If you've found this post because you're panicking that you may have lost your work in Ableton Live, there may still be hope of recovering it.
A few times I've been unable to open an Ableton Live set that I'd saved previously. My HD would churn away for a long time, and Live would eventually crash and disappear. Very frustrating.
If it was ever to turn out that the .als file was really unopenable, It wouldn't be a complete disaster since I always 'Save as' using an incrementing version number: "MyTrack1.als", "MyTrack2.als". So that if the last file I saved really was corrupt, and unopenable, I'd still have a previous version I could go back to and work from. I strongly recommend saving a new version of your track each time you save.
So far though, I've always been able to recover the current version.
Delete Live's preferences file
On my machine the file is located at ~/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live 7.0.1/Preferences.cfg. This often solves the problem and its the fastest fix, so try it first.
Remove your plugins
Many times it's been the case that removing a particular .au or .vst plugin from my plugins directory allowed me to open the file again. In particular I've noticed that if I've been using a demo of a plugin, and the demo has expired, then the demo plugin would cause Live to crash on opening a set (I experienced this recently with demos from Nugen Audio). If Live opens a set which uses a plugin that's no longer in your plugins folder, you will be notified by a dialog window, just click 'Ok' to instruct Live to continue loading. If the set loads, missing plugins will be represented by 'empty' plugin graphics. You can delete these or replace them with working plugins.
Remove corrupt audio files
Another thing that can stop a set from opening is if some of the audio files it depends on are corrupt. If removing plugins hasn't helped, try looking in your live set's Samples directory. See if any of the audio files are ZERO kB. If they are, remove them and try opening the set again.
Import the set track-by-track
A trouble-shooting technique that can be useful in this situation is to open an empty set, and import the tracks from the set you're having trouble with one by one. To do this, browse you your set in Live's browser, expand the set's folder using the arrow icon, and drag the individual tracks that have appeared, into the arrange window. It can be a pain to recreate a set this way, especially if you used return effects and master track automation, which can't be recovered like this (afaik), but this approach can still be useful for identifying where the problem is.
Post in the comments if you know of any other tips for those times a Live set won't open.
04 June 2008
"My Ableton Live set won't open!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
10x for the help, but that did not solve my problem
When I try to load a live set of a Mix that I made and did not finish, I can hear the sound of the music but I can't do anything and Ableton freezes, so I need to end the process to exit the program
I need help please
10x
Thanks for this. Totally saved my project.
Just a small addition to your first suggestion, re: deleting the preferences.cfg file.
I was able to recover everything, automation and all by renaming, instead of deleting the file. Here's what I did:
1. Rename the preferences.cfg file to something else, like preferences2.cfg
2. Open the problematic *.als file. Re-save it.
3. Go back and delete the newly automatically created preferences file, and re-rename the old preferences file (i.e. preferences2.cfg) back to "preferences.cfg"
and everything came back.
hm, when i try to expand the drop down menu for the live set in the browser (to troubleshoot), it freezes too! at this point, do you think that my laptop is just not keeping up?
thanks so much for the help
MANY THANKS FOR THESE TIPS!!!
I've just recovered a set on which I had spent a lot of time crafting a nice distorted guitar sound.
Last time I closed Ableton, it asked me if I wanted to remove some unused sounds. Guess what? These were 0Ko files. Once deleted, the set could be loaded perfectly!
Chuffed
Post a Comment