*.HDP *.HF2 *.HFP *.H0 *.H2 etc. etc

[heapug]

In my Sequoia and Samplitude project archives going back to the days of SEKD, (but mostly from Sequoia 7 onwards) there are now well over 30,000 of these *.Hxx (and previous similar ajuncts to WAV, AIFF,  and recently FLAC  files).

I need to rationalise all this stuff for the record company who have given me all this work over the last 20 years, and I would very much like to be able to safely exclude them from the project folders.

It appears to me that current versions of Samplitude and Seqoia will happily re-create them when/if (ever...!) the prjects are re-opened, but I'd just like reassurance that this is correct, from someone who understands their functions better than I do.  Do they store any info (such as mark points etc) that might be otherwise not available in the VIPs?

[JoaCHIP]

Many many years ago I made a .bat file that removes these files.  I use it often to clean up.  This has never ever given me any problems.

Raw processing software for photographers often produce similar files, e.g. RawTherapee and Lightroom.  But these programs offer to store those files in a separate folder.  It puzzles me that Samplitude doesn't have a similar configuration option, e.g. by offering an "Alternative peak file location" folder in the "Program / General" section where you also control the other paths.  And if left blank, it could simply do what it does now.  This is still high up on my wish list.

In fact, one of my friends was so upset with this feature that he quickly abandoned Samplitude because he didn't want his entire folder structure full of these files.

[Trensharo]

Sound Forge has an option to delete the temporary files automatically. Maybe an option like that for these in Samplitude wouldn't be bad. 

A lot of people complain about VEGAS not deleting the SFK files it creates, as well, though those are created next to source files... so they're kind of worse than Samplitude's...

I wouldn't be against the idea of bundling all of these files into a VIP project bundle... though that may increase the chance of corruption, I'd fear.

[gunmetal]

All the "special" files created represent different things like waveform graphic information, AQ analysis, Comparisonics, spectral editing, etc. Deleting them slows down your project from opening but I haven't ever had a situation where any actual data was lost that I know of (would have to test for AQ markers and pitch analysis/spectral data). If you are just archiving the raw audio data you can get rid of the files although their storage footprint is pretty minimal. For your own local SAM projects, definitely keep them in place. If you are archiving SAM VIP's then keep them in place.

As long as you keep your projects in subfolders these files are very easy to manage...I know a lot of SAM user get up in arms about them - they are not Temp files, they represent analysis of the WAV without changing the raw WAV.

You can use a third party browser like Xplorer2 to visually filter folders to only show WAV files. This is great if you are often pulling out audio files to share with collaborators and only need to see the WAV. In Windows you can also just "hide" the file type so you don't ever see them. When I export WAV files from a SAM folder to pass along to a non-SAM user I sort the folder by file type and grab only the WAV.

[tdor]

Be careful! Some of these files hold the data of your edits. For example edits on your audio file, or freeze data, etc. I have recently deleted a bunch of these files using Ultrasearch, then I reopened a VIP project and some edits were just gone.

Safest way to clean up: Go to File -> Clean up -> Save complete VIP in... a folder of your choice. Open your file from within that new folder and check for errors. Then replace your original folder with this new one. Or, check what files the process copied, and delete all but those files from your original folder.

 

[Johnny Blade]

Good tip, thanks!

[TerryBritton]

11 hours ago, tdor said:

Be careful! Some of these files hold the data of your edits. For example edits on your audio file, or freeze data, etc. I have recently deleted a bunch of these files using Ultrasearch, then I reopened a VIP project and some edits were just gone.

Safest way to clean up: Go to File -> Clean up -> Save complete VIP in... a folder of your choice. Open your file from within that new folder and check for errors. Then replace your original folder with this new one. Or, check what files the process copied, and delete all but those files from your original folder.

 

Right on the money, tdor! :-)

Terry

[JayBob]

Be also aware that HDP files that are created with the main wav file during the bouncing process do contain the name and path of the VIP from which they originate.

If these original HDP files are destroyed and automatically recreated you will not notice any difference until the moment you realize you are no more able to connect back to the original VIP using the "Edit Root VIP" function...

This can be a pity in case you need to easily recall some time later the original VIPs for further edits - when creating a CD for example.

[JoaCHIP]

I didn't know that deleting these was risky. I guess I never used the specific functionality mentioned above.

So now my suggestion is not to delete them, but rather that Samplitude should offer an option to store these files in a different location, the same way as LightRoom or RawTherapee can do with "sidecar" files.

The reason I find the current behavior undesirable is: Imagine a large company with many sound designers using the same sound library on a shared network drive. If everyone uses a different DAW, the sample library folders will get spammed with all sorts of odd files that are only relevant to each corresponding DAW. A folder with 100 .wav files might end up containing several hundred weird files left by different "spammy" DAWs.

And can we even be certain that e.g. the .HDP and .H2 files are even compatible across different versions of Samplitude in the future? If two users in said company use different incompatible versions of Samplitude, they might end up causing trouble for each other.