Reference Manual

50 Managing Files and Sets
5.4 Live Clips
Individual audio or MIDI clips can be exported to disk in the Live Clip format for easy retrieval
and reuse in any project. Audio clips only contain references to samples on disk (rather than the
audio data itself), so they are very small, which makes it easy to develop and maintain your own
collection.
To save a clip from the open Live Set to disk, simply drag it to the Places section of the browser
and drop it into the Current Project or any user folder. For audio clips, Live will manage the
copying of the clip’s sample into this new location based on the selection in the Collect Files on
Export chooser (page 63). You can then type in a new name for the clip or confirm the one
suggested by Live with [Enter].
A Live Clip in the Browser.
Live Clips are a great way of storing your ideas for later use or development, as they save not
only the original clip, including all its clip and envelope settings, but also the original track’s de-
vices. In order to recreate a Live Clip’s device chain, either drag it into a track containing no clips
or devices, or drag it into the space in the Session or Arrangement View containing no tracks.
Note that Live Clips that are imported into tracks already containing devices or clips will appear
with their clip settings but not their devices. You could, for instance, drop a bassline Live Clip on
an existing track that drives a bass instrument, rather than creating a new track.
Clips belonging to any Live Sets already on disk are also Live Clips. Please see the section on
merging Sets (page 51) for more on this topic.
Note that storing default clip settings with a sample’s analysis file is different from saving a Live
Clip. The default clip in the .asd file annotates the sample with sensible default values (warp,
gain and pitch settings) so that it will play in a defined way when it is added to a Set. Live Clips,
on the other hand, are stored on disk as separate musical ideas. For example, you could create