6 Cubase Media Management Tips

It's all well and good knowing Cubase well enough to produce great songs and mixes... but staying organized, and knowing how to manage your media can be just as important.  

Tip 1. Understand about the Default Project Folder

Cubase makes you choose a project folder when you begin any new project, and if you don't, it sends everything to a default location called Cubase Projects inside your User > Music folder (Mac) or Documents folder (PC). If you click on the Default Location field in the Steinberg Hub that opens when you create a new project, you can manually set this default location to be anywhere. If you have never set a specific new location for your projects, they may well all still be stored inside this folder, possible sequentially named. 

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Tip 2. Manually Redirect Recordings

You can right-click on the header area of any audio track in Cubase and choose Set Record Folder to manually redirect all recorded audio for that track to any location you like. So you can theoretically have different tracks all saving audio to different folders or drives. This can be handy for example if you are working on a small capacity laptop and need to record multitracked drums at very high resolution. Be aware that when diverting files like this you need to remember where you put them! 

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Tip 3. Take a Snapshot

If you select File > Back Up Project you can take a complete snapshot copy of a project which is very handy for security and also if you are about to make big changes to a project but want the option to revert it later. The options window lets you minimize audio files and freeze edits as well as removing unused audio files and omitting any video files, all to save space. Of course you can untick the relevant options if you want to copy absolutely everything just to be safe. 

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Tip 4. Dive into the Pool

The Pool window hasn't had its look updated for a while but it's still a very useful window to know about. Here you can view, search for and preview every single media file that's associated with a project regardless of whether or not it has been used on the timeline. Double-clicking any audio file opens it in the Sample Editor and you can drag and drop material from the Pool directly into the project. You can also import audio into the Pool without having to first create an audio track in the project which is useful for using it as a kind of project bin. 

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Tip 5. Use Plug-Ins and Processing Offline

You can actually apply processing to audio files from the Pool even when they have not been used in a project yet. Right-click on any file or group of files and then scroll down to Processing or Plug-ins. Using this technique you could for example batch normalize a bunch of files, or apply the same compression plug-in to multiple files at once. The possibilities are basically endless, and it works like a sort of offline batch processor. 

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Tip 6. Batch Convert your Files 

Also by right-clicking in the Pool you can choose to batch sample and bit rate convert any files and select whether to create new files, replace the old ones and even swap between stereo and mono files. This is generally quicker than exporting first or dragging stuff to the timeline to achieve the same thing. 

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Learn more about Cubase at AskVideo:

https://www.askvideo.com/course/cubase-8-101-moving-forward-with-cubase-8

Hollin Jones was classically trained as a piano player but found the lure of blues and jazz too much to resist. Graduating from bands to composition then production, he relishes the chance to play anything with keys. A sometime lecturer in videographics, music production and photography post production, Hollin has been a freelance w... Read More

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