, not mins & secs!
Allow space for mixing and/or exporting to a computer. Exporting creates extra files on the card, one per track, so you could do one track at a time if stuck, e.g. export one track, copy to computer, delete file from audiodepot... and repeat.
Sounds like you've done a lot of work already, so would strongly recommend backing up the song folders (at least) to a computer before the next session... you can copy the whole card, or the individual song folders, but note this does not replace the export process if you want to mix on your DAW.

 

[Vinnie Dambrosio]

Thanks Phil. Very informative. I think I can work with that. Ive watched your videos about the DP24. Great job with those! Ive only had the recorder a few months, but still having trouble exporting and importing separate tracks. Its been simple moving an entire song to the computer, by moving the song WAV file from the MUSIC section of the recorder. But using the AUDIO DEPOT to export and then import separate tracks back is very confusing to me. Im a musician not an I.T. lol..

Also, I always DELETE UNUSED from each song after Im done recording, mixing and mastering. Yet when I export the tracks to my computer, it shows lots of excess tracks I recorded over. Should I be doing something with the UNDO function as I record over mistakes or licks I don't like? Does that eliminate all those extra tracks? If so, I think I need some explanation on using the UNDO function. I don't quite get that either.

Sorry for all the questions but, the digital recording medium is a little past this old Rock and Roller!

PS. Whats your go to SD card for this unit??

 

[Phil Tipping]

That's ok Vinnie. The design is based around a computer system, albeit embedded and specialised for the task, so it's not surprising there's some nerdy stuff involved!

Copying individual WAV files from the Music folder is not the correct thing to do. They have odd names like ZZ0001 by design as they are not meant for human (musician?) consumption. The only exception is the master file, which does have a proper name based on the song name. Each song folder under the music folder should only be treated as a self-contained entity, i.e. you can copy it in its entirety for backup purposes, but all you can do with it is to copy it back to the card some time later to restore the song and continue using it on the machine.

If you want to transfer tracks for mixing or processing on your computer, you must use Export. The video on Import/Export tries to explain all this. When you say you 'export' tracks and see lots of excess tracks, it's because your term 'export' is not the same as Tascams! They mean to use the Export function in the AudioDepot menu. It's a conversion process which collates all those excess parts and sorts out which ones are needed for the track you are exporting. It then combines them to create a single WAV file in the AudioDepot folder. That's the file you can then copy to a computer. If you do this with several tracks, you'll find they are all synchronised from time zero so will play back correctly on your DAW. If you try using those ZZ files to do this, you won't know which ones correspond to which track, and even you do, they may not line up.

The undo process changes which ZZ files are 'active', taking into account how many undo levels you've set in Preferences. The details are hidden in a special file you may have noticed in the song folder with a .sys suffix. This system file is what holds all the ZZ files together for the song, which is another reason why the song folder should be treated as a single lump.

Another long-winded answer I'm afraid, but hope it's helped. If not, just ask away... lots of helpful people on this forum

 

[Vinnie Dambrosio]

Thanks again Phil. Must have missed that one particular video you did on SD card procedures. Very helpful. Ive gotten all the tracks I need transferred to my computer and can now free up space on the cards. Thanks a ton.