Editing paths in .memory files

#1

Hi there,

I’m sure that in the past I was able to change the paths in the .memory files in ~/Library/Application Supprot/Audio Finder/Scans in order to keep lists working after moving or changing the location of the referenced audio files.

This does not seem to work anymore. Now the list comes up empty after I’ve edited it with a text editor (used BBEdit and also Nano to test).

Is this no longer possible or is there a better way to deal with changing paths?

Side note: the original reason I was doing this was, I used the output of “find” in the Terminal in order to quickly add files to lists… alas it did not work…

Thanks and best
Hans

#2

Wow, that’s a really clever workaround! I Never knew about this. Just tested using TextEdit and it worked fine.

Maybe give it another go. The only other way I know is to use Spotlight Search in Finder and manually locate the files and drag them in. Both methods are time-consuming. - Yours is definitely a good solution.

This function in Audio finder has always made a bit nervous. If you potentially had a hard drive problem and had to install to a new drive from a backup. It would change the Paths of all the files in the lists. You could use database manager to reconnect the Metadata and tags but you would lose all your sidebar list data.

I guess using your method you could ‘replace’ the old hard drive names with the new ones for all your files in a list and potentially reconnect all the files. Good to know.

Have you tried Audio Cortex for sorting files before dragging them into Audio Finder? Or the other method ICED recently told me of dragging a folder onto the ‘Device Browser’ sidebar of Audio Finder and then hitting scan.

#3

I liked your technique so much I made a quick video on it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlgK7Bl0adM

#4

Ha! I’ve tried it on a different list (a much more important one actually, that had been broken) and it worked again on that one. Weird.
I used TextEdit this time instead of one of the other text editors, so perhaps that was the reason… who knows.

Good tutorial for this procedure, I hope this helps a lot of AudioFinder users.

As to Audio Cortex: I’m mostly dealing with cues for filmmusic so I’m not sure how the automatic category assignment applies to full mixes.

Best,
Hans