2488 question; delete unused?

[JDW3]

I plugged 8 cords in and away we went; reocrded a nights worth of live songs.

I recorded until the memory was used up. At home I tried to mix it down and I didn't have enough space.

Bigger problem; the entire night is one song, on the deck.

I need to delete about 15 minutes at least from this "song". Is there a way to do it without something bad happening? I'm worried I'll lose the whole thing.

I tried the "In"/"out" editing; it wouldn't work without the "Delete unused" screen popping up.

Any ideas?

[Dave Klausner]

I'm not familiar with that machine, but it does have a USB connection, so I would try to dump all the data into a computer. If you have any sort of editing software on it, you can break things up that way. If not, at least you'll have a copy of all your data so if you accidentally mess anything up on the 2488 itself, you'll still have copies of everything.

[JDW3]

Haven't tried that yet. I was hoping for something internal.

[Dave Klausner]

There may be a way to do it internally, but I'm not familiar enough with that machine to know. If it were me, I'd probably dump things into the computer just so I had a backup, and then experiment won the 2488 when I was sure I wasn't going to lose anything permanently.

[Jim Soloway]

I have a 2488 and I used a 788 for years. The "delete unused" function should be perfectly safe, but it probably won't get you the amount of space that you need. If you didn't do edits or backup tracks, it probably won't get you much space at all.

Assuming you have the default drive setup, then you should have three partitions. Again assuming that you haven't used the largest partition, then start by copying the recording to a second partition. It's a VERY slow process, especially with a recording that large. So be patient. Once you've copied it to a second partition, then make that the active drive and edit the copy to song length by deleteing the portions of the recording before and after the song. After you've done that, that's when you'll get some benefit from the "delete unused" function on the copy and it will free up the portions of the recording that you've deleted. The last step is to rename the edited recording file with the individual song title. Unfortunately, you'll have to repeat this process for each song. It's a very slow process, but most of the time just goes to copying the file from one partition to the other, a process that you can start and then leave unattended.

[JDW3]

I have a 2488 and I used a 788 for years. The "delete unused" function should be perfectly safe, but it probably won't get you the amount of space that you need. If you didn't do edits or backup tracks, it probably won't get you much space at all.

Assuming you have the default drive setup, then you should have three partitions. Again assuming that you haven't used the largest partition, then start by copying the recording to a second partition. It's a VERY slow process, especially with a recording that large. So be patient. Once you've copied it to a second partition, then make that the active drive and edit the copy to song length by deleteing the portions of the recording before and after the song. After you've done that, that's when you'll get some benefit from the "delete unused" function on the copy and it will free up the portions of the recording that you've deleted. The last step is to rename the edited recording file with the individual song title. Unfortunately, you'll have to repeat this process for each song. It's a very slow process, but most of the time just goes to copying the file from one partition to the other, a process that you can start and then leave unattended.



Is there a way I can delete say 14 minutes from the beginning of this 90 minute song? I recorded using 8 tracks. If I could get one song pulled from this recording, and slowly edit the original track down by deleting, it would be great. I tried the "In/Out" cut paste section and it wouldn't work.

Maybe there's another way?

[Jim Soloway]

Is there a way I can delete say 14 minutes from the beginning of this 90 minute song? I recorded using 8 tracks. If I could get one song pulled from this recording, and slowly edit the original track down by deleting, it would be great. I tried the "In/Out" cut paste section and it wouldn't work.

Maybe there's another way?


My guess is that you've hit a bug that seems to plague almost all of the 788 and 2488 series. The function to make the "out" spot of a section often takes several attempts to actually work. Be sure that it tells you that the "Out" is successful and hit the button combination repeatedly until you get the message.

[tac5]

You might want to check the tascamforums.com website. There is an incredible amount of knowledge regarding the 2488. They have (independently) rewritten the manual and are entirely user supported. I could have never navigated my way into the digital world without them.

[jamhandy]

Dave Klausner (in the post above) gave you some great advice.

I'll add my 2 cents.

I am assuming the Tascan 2488 you are using is creating Windows-compatible .WAV files as it is burning the music to its internal hard drive.

Pretty much, view the internal hard drive of the Tascam as just another piece of computer hard ware. View that machine as an external hard drive. Just like an external hard drive that you might buy for your computer, that hooks up to the Computer's USB port.

If you have ever used any kind of storage device on a personal computer, like a thumb drive, or more than one hard drive at a time, it is easy to drag and drop the files you have on one drive to the empty space on the second drive.

That is what you should do with the .WAV files that the Tascam has recorded for you.

Every audio company out there offers a free demo of their multi-track stuff... it might mean learning new things, but you stand a chance to be able to allow yourself to move on and beyond the limitations of the 2488 to the almost infinite possibilitites of getting your files over to the PC.

Download any company's multi-track software as a demo.

The little key to using demos, if you are handy with a computer is... when the 30 or 60 day demo period runs out... just re-format your computer's hard drive, re-install the demo... and away you go... free of charge... its a "poor man's" way of affording just about every kind of audio software out there... But you have to know how to re-format a computer to make it work... I don't mind walking somebody through that if they need the info... I can either post it here, or in an e-mail if they wish... it takes a little time... you have to back up everything (files, etc..) but it does work. The demo software only attaches a signature to the current operating system registry. Once the operating system is erased, and the re-format is complete, the system has a new registry, minus the old software demo signature. Works on plug-in demos, too...

You need to be able to see the recordings .WAV files on a computer monitor, and stop worrying that you need to do it in Tascam-land.

Once it is big and beautiful in front of you on a computer screen, it is easy as pie to clip every song into its own .WAV file, or set of .WAV file tracks.

Then instead of having one long 90-minute or longer .WAV file you are scared of losing, you have several .WAV files you can burn as data files to CDs or DVDs as backups. Once its on a CD or DVD, you won't lose it.

Best to back the stuff up, then you don't chance ruining something that has already taken a LOT of effort to get onto the machine...

Then, learn how to bounce stuff back and forth between ther Tascam and your PC...

Do all of this, and you will have a more secure recording that isn't going to be deleted by mistake, you've got it on your PC so you can clip it to size song-by-song... and you can re-enter it into your Tascam in song-by-song chunks that aren't going to eat up the Tascam's hard drive... meaning you will then be able to edit it song-by-song on the Tascam...

:-)

JH
.

[Jim Soloway]

Dave Klausner (in the post above) gave you some great advice.

I'll add my 2 cents.

I am assuming the Tascan 2488 you are using is creating Windows-compatible .WAV files as it is burning the music to its internal hard drive.

Pretty much, view the internal hard drive of the Tascam as just another piece of computer hard ware. View that machine as an external hard drive. Just like an external hard drive that you might buy for your computer, that hooks up to the Computer's USB port.

If you have ever used any kind of storage device on a personal computer, like a thumb drive, or more than one hard drive at a time, it is easy to drag and drop the files you have on one drive to the empty space on the second drive.

.

The 2488 doesn't work that way. It uses a proprietary format as it burns files. To export files to a PC, you first have to burn a WAV to a temporary tranfer area on the internal drive. You then activate the USB capability which then allows the drive to be recognized by the PC. To transfer the WAV back to the Tascam, the process works in the reverse sequence with the WAV being written first ot the temporary transfer area with the USB activated. Once it's deactivated, it can be written back to the active partition of the internal drive.

[jamhandy]

The 2488 doesn't work that way. It uses a proprietary format as it burns files. To export files to a PC, you first have to burn a WAV to a temporary tranfer area on the internal drive. You then activate the USB capability which then allows the drive to be recognized by the PC. To transfer the WAV back to the Tascam, the process works in the reverse sequence with the WAV being written first ot the temporary transfer area with the USB activated. Once it's deactivated, it can be written back to the active partition of the internal drive.


Hmmmm... so if there is no room left on the Tascam's hard drive (ie.. "temporary transfer area") then you're out-of-luck?... yikes...

Is there any kind of a SCSI port, etc that would allow for an extra hard drive to be added? (that's old school... maybe it is accomplished by using the USB port?)

Is there a way to choose what format it burns to before the recording starts? Or, with this unit, are you stuck with using the Tascam proprietary format? I suppose that would be OK if it will also convert to a Mac's AIFF format as well as a PCs WAV files...

In a related story...

Back when I first started using a Word Processor, it was a Brother WP-760. It looked a lot like a type-writer, but had a floppy disk drive where you could save documents. The format it saved them on was a proprietary Brother format. The floppies cannot be read on an IBM-formatted PC. Eventually, the Brother unit went "kah-putt"... and now I have a full box of floppies formatted to the Brother proprietary format, and everything I wrote on them is lost until I find another 1994-era Brother Word Processor. (of which I just found a few months ago... at a thrift store, thank goodness..)

All that said, I learned a good lesson in computer compatibility through using that Brother unit...

A similar tale seems to be woven into the Tascam unit... once you have trapped the files into the Tascam drive, there they sit...

Is there a solution to this that doesn't include losing some of the tracks, or significant portions of the recording?

I had looked at these 2488's when I was shopping for a multi-track unit a while back, and after hearing this, I might be encouraged to look somewhere else for a system that is more Mac or PC compatible...

?