Talk:ADAT Data Archiving Process

Moving Data from Alesis ADAT to a KDHX Firewire Hardrive

Live performances at KDHX are recorded to an ADAT machine manufactured by Alesis. All the data on the ADAT drives must be transferred to a hard drive, put into a ProTools session, and burned to a DVD for archival purposes. This ensures two things: that KDHX always has a hard copy of the live performance data, and that the ADAT drives don't fill up.

You'll need the following supplies for this process:

• ADAT Hard Drive 1, 2 or 3 - use whichever one contains the data that needs to be archived
• The external hard drive labeled ADAT Data
• The Fireport adapter for ADAT drives
• A firewire cord to connect the two drives

Setting Up the Hard Drives

In order to move data from one storage device to another, they must be chained in parallel. This is how to set up the hard drives:

• Ensure both hard drives are off. The power switch for the external hard drive is on the back and labelled “On/Off”. The switch for the ADAT drive is on the back of the adapter, and also labelled “On/Off”.
• Plug the ADAT drive into the Fireport adapter.
• Both the external hard drive and the ADAT drive need power supplies. There will be cords for both on the desk. Double-check both drives are off, and plug both in.
• Plug the FireWire cord from the computer into the back of the external hard drive. This is very important. The external hard drive must be the hub between the computer and the ADAT Fireport adapter.
• Take a FireWire cable and plug it into the unused port on the external hard drive, and connect the other end to the ADAT Fireport adapter.

There should now be an external hard drive connected via FireWire to the computer, and also to the ADAT Fireport adaptor. Both should have their power supplies plugged in. The ADAT drive should be plugged into the ADAT Fireport adapter.

Setting Up the Mac

Next, it's time to set up the Mac so that it can read the information from the ADAT drive. This step is tricky, but incredibly important. It's a workaround necessary due to a glitch between this version of Apple's operating system and Alesis's software. It does work though, so it's important to follow the instructions very carefully at this point.

Turn on both the drives. The on/off switches are on the backs of the machines. Launch the Alesis software. Its the icon on the dock that say “adat FST”.

Once the software is launched, there will be a window that looks like this:

In the upper right hand corner of the window is a box labelled “Export to Directory”. Next to it is a button that says “Choose”.

This selects where the data will be exported to. Click the “Choose” button, and select the “KDHX drive #3”, then the “ADAT backup” folder. In this folder, there should be three folders. “ADAT backup HD1”, “ADAT backup HD2”, and “ADAT backup HD3”. Select the one appropriate for the ADAT drive that is being backed up.

Once that is set up, exit the program. Once it's closed, relaunch it and verify that the “Export to Directory” window shows the folder that was just selected. If it does, the files are ready to export.

Exporting the Files

Click on the files you want to export. They are listed underneath the “Export to Directory” window.

Highlight the one to be exported, and click the “Export” button to the right. This will take some time.

Once it's completed, verify the files are in the folder selected by going to the Finder and taking a look.

The files will be listed as .aif files.

Once it's verified, the files are ready to be imported into ProTools.

Using ProTools and Toast to Archive ADAT Data

So the data is now off of the ADAT drive, and happily living on the KDHX external hard drive. The data has to be imported into ProTools, verified, and burned to a DVD in data format.

Setting Up ProTools Session

Click the ProTools icon to launch the program. Open a new project, and select “KDHX drive #3”, the “ADAT backup data”, then the appropriate ADAT drive that corresponds to where the data came from. The title of the project should be the artist/band's name, and the date they played. For this example, Ryan Spearman's session is being used.

When entering the date, make sure to use hyphens. ProTools doesn't like slashes.

ProTools will now build the file, and create an empty edit window. Go into the Finder and locate the .aif files. See above to find their location. Now, just simply click and drag them into the ProTools edit window.

The task manager will show a progress bar as the audio waveforms are being built.

Verifying Songs

Once ProTools is done building the audio, cross-reference all the songs with Soundcloud. Verify that each song is the same as the Soundcloud version. The whole song doesn't have to be listened to, but the whole session needs to be double-checked to make sure data didn't get lost. Remember, this is the final archive of the session, so be 100% certain that what is being saved is the entirety of the session.

Finding and Deleting Empty Tracks

After the audio is verified, double-click on the Zoom tool. It's the magnifying glass icon in the top left section of the screen.

By double-clicking on it, the whole session will be in view in the edit window. Now the distinction can be made between empty tracks, and tracks with only one or two sounds on them.

An empty track looks like this:

There isn't an audio waveform on this track. If uncertain about whether or not there is audio, there are two steps to take. First, enlarge the audio waveforms. This is done using the audio zoom tool. It's located in the upper left corner of ProTools.

And it looks like this:

Clicking the top of the button will make the audio waveforms larger, while the bottom will make it smaller.

The second way to double-check there is no audio is to Solo the track and listen to any place you think there may be audio.

Some tracks will have faint audio. Maybe it was the DJ microphone, maybe it was an effect the artist used only once during the session. Ensure these do not get deleted. An example of what faint audio looks like:

As you can see, there is very faint audio on this track.

If there are blank tracks, and it's been double and triple checked that they are blank, they need to be deleted. This cuts down on the size of the file and is very important for conserving space.

Confirming Data and Burning Final Data DVD

Double-checking that everything was done correctly up to this point is very important. As mentioned before, this is the final archival copy of the session, and it must be complete and perfect.

In the Finder window, there should be one folder containing the artist's name and date of performance. Inside this folder should be a ProTools session that has been verified for accuracy, and edited so that there are no blank tracks. The Audio Files folder should contain all of the .aif files originally taken off the ADAT.

Once it's confirmed that everything is correct, the final data DVD is ready to be burned.

It's time to burn a data disk of the session. Open Toast Titanium. The button is on the dock, and it looks like a toaster.

Once Toast is open, look to the upper left of the window and select the Data icon. From there, select the option for Mac and PC.

Now just click and drag the artist's file folder from the Finder into Toast. The whole folder should appear in the middle window.

If it's a small file, less than 700 MB, use a CD to burn it. The majority of the time, a DVD will be used. The size of the file, as well as the format of the disk can be viewed and changed at the bottom of the toast menu. Look at the picture of the Toast window above. At the bottom is a green toolbar with a small window next to it that says DVD. This is where the format can be changed. The toolbar shows how much space the file will take up on the given format.

If the file is over 4.4. GB, it will need to be split into two folders, and burned onto two disks.

Go ahead and insert the disk, click the big red button, and then label the DVD with the artist's name, date of performance and ADAT. Place the finished DVD's in a CD folder, write artist's name and performance date on the folder tab, and archive by date in the ADAT archiving drawers in Studio C.