Cubase 9: A little trick to reduce file size (and saving times) of big disabled track templates

[lucor]

Hey guys, here's a little trick I found while working with my disabled track template in Cubase. While I love the concept of working this way, I had some issues since my empty template was around 1.2gb in size and saving times of up to 10-15 sec were driving me mad. The caveat of this workaround is that it requires you to make one additional click when reactivating a track, but it reduced my project size from 1.2gb to around 40mb, making saving times almost instantaneous, so it's worth it for me.

What you have to do is basically create a track preset for every one of your tracks, then remove the Kontakt instrument completely:

1. Right click a track in your template and select "Save Track Preset...". Give it a name and press OK.

2. On the left in the inspector, select the instrument section and select "No VST instrument"

3. That's it. Now all you have to do additionally to enable the track, is to press the little reload symbol in the inspector to recall your patch (I wish there was a shortcut for it, but I don't think there is, so you'll have to do it manually with your mouse.)



You'll then have to repeat Steps 1 and 2 for every track in your template.
Overall it's a little bit more work than the normal way, but for me it was worth it to save HD space and sanity.

Click to read more...

 

[Phillip]

Thank you for sharing. I regained my sanity by abandoning disabled track template all together. All the best

 

[InLight-Tone]

Great tip thanks! How many tracks do you have in your template BTW?

 

[Fab]

I don't really understand what your talking about.

Isn't disabling a track the same as having 0 of it used in RAM?

 

[lucor]

Great tip thanks! How many tracks do you have in your template BTW?

1021.

I don't really understand what your talking about.

Isn't disabling a track the same as having 0 of it used in RAM?

I'm talking about the size of the actual Cubase project file. With the usual way of doing it it was 1.2gb in size, resulting in very long saving times and it ate up a lot of HDD space. With this trick the file size is down to 40mb.

 

[tack]

1.2GB, ouch. Out of curiosity, how many tracks was that?
Disregard. I'm blind.

 

[T.j.]

Seems I've found yet another way to crash Cubase (toggling between enabled/disabled is what did it this time).
I'm getting reeeeally fed up with it tbh..

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, Like @Phillip I gave up on disabled templates a while back and switched (back) to VE but that never worked 100% either

Quick question for the OP:
Do some of your disabled tracks still show the M(ute) and S(olo) buttons?
(greyed out but visible nonetheless?)

 

[jononotbono]

Yeah Cubase's track preset option is great. Although I do use some disabled Instrument tracks in my template for things I don't use all the time, the majority are midi Tracks connected to VEPro as I hate waiting for things to keep loading. My template is now at 2296 tracks. Adding more computers is my preferred option.

 

[airflamesred]

My template is now at 2296 tracks.

Get out of here!

 

[ChristopherDoucet]

Yeah Cubase's track preset option is great. Although I do use some disabled Instrument tracks in my template for things I don't use all the time, the majority are midi Tracks connected to VEPro as I hate waiting for things to keep loading. My template is now at 2296 tracks. Adding more computers is my preferred option.

How many computers are you using with your 2296 template?

Are those tracks in surround or Stereo?

 

[jononotbono]

Get out of here!

Sorry, my bad, I forgot I deleted a load of Audio tracks a couple of days ago. It's actually at 2247. I shall endeavour to pump that up to 3k as soon as possible.

 

[jononotbono]

How many computers are you using with your 2296 template?

Are those tracks in surround or Stereo?

2 Computers and just in Stereo. I haven't moved to Surround yet but if I'm successful with a Video game pitch a recently did I shall make the move to quad to begin with and have a rethink about templates (after learning how to use and mix in Surround) solely for quad and Surround. I really want to build a 2nd Slave but I have other financial priorities at the minute.

 

[T.j.]

@lucor

Did you notice any increase in Asio use with this template even though tracks are disabled?
I've been working on a template that has a lot of folders with disabled tracks so i don't have to load them inside of kontakt but something strange is happening though:
A. The 'base' level on the meter is higher even though nothing is enabled (not a lot but say 15% with nothing active).
B. If i take my regular piano (same patch as always) and hold down the pedal i can see the asio meters rising rapidly.
The same piano in an empty project doesn't even go above the 10% mark with sustain pedal pressed infinitely.
When i add a stringpatch to layer it, it quickly shoots up to nearly 100%.
I've deactivated all plugins that could be cpu intensive and disabled all sends,
so it should technically be the same: just those patches to a master bus but it behaves totally different.

any ideas what could be causing it?
I tried the Asio guard options (usually have it off completely) but that didn't make any difference

 

[Nicksaya]

This got me real excited but problem is if your template is in surround and your kontakt instance has a front and rear output that are routed to a specifice surround group.. only the main out put channel routing asssignment recalls. the other just routes to your Main output bus. Bummer. But i will try on all tracks that are just stereo

 

[Epic Adam]

This got me real excited but problem is if your template is in surround and your kontakt instance has a front and rear output that are routed to a specifice surround group.. only the main out put channel routing asssignment recalls. the other just routes to your Main output bus. Bummer. But i will try on all tracks that are just stereo

This thread is pretty old and the OP didn't know that track preset doesn't save routing and sends.

This thread makes more sense if you wanna understand track preset templates in details

A different take on Cubase templates

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