In this episode, Paul invites his friend Mark, a film composer fresh from scoring the upcoming UK horror film The Shug, to tackle a creative but frustrating problem — a mountain of disorganized Logic Pro files.
Together, they enlist ChatGPT to help sort through the chaos. What follows is a mix of practical troubleshooting, unexpected tech hiccups, and a candid look at how AI can (and can’t) solve real-world creative problems.
From missing audio files to folder structure nightmares, this episode dives into:
- How Logic Pro handles file management — and how not to break it
- What to do when your audio projects lose their way
- Whether AI can truly rescue a disorganized musician
- Why “good questions” matter more than “right answers” when working with AI
It’s a funny, relatable, and honest look at the intersection of music production and artificial intelligence — with some wisdom on how to work smarter next time.
🎙️ Hosted by Paul at Talking to AI — where real people, real problems, and real conversations meet artificial intelligence.
Full Transcript
I am talking to AI.
A successor day, you don't need to know all the answers.
Just have good questions.
Chatting to AI is different from normal speech
and I hope you enjoy listening to the show
whilst getting ideas on how to hone your questions
to get the most out of AI.
My name is Paul.
The live conversations you hear are uncut
although sometimes the AI needs time to think.
In those cases, I've cut out the dead space.
OK, so hello everybody.
So today, it's going to be a little bit different.
I've got a friend called Mark
who's got a specific problem
that he's hoping to fix with ChatGPT.
So it's going to be another freeway.
It's going to be me and Mark and ChatGPT.
And we're going to work through this
and hopefully get him fixed up with his problem.
So do you want to talk about…
introduce yourself Mark
and also explain a little bit about
what you're trying to fix today.
Hey Paul, yeah, I can do that.
So yeah, I use Logic Pro software on a Mac
which is music production software.
I've just done…
or a few months ago, I finished off doing a film score.
So there's a lot of…
What is that film?
Is that film available now?
That film will be out soon.
It's a horror film called The Shug.
And hopefully it'll be out for this year.
Hopefully out this year.
So keep an eye out for it.
It's really good, really scary and got a great score.
OK, and that's based in the UK, is it?
Yeah, it's the story of a mythical demon
that lived in the Fens
and crazed on young people
and slaughtered them in the woods.
It's pretty good.
It's a great story and it's really fun
and I recommend it.
All right, OK, awesome.
So you've been doing the musical score for that film.
So what are you…
and you've got some kind of
technical issue with that, I guess.
Yeah, that's right.
Obviously there's a lot of music in a film.
So I had a lot of projects created in Logic.
So the way it works in Logic,
every time you want to make a piece of music
so I would have a scene for a film,
I'd have the bit of the movie in there
and I'd do the score for that.
That's called a project.
What happened was I'd be trying lots of different things,
doing lots of different scenes
and my file management was very poor
and it meant that when I was trying to send files
to the director or the guy I was working on the score with,
it was really difficult to keep track of things
and find what I needed.
So by file management being really poor,
do you mean like there were files sort of splattered
all over your hard drive
and you didn't know what they were?
And then I'd get inspired and do something
and I'd create a whole new folder structure
and call it like November 24
and do a few scenes there
and the naming conventions were all over the place
and you couldn't tell which bit of the film it was for.
It was just very difficult to get around.
So I suppose this is a problem that lots of people have
but you're having it particularly for that
but folder structures and things can be a challenge
for a lot of people, I guess.
Well, yeah, and I think it's difficult
in kind of normal work life
but the extra special problem you have with logic
is that after I'd sent everything to the director
and basically it was finished,
I thought I'm going to organize these folders
so I'm not spending ages digging around
looking for files anymore.
So I came up with a much more logical folder structure.
So that's a great idea for normal files
but a really bad idea for logic
because what happens when you open a logic project?
So if I open the file for the opening credits, say,
it would look for audio files and instruments
in the previous folder location
because I haven't told it that I've moved the folder.
So I have to tell logic that I've moved the folder
and where all those associated files are.
So now when I open one of my projects,
I immediately get this pop-up that says
audio file missing and I have to go and find them.
So that's all right if you've got one or two audio files missing
but I've got dozens of audio files missing
and I need a way that isn't just…
Well, I need to find out the best way to do it
because I haven't really…
You want to try and fix…
You want to try and get all of your files more organized
but actually working, I guess.
And do you also want to try and figure out a better way
for you to organize things in the future?
Yes, because every time…
I think to be honest, every time I've done a big-ish sort of job
that involves multiple projects, I have the same problem.
So yeah, I think the first thing here is
I want to get this sorted so all my projects work properly
and it's not having to find all these audio files.
Second thing, I want to make sure I know how to do this right
in future so I don't have this problem.
All right.
Okay, well, shall I get ChatGPT on the line
and see if you can explain your problem and see what happens?
Okay, sounds good.
Good morning, ChatGPT.
Good morning. Ready to jump into some Norwegian practice today?
Not today.
What I was hoping to do today was I've got a friend on the line
called Mark and he's got some questions for you.
He's a musician and he's struggling a little bit
with his audio files with Logic Pro
and he's got some questions for you.
So I'll just put you over to him
and he's going to ask you a question.
Hey, ChatGPT.
Hey there, Mark.
Sure thing. I'm all ears.
I know what you're running into with Logic Pro
and I'll do my best to help out.
Okay, I'm using Logic Pro X.
I can't remember which version but I could find that out.
What I've done is I've created a lot of projects
and then I moved the folders to try and organize my file structure a bit
so it's much more logical and easy to find things.
The trouble is when you move a folder in Logic
you'll move in the audio files within your project too.
So I get this message pop up that says
audio file not found and then it says
the audio file, whatever it is, was not found at its expected location.
So I can then go and find it myself
but I've got dozens and dozens of these files in the wrong place now.
So I'm hoping there's a solution that is less time consuming
than doing this for every single file.
So if you've got any ideas on how I can do this more efficiently.
Yeah, absolutely. That's a pretty common hiccup
when you reorganize things outside of Logic.
So one of the quickest ways to fix that
is actually using the project management features inside Logic.
You can use the consolidate or save a copy function
to basically gather all those audio files back into one folder.
So if you open your project and then go to file and choose save a copy as
and make sure to tick the box that says include audio files
it'll actually pull all those missing files together into one place again.
That way you won't have to relink each one manually.
And once you've done that, you should have a nicely organized
self-contained folder with everything in the right place.
Oh, okay. Let me try that then.
So I've just gone to open my file, my project, sorry,
and it's asking me to find these files.
So I'm getting the audio file not found window.
Do I just skip them all and then open my project
and then do this consolidation thing that you just talked about?
Yeah, exactly. You can go ahead and skip them all when that window pops up.
Just let the project open without relinking them right now.
And once you have the project open, you can do that save a copy as step
with the include audio files option checked.
That'll gather all the missing files into that relocation
and then everything should be in the right spot going forward.
So yeah, that should save you a whole bunch of manual relinking.
All right, this sounds very good.
So I'm going file, save a copy as…
Yep, exactly. And just make sure when you're in that save a copy as dialog
that you've checked the box to include all audio files.
Once you do that, it's basically going to scoop everything into that new saved folder.
And from that point on, you should have a nice organized project
with no more missing file headaches.
So that should do the trick.
Okay.
Okay, Paul, natural edit point.
Logic's just crashed. It's the first time it's ever done this.
Okay, yeah.
I'll just put you on mute strategy.
We're having some technical issues at our end.
Just bear with us.
No worries at all. I'll hang tight.
Sometimes these things have a sense of humor, I guess.
Actually, while my colleague is trying to wrestle with his computer
and getting it to…
I suppose, actually, Mark, if you have to turn off your computer
and turn it back on again, then we may have to restart this.
But I'll keep talking.
I'm going to try and get some views as to what chat…
Well, so what I'm thinking to LGBT is,
can you give us some advice as to how he doesn't create this mess again?
So hopefully you've just helped him fix his mess.
But how can he be more organized with his file structure
so that he doesn't have this problem again?
Yeah, definitely.
So a little bit of prevention definitely helps here.
One of the best things to do is to keep all your logic projects
and their audio files in a dedicated folder structure from the start.
So when you first create a project, use Logic's built-in save as
or save a folder option,
and always keep the audio files inside that folder.
If you need to reorganize, just do it from within Logic.
So is that the audio files for that particular project in a particular folder?
So every project has a separate folder, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, exactly.
So basically each Logic project should have its own dedicated folder,
and inside that folder you have all the audio files that belong to that project.
And if you keep it that way, you won't have to worry about moving things around later.
It'll all stay nicely together, and you won't run into those missing file issues.
So yeah, that's the way to go.
Okay, are there any, maybe some people have written about this in the past,
or maybe there's some videos on YouTube on to sort of a complete process
for managing your files when using Logic Pro?
Absolutely. There are some great resources out there.
For example, there's a blog post called Organizing and LPX,
the critical stacks to successful sessions that walks through good project organization.
And there's also a YouTube video called Developing File Management Skills in Logic Pro X
that gives you a nice visual guide.
So if Mark wants to dive a bit deeper, those should definitely help him out.
Okay, that sounds good. Do you think you could add those to the chat window
if you haven't already? The links to those two things.
Oh yeah, I've got them. They're here already. Fantastic.
All right then, I'll just put you on hold for a little bit.
Actually, I'm going to check TPT's assistance again.
Okay, all right.
I've rebooted Logic, we're all back.
I've just clicked Save a copy as for my file,
and it says there's an option here,
Organize my project as a package or a folder,
and it says copy the following files into your project.
So audio files and then there's things like movie file,
sampler data, all that kind of thing.
So can you tell me what I need to do there?
Actually, sorry, just before he continues,
is there any precautions that Mark should take to prevent
if this was to go wrong?
Anything he can do just to try to give him a full back position
to go back to where he was or just something that would
make it a bit safer in case this was to go wrong?
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great idea.
There's always a good precaution to first just make a backup
of the original project file exactly as it is right now.
So before you do the Save a copy as,
just go ahead and manually duplicate that project file
and put it somewhere safe.
That way, if anything goes sideways,
you've always got to fall back to the original state.
And then once you've done that,
you can go ahead and choose the Save as a folder option,
check that box to copy all the audio files
and any other resources into that folder,
and you should be good to go.
All right, I don't know if that's possible for you to do, Mark,
but if you haven't or if that isn't possible.
So what do you think about that little bit of advice
before you start?
Sounds sensible, but I don't see…
Is there all over your hard drive here?
But I don't see how saving the copy as a new file
would mess up the old one.
Okay, all right.
I'm going to go for it.
All right, okay, I'm going to keep quiet now
and let you deal with it.
Okay, right.
Let's save the copy as instructed by ChatGPT.
So I'm going to close my current project, sorry.
And I'm going to open my new one,
and let's see if ChatGPT has saved me
an absolute bunch of time here.
Fingers crossed.
Hopefully that does the trick
and you'll have everything neatly in place now.
And if it opens up smoothly
without any missing file messages,
then you're all set.
Let me know how it goes.
It has not worked.
I've got the same messages.
Well, technology likes to keep us on our toes, doesn't it?
All right, there's probably a small step or two
that we might need to tweak.
Sometimes logic can be a little bit finicky
if the files were already in a different place before.
So maybe there's just a little relinking step that we can do,
but no worries, we can figure that out.
Got it.
Well, no worries.
Sometimes it just needs a little bit of extra nudging
so we can definitely troubleshoot that step by step
and we'll get you all sorted out.
Okay, what do you reckon?
What do I need to do then?
All right, so one thing we can try
is just manually relinking one of the missing files
within the new project.
If you do that for one file,
logic often learns where everything else is
and then it'll kind of automatically find the rest.
So if you relink one, it might fix the whole chain
and if that doesn't work, we can try another approach.
But let's start there and see if that helps.
Okay, so I think, so I've got my audio file not found window.
I'm going to click on locate to locate this myself.
Oh, here we go, same for music too.
Perfect, yeah.
So once you find that first audio file manually
and you relink it, logic will usually go,
oh, okay, I see where everything is now
and it'll just kind of follow suit
and link all the other missing files automatically.
So yeah, go ahead and do that
and hopefully that should just tie everything together
and you'll be good to go.
Okay, so I've located my first one.
But it's just proceeding the same way
and asking me to locate all the other ones.
Okay, so sometimes laundry can be a little stubborn.
If it's still asking you to locate each one,
there's a chance that maybe it just hasn't fully learned the path yet.
One other trick you can try is to go into the project settings
and there's an option to relink all missing files in one go.
If that doesn't work, then at worst we might just have to do it once
for each file, but hopefully it's just one or two more clicks
and then it'll figure out the rest.
Let me know if that works.
So you're saying go back into the project
and go into the settings when it's open in Logic?
Exactly, yeah.
So once your project is open, you can head into the file menu
and then go to project settings
and there's usually an option in there under assets or file handling
that says something like relink all missing files.
If you run that command from the project settings,
you can do all relink and then you won't have to do them individually.
So definitely give that a shot.
Okay, so I've gone project files.
I've gone to assets and then it says project folder
and I've got options for copy audio files into project,
copy audio files, sample rate.
Is that what I need to do?
They're already checked though.
Yeah, if those are already checked,
then you've actually already got the set correctly.
Sometimes there's a separate option that says something like
reindex all files or relink missing files.
If you don't see that option, it might be a matter of
just making sure everything is saved again
after you've located one or two files manually.
But if all those boxes are already checked
and everything looks good,
you might just need to do a quick save and reopen
and then it might pick it up.
I did wonder about that.
I'm going to do that.
So I found a couple of files, I'm saving it, I'm closing it,
I'm going to reopen it.
Alright, fingers crossed on the reopen.
Sometimes that's just the little refreshing ease
to kind of recognize everything,
so hopefully when you open it back up,
it'll be nice and smooth.
Let me know if it works.
Okay.
Alright, well, let's see how it goes.
Hopefully this time it's all sorted out
and if it is, then awesome,
and if not, we'll just keep troubleshooting.
But hopefully this is the fix.
Yeah, it's not worked.
Oh, well, I appreciate the patience.
Sometimes these things can be a bit of a puzzle,
but no worries, we can keep at it.
Maybe we can try one more little trick
or at the very least we can kind of double check
if there's a specific path that logic's not seeing.
But don't worry, we will figure it out eventually.
Thanks for hanging in there.
Okay.
So I'm thinking my only options now
are to manually locate all these files.
Do you have any other little tricks
that we could try before I do that?
Yeah, I totally get it.
It can be a little tedious if we have to do it manually.
One trick you might want to try
before going that route
is just to check if there's a consolidated backup option.
Sometimes logic creates a backup file
in your project folder
that might have all the files already linked.
If you can find that backup and open it,
it might just be a cleaner version.
But if not, then yeah,
you might just have to do it manually.
Either way, we'll get you there.
Okay.
I think that
I'm just going to have to do it manually.
Can I just ask a question
to ChurchBT?
So, ChurchBT,
are there any like
scripts or anything like that
that he could run that would fix this?
Yeah, definitely.
So there are actually some user scripts
or little utility tools
that people in the logic community have created
that can battery link
or at least help you organize files a bit more easily.
So if you're comfortable looking up
a Logic Pro X user script
or utility online,
there are definitely some out there.
It can help automate that process a bit.
But yeah, if you want to do it manually,
that's totally fine too.
But there are definitely scripts that can help out.
What can you provide instructions
as to how to do one of these scripts?
So the script obviously has got
to find all these files and organize it.
Sure.
I can give you kind of a general overview.
Well, can we do a specific script?
Can we
go through a specific script?
Can you find the script
and then we'll try to run it?
So, I didn't find
a ready-made script just now,
but there is a method people in the
Logic Pro forums have suggested.
Basically, if you save your project as a folder
with at least one missing file,
there's a relink all missing files option
that might do the battery link four-year.
It's not exactly a script, but it's a built-in tool
that might save you some time.
Isn't that what we've just been doing?
Yes, you're absolutely right.
That is basically what we've been doing.
If it's not working in this case,
then the script approach might not add much more.
Sometimes these things just need a little persistence.
So if you don't find a ready-made script,
the manual route might be the way to go.
Oh dear.
It looks like it's not been so successful at this time.
So, I thank you chat, TBT.
I've got another question for chat.
Oh, okay. Go on.
Because it seems like this should be
very doable.
So, all of these audio files
that it can't find, they've got
very specific names.
So, I know that I've only got one file
on my laptop with that name.
So, it should be, it's certainly
possible to automate
that finding those files.
Are there any other options we could do
other than scripts or
the ones you've suggested
where we can set something up
to help my Mac
find a long list of files
in this way?
Yeah, that's a good point.
And there is actually another approach that you could try.
So, on a Mac,
you can use the find your search functionality
to locate all the files by their unique names.
And then what you can do is basically
drag them all into the correct project folder
at once. And after that
when you open logic, it should be able to see all the files
in the right place. It's kind of a manual
batch move, but it uses the finder
search to speed it up. So, that could be
a nice little workaround if you don't want to manually
click each file one by one in logic.
You can kind of do it in the finder and then just let logic
see the files. So, could you use finder
with some sort of pattern matching
so that you can find files
that have
a certain naming convention
because I'm guessing they do have some things in common
on the name.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can definitely do that. So, in finder
you can use the search bar and
you can type in a pattern that matches part of the file names.
So, if all of your audio files
have say a certain prefix or a certain extension
you can just search for that.
So, do you think
Mark you could
have you got an idea as to how you might
be able to do that in finder because then
we could say well if you can think of a pattern
then we could sort of do an exercise
where in finder we
try to find them and then you can confirm that you found
them all at least.
No, I think chat GPT
has gone off topic here.
So, the issue isn't that I don't know where they are
the issue is that logic doesn't know where they are.
So, I know where they are.
But it's telling logic where they are.
Well, I was a bit confused there. I thought you were asked
how do you find your files.
So, you were just asking is there any other way
for logic to find them.
Yeah, what I'm saying is it's asking me
it's saying this audio file cannot be found
but it knows the
exact name of the file.
So, it's not like
I've saved it as like audio file one
so chat GPT I've got an idea
I imagine that
the audio that
this project has got some kind of
file with the links
and the destinations of all the
all the link
files in it somewhere.
Could it be as simple as deleting that
file and then rerunning
it and then getting it to find
them all again or something like that.
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
So, logic does keep a sort of project
file cache that remembers where everything was
linked and if you clear that out
or you basically force logic to be scanned
then sometimes it'll just pick everything up
fresh. So, yeah one thing you can do is
either move the project to a new location
or just clear out that cache file.
Well, maybe we can try that. Maybe we could try moving that file
onto your desktop or something Mark
so that it doesn't have the access to it
but you can always come back to it
and then try and run it again
which does that sound like a good idea Mark?
I don't understand.
Explain again.
Okay, so it's my understanding
that when you create a project
in Logic Audio
there's a little cache file
it's actually got a list of all of where the files actually are
and my suggestion was
maybe if you delete that cache file
it will then force it to
look for everything again
and by doing so
it might actually find everything
with a bit of hinting
it might actually figure it all out.
So, my suggestion was
not to delete it completely
but to move it so that you can always put it back
if it all goes horribly wrong.
So, that could potentially work
but it won't solve my problem
as nicely as I'd hoped
because it would only do it for each project.
So, my issue is I've got lots of projects with
with like
some of them have got like 20 files missing.
Alright, let me just ask that question
to churchBD there.
So, churchBD, is there a way of like
so if this was a good idea
could you do it for, is there like a global file
or does every project have its own cache?
Yeah, so each project
does generally have its own cache
or its own sort of set of references
so if you have a lot of projects
you'd have to do it for each one
there's not really a global file
that fixes all the projects at once
but I think your idea of moving the cache
for a single project to test it out
is a good start and if that works
then you might just have to repeat it
for each project that has missing files
so it's a little bit of a manual process
but it could definitely work.
Do you have any other thoughts Mark?
So my thoughts are on the surface
churchBDT's
put a lot of suggestions that don't work
to me.
However, I mean
what this has done really is
it's
made me much more confident that
what I've got to do is basically
locate all these files
which is annoying
and time consuming but it's not
just less annoying
when you know that that's the only option to you
it's not that there's some easy option
that I just don't know about
and I'm doing all this manual labour for nothing
And you never know, there might be something
in that video, I'll send you the link to the video
and the blog post that they suggested about
so I don't know
if you noticed that when I was talking
but the best practice stuff
there could be something in that as well
that explains a bit more intimately
how this whole linking thing works
and I suppose
worst case, you're going to have a load of work
but next time you're going to know
how to do it properly, I suppose
Yeah, absolutely, which is a really important thing
to be honest and I think these chats with chatGPT
there's quite a lot of
it's sort of rounded out
my understanding of how this works a bit as well
Okay, so it has been
which has actually been helpful
Yeah, it's been helpful even though on the surface
it's been absolutely useless
and only proposed things that haven't worked
Alright, okay
well, I guess
I'll say goodbye to chatGPT now
so goodbye chatGPT
Bye chatGPT
Goodbye
and hey, I'm glad if it at least helped around things out a bit
even if we didn't find the perfect solution
good luck with the rest of it
and if you need anything else, just let me know
We've had our conversation
I just thought it'd be quite interesting to have a quick chat with Mark
just to see his thoughts on the way this went
so we're just chatting out
so yeah
so what was I saying
if I was saying I thought it was quite good
this being the second conversation that
if I didn't mute chatGPT
so long as we both talked
quite quickly after each other then chatGPT
couldn't really get in so we could have a conversation with ourselves
chatGPT could still hear us
and then we could
if we both paused then chatGPT can come in
so I thought that worked quite well
yeah, I think so too
I mean he's a bit
verbose
he takes quite a long time to say anything
yes
and that was the first time I've talked to chatGPT
so I do use it quite a bit
but I generally
I speak to it
and I read it back
so in a lot of ways
that's easier to deal with
so
and I probably would have been a bit more
I would have given a bit more
thought to my prompt
if I'd have done that on my own
so I would have asked him for step by step
instructions instead of
instead of him
saying it all in one go
do you think there's
some advantages
to doing it this way?
yeah I do, I wonder if it's
I wonder if it's
if
either chatGPT needs to be a bit better
or we probably we need to be a bit
better at interacting with it for it to work
properly though
but do you think because I
do feel that when I'm talking
to chatGPT
I think it's because I'm not
having to put so much effort into the communication
I can
think a bit better
I don't know it seems to be more productive
I seem to be able to ask
there's definitely things where
I would prefer to do it via text
there are things
I don't know it just feels easier
when you're doing
support and you're doing things as you
go and you can just ask
it's kind of nice I think it can
be quite nice
it's a lot more natural isn't it as well
because a lot of what you want chatGPT
or any of these AI
assistants to be is like a little
knowledgeable friendly
assistant
and you're much more
likely to talk to them
and try and work things through with them
verbally than you are by text
so it seems like that's the way
we're going to want to use them
I can imagine
especially for people
well I don't know I think if you're talking
about things then I think it's good
say if you're trying to flesh out
an idea I think I found that
to be quite useful because it's like
you're talking to somebody
but you don't have this problem
if I'm talking to you for example
or you're talking to me we're talking about something
at some point my limited knowledge
is going to become a problem
and obviously chatGPT doesn't know
anything and it's got bias and all that kind of stuff
but generally
that isn't the problem
so you've got all this
access to information at the same time
as being able to talk to someone
yeah
yeah although
I think that's true although one thing
I think that whole conversation just now
showed
kind of did show its limitations a bit
because it kept coming up
with things that didn't work
and then in the end it sort of went back
to the beginning and suggested a thing
that we'd already tried
and didn't work
I think that kind of process
thinking about it afterwards
it seems to me I've done this before
I've looked into this years ago
I've had the same problem years ago and looked into it
but I did it via Google
and I did the same sort of going
round in circles and chasing my tail
but it took me a lot longer
so going through forums
and then reaching the conclusion
I don't know what to do in giving up
so it's almost
for that example it's a much quicker
and more efficient way to go around in circles
and realise that something's not possible
yes, yes because that is the
difficult thing, it would be nice
because Cheshirevity is so agreeable
it doesn't tell you
it won't come out very easily
with the this isn't possible
yeah, yeah
so yeah okay
alright well I was just curious
yeah obviously
because I've been having these conversations recently
and that I was interested
to know what you were thinking
because you've been doing a lot with
co-pilot haven't you
yeah so we've been using
we've got co-pilot at work
and got like the big
main co-pilot and I'm in the
co-pilot sort of beta testing group as well
so we get access to the
latest features so it's quite different
because it's much more
of a work sort of implementation
so it can access your files
and it can help you sort of find
things and analyse data in theory
I mean
a lot of the things I've tried didn't work with that either
so it's
kind of a different thing
but still pretty
when it works it's pretty amazing
but often you just have interactions
like the one today where you spend 45 minutes
trying to do something and then realise you can't do it
yeah
alright well look I hope maybe
those links will be useful
they definitely will
that kind of stuff it's
if I'd have done that in the first place
so yeah
okay well that's the end then
so thanks for that
and I'll speak to the guys
in the next episode
alright, cheers mate
thanks Pau
for show notes
and more go to talking2ai.show
thanks for watching
I am talking to AI.
A successor day, you don't need to know all the answers.
Just have good questions.
Chatting to AI is different from normal speech
and I hope you enjoy listening to the show
whilst getting ideas on how to hone your questions
to get the most out of AI.
My name is Paul.
The live conversations you hear are uncut
although sometimes the AI needs time to think.
In those cases, I've cut out the dead space.
OK, so hello everybody.
So today, it's going to be a little bit different.
I've got a friend called Mark
who's got a specific problem
that he's hoping to fix with ChatGPT.
So it's going to be another freeway.
It's going to be me and Mark and ChatGPT.
And we're going to work through this
and hopefully get him fixed up with his problem.
So do you want to talk about…
introduce yourself Mark
and also explain a little bit about
what you're trying to fix today.
Hey Paul, yeah, I can do that.
So yeah, I use Logic Pro software on a Mac
which is music production software.
I've just done…
or a few months ago, I finished off doing a film score.
So there's a lot of…
What is that film?
Is that film available now?
That film will be out soon.
It's a horror film called The Shug.
And hopefully it'll be out for this year.
Hopefully out this year.
So keep an eye out for it.
It's really good, really scary and got a great score.
OK, and that's based in the UK, is it?
Yeah, it's the story of a mythical demon
that lived in the Fens
and crazed on young people
and slaughtered them in the woods.
It's pretty good.
It's a great story and it's really fun
and I recommend it.
All right, OK, awesome.
So you've been doing the musical score for that film.
So what are you…
and you've got some kind of
technical issue with that, I guess.
Yeah, that's right.
Obviously there's a lot of music in a film.
So I had a lot of projects created in Logic.
So the way it works in Logic,
every time you want to make a piece of music
so I would have a scene for a film,
I'd have the bit of the movie in there
and I'd do the score for that.
That's called a project.
What happened was I'd be trying lots of different things,
doing lots of different scenes
and my file management was very poor
and it meant that when I was trying to send files
to the director or the guy I was working on the score with,
it was really difficult to keep track of things
and find what I needed.
So by file management being really poor,
do you mean like there were files sort of splattered
all over your hard drive
and you didn't know what they were?
And then I'd get inspired and do something
and I'd create a whole new folder structure
and call it like November 24
and do a few scenes there
and the naming conventions were all over the place
and you couldn't tell which bit of the film it was for.
It was just very difficult to get around.
So I suppose this is a problem that lots of people have
but you're having it particularly for that
but folder structures and things can be a challenge
for a lot of people, I guess.
Well, yeah, and I think it's difficult
in kind of normal work life
but the extra special problem you have with logic
is that after I'd sent everything to the director
and basically it was finished,
I thought I'm going to organize these folders
so I'm not spending ages digging around
looking for files anymore.
So I came up with a much more logical folder structure.
So that's a great idea for normal files
but a really bad idea for logic
because what happens when you open a logic project?
So if I open the file for the opening credits, say,
it would look for audio files and instruments
in the previous folder location
because I haven't told it that I've moved the folder.
So I have to tell logic that I've moved the folder
and where all those associated files are.
So now when I open one of my projects,
I immediately get this pop-up that says
audio file missing and I have to go and find them.
So that's all right if you've got one or two audio files missing
but I've got dozens of audio files missing
and I need a way that isn't just…
Well, I need to find out the best way to do it
because I haven't really…
You want to try and fix…
You want to try and get all of your files more organized
but actually working, I guess.
And do you also want to try and figure out a better way
for you to organize things in the future?
Yes, because every time…
I think to be honest, every time I've done a big-ish sort of job
that involves multiple projects, I have the same problem.
So yeah, I think the first thing here is
I want to get this sorted so all my projects work properly
and it's not having to find all these audio files.
Second thing, I want to make sure I know how to do this right
in future so I don't have this problem.
All right.
Okay, well, shall I get ChatGPT on the line
and see if you can explain your problem and see what happens?
Okay, sounds good.
Good morning, ChatGPT.
Good morning. Ready to jump into some Norwegian practice today?
Not today.
What I was hoping to do today was I've got a friend on the line
called Mark and he's got some questions for you.
He's a musician and he's struggling a little bit
with his audio files with Logic Pro
and he's got some questions for you.
So I'll just put you over to him
and he's going to ask you a question.
Hey, ChatGPT.
Hey there, Mark.
Sure thing. I'm all ears.
I know what you're running into with Logic Pro
and I'll do my best to help out.
Okay, I'm using Logic Pro X.
I can't remember which version but I could find that out.
What I've done is I've created a lot of projects
and then I moved the folders to try and organize my file structure a bit
so it's much more logical and easy to find things.
The trouble is when you move a folder in Logic
you'll move in the audio files within your project too.
So I get this message pop up that says
audio file not found and then it says
the audio file, whatever it is, was not found at its expected location.
So I can then go and find it myself
but I've got dozens and dozens of these files in the wrong place now.
So I'm hoping there's a solution that is less time consuming
than doing this for every single file.
So if you've got any ideas on how I can do this more efficiently.
Yeah, absolutely. That's a pretty common hiccup
when you reorganize things outside of Logic.
So one of the quickest ways to fix that
is actually using the project management features inside Logic.
You can use the consolidate or save a copy function
to basically gather all those audio files back into one folder.
So if you open your project and then go to file and choose save a copy as
and make sure to tick the box that says include audio files
it'll actually pull all those missing files together into one place again.
That way you won't have to relink each one manually.
And once you've done that, you should have a nicely organized
self-contained folder with everything in the right place.
Oh, okay. Let me try that then.
So I've just gone to open my file, my project, sorry,
and it's asking me to find these files.
So I'm getting the audio file not found window.
Do I just skip them all and then open my project
and then do this consolidation thing that you just talked about?
Yeah, exactly. You can go ahead and skip them all when that window pops up.
Just let the project open without relinking them right now.
And once you have the project open, you can do that save a copy as step
with the include audio files option checked.
That'll gather all the missing files into that relocation
and then everything should be in the right spot going forward.
So yeah, that should save you a whole bunch of manual relinking.
All right, this sounds very good.
So I'm going file, save a copy as…
Yep, exactly. And just make sure when you're in that save a copy as dialog
that you've checked the box to include all audio files.
Once you do that, it's basically going to scoop everything into that new saved folder.
And from that point on, you should have a nice organized project
with no more missing file headaches.
So that should do the trick.
Okay.
Okay, Paul, natural edit point.
Logic's just crashed. It's the first time it's ever done this.
Okay, yeah.
I'll just put you on mute strategy.
We're having some technical issues at our end.
Just bear with us.
No worries at all. I'll hang tight.
Sometimes these things have a sense of humor, I guess.
Actually, while my colleague is trying to wrestle with his computer
and getting it to…
I suppose, actually, Mark, if you have to turn off your computer
and turn it back on again, then we may have to restart this.
But I'll keep talking.
I'm going to try and get some views as to what chat…
Well, so what I'm thinking to LGBT is,
can you give us some advice as to how he doesn't create this mess again?
So hopefully you've just helped him fix his mess.
But how can he be more organized with his file structure
so that he doesn't have this problem again?
Yeah, definitely.
So a little bit of prevention definitely helps here.
One of the best things to do is to keep all your logic projects
and their audio files in a dedicated folder structure from the start.
So when you first create a project, use Logic's built-in save as
or save a folder option,
and always keep the audio files inside that folder.
If you need to reorganize, just do it from within Logic.
So is that the audio files for that particular project in a particular folder?
So every project has a separate folder, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, exactly.
So basically each Logic project should have its own dedicated folder,
and inside that folder you have all the audio files that belong to that project.
And if you keep it that way, you won't have to worry about moving things around later.
It'll all stay nicely together, and you won't run into those missing file issues.
So yeah, that's the way to go.
Okay, are there any, maybe some people have written about this in the past,
or maybe there's some videos on YouTube on to sort of a complete process
for managing your files when using Logic Pro?
Absolutely. There are some great resources out there.
For example, there's a blog post called Organizing and LPX,
the critical stacks to successful sessions that walks through good project organization.
And there's also a YouTube video called Developing File Management Skills in Logic Pro X
that gives you a nice visual guide.
So if Mark wants to dive a bit deeper, those should definitely help him out.
Okay, that sounds good. Do you think you could add those to the chat window
if you haven't already? The links to those two things.
Oh yeah, I've got them. They're here already. Fantastic.
All right then, I'll just put you on hold for a little bit.
Actually, I'm going to check TPT's assistance again.
Okay, all right.
I've rebooted Logic, we're all back.
I've just clicked Save a copy as for my file,
and it says there's an option here,
Organize my project as a package or a folder,
and it says copy the following files into your project.
So audio files and then there's things like movie file,
sampler data, all that kind of thing.
So can you tell me what I need to do there?
Actually, sorry, just before he continues,
is there any precautions that Mark should take to prevent
if this was to go wrong?
Anything he can do just to try to give him a full back position
to go back to where he was or just something that would
make it a bit safer in case this was to go wrong?
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great idea.
There's always a good precaution to first just make a backup
of the original project file exactly as it is right now.
So before you do the Save a copy as,
just go ahead and manually duplicate that project file
and put it somewhere safe.
That way, if anything goes sideways,
you've always got to fall back to the original state.
And then once you've done that,
you can go ahead and choose the Save as a folder option,
check that box to copy all the audio files
and any other resources into that folder,
and you should be good to go.
All right, I don't know if that's possible for you to do, Mark,
but if you haven't or if that isn't possible.
So what do you think about that little bit of advice
before you start?
Sounds sensible, but I don't see…
Is there all over your hard drive here?
But I don't see how saving the copy as a new file
would mess up the old one.
Okay, all right.
I'm going to go for it.
All right, okay, I'm going to keep quiet now
and let you deal with it.
Okay, right.
Let's save the copy as instructed by ChatGPT.
So I'm going to close my current project, sorry.
And I'm going to open my new one,
and let's see if ChatGPT has saved me
an absolute bunch of time here.
Fingers crossed.
Hopefully that does the trick
and you'll have everything neatly in place now.
And if it opens up smoothly
without any missing file messages,
then you're all set.
Let me know how it goes.
It has not worked.
I've got the same messages.
Well, technology likes to keep us on our toes, doesn't it?
All right, there's probably a small step or two
that we might need to tweak.
Sometimes logic can be a little bit finicky
if the files were already in a different place before.
So maybe there's just a little relinking step that we can do,
but no worries, we can figure that out.
Got it.
Well, no worries.
Sometimes it just needs a little bit of extra nudging
so we can definitely troubleshoot that step by step
and we'll get you all sorted out.
Okay, what do you reckon?
What do I need to do then?
All right, so one thing we can try
is just manually relinking one of the missing files
within the new project.
If you do that for one file,
logic often learns where everything else is
and then it'll kind of automatically find the rest.
So if you relink one, it might fix the whole chain
and if that doesn't work, we can try another approach.
But let's start there and see if that helps.
Okay, so I think, so I've got my audio file not found window.
I'm going to click on locate to locate this myself.
Oh, here we go, same for music too.
Perfect, yeah.
So once you find that first audio file manually
and you relink it, logic will usually go,
oh, okay, I see where everything is now
and it'll just kind of follow suit
and link all the other missing files automatically.
So yeah, go ahead and do that
and hopefully that should just tie everything together
and you'll be good to go.
Okay, so I've located my first one.
But it's just proceeding the same way
and asking me to locate all the other ones.
Okay, so sometimes laundry can be a little stubborn.
If it's still asking you to locate each one,
there's a chance that maybe it just hasn't fully learned the path yet.
One other trick you can try is to go into the project settings
and there's an option to relink all missing files in one go.
If that doesn't work, then at worst we might just have to do it once
for each file, but hopefully it's just one or two more clicks
and then it'll figure out the rest.
Let me know if that works.
So you're saying go back into the project
and go into the settings when it's open in Logic?
Exactly, yeah.
So once your project is open, you can head into the file menu
and then go to project settings
and there's usually an option in there under assets or file handling
that says something like relink all missing files.
If you run that command from the project settings,
you can do all relink and then you won't have to do them individually.
So definitely give that a shot.
Okay, so I've gone project files.
I've gone to assets and then it says project folder
and I've got options for copy audio files into project,
copy audio files, sample rate.
Is that what I need to do?
They're already checked though.
Yeah, if those are already checked,
then you've actually already got the set correctly.
Sometimes there's a separate option that says something like
reindex all files or relink missing files.
If you don't see that option, it might be a matter of
just making sure everything is saved again
after you've located one or two files manually.
But if all those boxes are already checked
and everything looks good,
you might just need to do a quick save and reopen
and then it might pick it up.
I did wonder about that.
I'm going to do that.
So I found a couple of files, I'm saving it, I'm closing it,
I'm going to reopen it.
Alright, fingers crossed on the reopen.
Sometimes that's just the little refreshing ease
to kind of recognize everything,
so hopefully when you open it back up,
it'll be nice and smooth.
Let me know if it works.
Okay.
Alright, well, let's see how it goes.
Hopefully this time it's all sorted out
and if it is, then awesome,
and if not, we'll just keep troubleshooting.
But hopefully this is the fix.
Yeah, it's not worked.
Oh, well, I appreciate the patience.
Sometimes these things can be a bit of a puzzle,
but no worries, we can keep at it.
Maybe we can try one more little trick
or at the very least we can kind of double check
if there's a specific path that logic's not seeing.
But don't worry, we will figure it out eventually.
Thanks for hanging in there.
Okay.
So I'm thinking my only options now
are to manually locate all these files.
Do you have any other little tricks
that we could try before I do that?
Yeah, I totally get it.
It can be a little tedious if we have to do it manually.
One trick you might want to try
before going that route
is just to check if there's a consolidated backup option.
Sometimes logic creates a backup file
in your project folder
that might have all the files already linked.
If you can find that backup and open it,
it might just be a cleaner version.
But if not, then yeah,
you might just have to do it manually.
Either way, we'll get you there.
Okay.
I think that
I'm just going to have to do it manually.
Can I just ask a question
to ChurchBT?
So, ChurchBT,
are there any like
scripts or anything like that
that he could run that would fix this?
Yeah, definitely.
So there are actually some user scripts
or little utility tools
that people in the logic community have created
that can battery link
or at least help you organize files a bit more easily.
So if you're comfortable looking up
a Logic Pro X user script
or utility online,
there are definitely some out there.
It can help automate that process a bit.
But yeah, if you want to do it manually,
that's totally fine too.
But there are definitely scripts that can help out.
What can you provide instructions
as to how to do one of these scripts?
So the script obviously has got
to find all these files and organize it.
Sure.
I can give you kind of a general overview.
Well, can we do a specific script?
Can we
go through a specific script?
Can you find the script
and then we'll try to run it?
So, I didn't find
a ready-made script just now,
but there is a method people in the
Logic Pro forums have suggested.
Basically, if you save your project as a folder
with at least one missing file,
there's a relink all missing files option
that might do the battery link four-year.
It's not exactly a script, but it's a built-in tool
that might save you some time.
Isn't that what we've just been doing?
Yes, you're absolutely right.
That is basically what we've been doing.
If it's not working in this case,
then the script approach might not add much more.
Sometimes these things just need a little persistence.
So if you don't find a ready-made script,
the manual route might be the way to go.
Oh dear.
It looks like it's not been so successful at this time.
So, I thank you chat, TBT.
I've got another question for chat.
Oh, okay. Go on.
Because it seems like this should be
very doable.
So, all of these audio files
that it can't find, they've got
very specific names.
So, I know that I've only got one file
on my laptop with that name.
So, it should be, it's certainly
possible to automate
that finding those files.
Are there any other options we could do
other than scripts or
the ones you've suggested
where we can set something up
to help my Mac
find a long list of files
in this way?
Yeah, that's a good point.
And there is actually another approach that you could try.
So, on a Mac,
you can use the find your search functionality
to locate all the files by their unique names.
And then what you can do is basically
drag them all into the correct project folder
at once. And after that
when you open logic, it should be able to see all the files
in the right place. It's kind of a manual
batch move, but it uses the finder
search to speed it up. So, that could be
a nice little workaround if you don't want to manually
click each file one by one in logic.
You can kind of do it in the finder and then just let logic
see the files. So, could you use finder
with some sort of pattern matching
so that you can find files
that have
a certain naming convention
because I'm guessing they do have some things in common
on the name.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can definitely do that. So, in finder
you can use the search bar and
you can type in a pattern that matches part of the file names.
So, if all of your audio files
have say a certain prefix or a certain extension
you can just search for that.
So, do you think
Mark you could
have you got an idea as to how you might
be able to do that in finder because then
we could say well if you can think of a pattern
then we could sort of do an exercise
where in finder we
try to find them and then you can confirm that you found
them all at least.
No, I think chat GPT
has gone off topic here.
So, the issue isn't that I don't know where they are
the issue is that logic doesn't know where they are.
So, I know where they are.
But it's telling logic where they are.
Well, I was a bit confused there. I thought you were asked
how do you find your files.
So, you were just asking is there any other way
for logic to find them.
Yeah, what I'm saying is it's asking me
it's saying this audio file cannot be found
but it knows the
exact name of the file.
So, it's not like
I've saved it as like audio file one
so chat GPT I've got an idea
I imagine that
the audio that
this project has got some kind of
file with the links
and the destinations of all the
all the link
files in it somewhere.
Could it be as simple as deleting that
file and then rerunning
it and then getting it to find
them all again or something like that.
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
So, logic does keep a sort of project
file cache that remembers where everything was
linked and if you clear that out
or you basically force logic to be scanned
then sometimes it'll just pick everything up
fresh. So, yeah one thing you can do is
either move the project to a new location
or just clear out that cache file.
Well, maybe we can try that. Maybe we could try moving that file
onto your desktop or something Mark
so that it doesn't have the access to it
but you can always come back to it
and then try and run it again
which does that sound like a good idea Mark?
I don't understand.
Explain again.
Okay, so it's my understanding
that when you create a project
in Logic Audio
there's a little cache file
it's actually got a list of all of where the files actually are
and my suggestion was
maybe if you delete that cache file
it will then force it to
look for everything again
and by doing so
it might actually find everything
with a bit of hinting
it might actually figure it all out.
So, my suggestion was
not to delete it completely
but to move it so that you can always put it back
if it all goes horribly wrong.
So, that could potentially work
but it won't solve my problem
as nicely as I'd hoped
because it would only do it for each project.
So, my issue is I've got lots of projects with
with like
some of them have got like 20 files missing.
Alright, let me just ask that question
to churchBD there.
So, churchBD, is there a way of like
so if this was a good idea
could you do it for, is there like a global file
or does every project have its own cache?
Yeah, so each project
does generally have its own cache
or its own sort of set of references
so if you have a lot of projects
you'd have to do it for each one
there's not really a global file
that fixes all the projects at once
but I think your idea of moving the cache
for a single project to test it out
is a good start and if that works
then you might just have to repeat it
for each project that has missing files
so it's a little bit of a manual process
but it could definitely work.
Do you have any other thoughts Mark?
So my thoughts are on the surface
churchBDT's
put a lot of suggestions that don't work
to me.
However, I mean
what this has done really is
it's
made me much more confident that
what I've got to do is basically
locate all these files
which is annoying
and time consuming but it's not
just less annoying
when you know that that's the only option to you
it's not that there's some easy option
that I just don't know about
and I'm doing all this manual labour for nothing
And you never know, there might be something
in that video, I'll send you the link to the video
and the blog post that they suggested about
so I don't know
if you noticed that when I was talking
but the best practice stuff
there could be something in that as well
that explains a bit more intimately
how this whole linking thing works
and I suppose
worst case, you're going to have a load of work
but next time you're going to know
how to do it properly, I suppose
Yeah, absolutely, which is a really important thing
to be honest and I think these chats with chatGPT
there's quite a lot of
it's sort of rounded out
my understanding of how this works a bit as well
Okay, so it has been
which has actually been helpful
Yeah, it's been helpful even though on the surface
it's been absolutely useless
and only proposed things that haven't worked
Alright, okay
well, I guess
I'll say goodbye to chatGPT now
so goodbye chatGPT
Bye chatGPT
Goodbye
and hey, I'm glad if it at least helped around things out a bit
even if we didn't find the perfect solution
good luck with the rest of it
and if you need anything else, just let me know
We've had our conversation
I just thought it'd be quite interesting to have a quick chat with Mark
just to see his thoughts on the way this went
so we're just chatting out
so yeah
so what was I saying
if I was saying I thought it was quite good
this being the second conversation that
if I didn't mute chatGPT
so long as we both talked
quite quickly after each other then chatGPT
couldn't really get in so we could have a conversation with ourselves
chatGPT could still hear us
and then we could
if we both paused then chatGPT can come in
so I thought that worked quite well
yeah, I think so too
I mean he's a bit
verbose
he takes quite a long time to say anything
yes
and that was the first time I've talked to chatGPT
so I do use it quite a bit
but I generally
I speak to it
and I read it back
so in a lot of ways
that's easier to deal with
so
and I probably would have been a bit more
I would have given a bit more
thought to my prompt
if I'd have done that on my own
so I would have asked him for step by step
instructions instead of
instead of him
saying it all in one go
do you think there's
some advantages
to doing it this way?
yeah I do, I wonder if it's
I wonder if it's
if
either chatGPT needs to be a bit better
or we probably we need to be a bit
better at interacting with it for it to work
properly though
but do you think because I
do feel that when I'm talking
to chatGPT
I think it's because I'm not
having to put so much effort into the communication
I can
think a bit better
I don't know it seems to be more productive
I seem to be able to ask
there's definitely things where
I would prefer to do it via text
there are things
I don't know it just feels easier
when you're doing
support and you're doing things as you
go and you can just ask
it's kind of nice I think it can
be quite nice
it's a lot more natural isn't it as well
because a lot of what you want chatGPT
or any of these AI
assistants to be is like a little
knowledgeable friendly
assistant
and you're much more
likely to talk to them
and try and work things through with them
verbally than you are by text
so it seems like that's the way
we're going to want to use them
I can imagine
especially for people
well I don't know I think if you're talking
about things then I think it's good
say if you're trying to flesh out
an idea I think I found that
to be quite useful because it's like
you're talking to somebody
but you don't have this problem
if I'm talking to you for example
or you're talking to me we're talking about something
at some point my limited knowledge
is going to become a problem
and obviously chatGPT doesn't know
anything and it's got bias and all that kind of stuff
but generally
that isn't the problem
so you've got all this
access to information at the same time
as being able to talk to someone
yeah
yeah although
I think that's true although one thing
I think that whole conversation just now
showed
kind of did show its limitations a bit
because it kept coming up
with things that didn't work
and then in the end it sort of went back
to the beginning and suggested a thing
that we'd already tried
and didn't work
I think that kind of process
thinking about it afterwards
it seems to me I've done this before
I've looked into this years ago
I've had the same problem years ago and looked into it
but I did it via Google
and I did the same sort of going
round in circles and chasing my tail
but it took me a lot longer
so going through forums
and then reaching the conclusion
I don't know what to do in giving up
so it's almost
for that example it's a much quicker
and more efficient way to go around in circles
and realise that something's not possible
yes, yes because that is the
difficult thing, it would be nice
because Cheshirevity is so agreeable
it doesn't tell you
it won't come out very easily
with the this isn't possible
yeah, yeah
so yeah okay
alright well I was just curious
yeah obviously
because I've been having these conversations recently
and that I was interested
to know what you were thinking
because you've been doing a lot with
co-pilot haven't you
yeah so we've been using
we've got co-pilot at work
and got like the big
main co-pilot and I'm in the
co-pilot sort of beta testing group as well
so we get access to the
latest features so it's quite different
because it's much more
of a work sort of implementation
so it can access your files
and it can help you sort of find
things and analyse data in theory
I mean
a lot of the things I've tried didn't work with that either
so it's
kind of a different thing
but still pretty
when it works it's pretty amazing
but often you just have interactions
like the one today where you spend 45 minutes
trying to do something and then realise you can't do it
yeah
alright well look I hope maybe
those links will be useful
they definitely will
that kind of stuff it's
if I'd have done that in the first place
so yeah
okay well that's the end then
so thanks for that
and I'll speak to the guys
in the next episode
alright, cheers mate
thanks Paul
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