Save Reaper Project portable

[PeterSteinweg]

Hey Reaper Community

I had to make a Reaper project for my school, so i have to put it on my USB Stick, but I have no idea how to save it in a way that i can run it anywhere. Do you know how?

Greetings, Peter Steinweg

[nicholas]

Do File Save Project As, tick the boxes for Create subdirectory ... and Copy all media files to project directory.

Then close Reaper, go to Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder) and copy the whole project directory to your USB stick.

You're now good to go ...

[upside24]

I have a somewhat similar problem. I finally finished a song me and my 5 year old have been working on, tried to render to a disc and it wouldn't burn. So then I saved the output to a sync folder I have on my computer (basically a backup drive) and all the files are there but they are individual files, not the song as a whole. Can anyone help me with this? When I open "recent projects" it doesn't load all the tracks. I could probably have them point to the sync drive but I just don't want to keep walking down a confusing tunnel, deeper and deeper into more confusion. Nick, I tried to follow your Home Recording Manual but I must have messed up along the way. Finally, any suggestions on how I should setup Reaper so that all my files go to the correct space after each project? When I created my "Brad Sucks" file everything started saving there. thanks!

[clepsydrae]

Originally Posted by PeterSteinweg

I had to make a Reaper project for my school, so i have to put it on my USB Stick, but I have no idea how to save it in a way that i can run it anywhere. Do you know how?

If what you want is to be able to run Reaper with all the plugins and so forth from anywhere, what you want to do is download the Reaper installer, run the installer executable, and select "portable install" during the installation process. Install it to a folder on the USB drive. Run reaper.exe from the portable-install folder, configure your license, configure your audio card, etc. If you have third-party plugins, copy them to the USB stick as well in a "myplugins" folder, and configure the portable-install reaper.exe (not the one from your computer hard drive!) to look for plugins only in that folder (instead of the default folders on your computer's hard drive -- you do this to make sure that it's not relying on anything from your computer to run, only the USB drive. If you're not using any third-party plugins (like VST's, VSTi's, AU, etc) then you don't have to worry about it. You can find all these settings in the preferences for reaper.

Then save your project as nicholas described to the USB drive as well. Now you should be able to plug that USB drive into any computer, run reaper from it, configure it for whatever audio card is present on that computer, and open your project.

It's also a good idea to back up the installed reaper folder from the USB drive -- just copy it to your computer hard drive somewhere.

Originally Posted by upside24

So then I saved the output to a sync folder I have on my computer

What do you mean by "saved the output"? If you did File -> Save, that's not "saving the output", that's "saving the project". The "output" would be interpreted to mean the audio output of the project... see next:

they are individual files, not the song as a whole.

Perhaps what you seek is "render" -- rendering takes the project you have created in Reaper with many tracks and layers and whatnot, and generates a single WAV or MP3 file, etc.

I just don't want to keep walking down a confusing tunnel, deeper and deeper into more confusion.

It sounds like you may need to spend some time reading up on the basics of using Reaper. And the basics of DAWs in general. :-)

Finally, any suggestions on how I should setup Reaper so that all my files go to the correct space after each project?

When you start a new project, save it first, before recording anything, in a directory of its own. Then all the files you record for that project will go into that directory.

If you have already started a project without saving it in its own directory, you can do a 'save as' and in the dialog you can choose to move all media into the new directory. As long as media files aren't shared between projects, this shouldn't be a problem.

[upside24]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

If what you want is to be able to run Reaper with all the plugins and so forth from anywhere, what you want to do is download the Reaper installer, run the installer executable, and select "portable install" during the installation process. Install it to a folder on the USB drive. Run reaper.exe from the portable-install folder, configure your license, configure your audio card, etc. If you have third-party plugins, copy them to the USB stick as well in a "myplugins" folder, and configure the portable-install reaper.exe (not the one from your computer hard drive!) to look for plugins only in that folder (instead of the default folders on your computer's hard drive -- you do this to make sure that it's not relying on anything from your computer to run, only the USB drive. If you're not using any third-party plugins (like VST's, VSTi's, AU, etc) then you don't have to worry about it. You can find all these settings in the preferences for reaper.

Then save your project as nicholas described to the USB drive as well. Now you should be able to plug that USB drive into any computer, run reaper from it, configure it for whatever audio card is present on that computer, and open your project.

It's also a good idea to back up the installed reaper folder from the USB drive -- just copy it to your computer hard drive somewhere.



What do you mean by "saved the output"? If you did File -> Save, that's not "saving the output", that's "saving the project". The "output" would be interpreted to mean the audio output of the project... see next:



Perhaps what you seek is "render" -- rendering takes the project you have created in Reaper with many tracks and layers and whatnot, and generates a single WAV or MP3 file, etc.



It sounds like you may need to spend some time reading up on the basics of using Reaper. And the basics of DAWs in general. :-)



When you start a new project, save it first, before recording anything, in a directory of its own. Then all the files you record for that project will go into that directory.

If you have already started a project without saving it in its own directory, you can do a 'save as' and in the dialog you can choose to move all media into the new directory. As long as media files aren't shared between projects, this shouldn't be a problem.

Thank you for your reply. I am certainly a newbie with any computer recording. I have some xp with my Tascam 414, but this is a whole new beast! I ended up finding the files and finally got them to a CD, which was my goal for the day. My question about saving projects though: Shouldn't there be a folder within Reaper that my "save project" files ALL should go in to? ie) C:\Program Files\REAPER (x64)\Album Title. At the moment I have files (and vst's) on my external hard drive and in two locations on my computer. If I can get some advice on how some of you folks store things I'll try heading in that direction. I bought a new computer last week and copying everything over from the old to the new is where lots of these duplicates started. Thanks in advance!

[clepsydrae]

Originally Posted by upside24

My question about saving projects though: Shouldn't there be a folder within Reaper that my "save project" files ALL should go in to? ie) C:\Program Files\REAPER (x64)\Album Title. At the moment I have files (and vst's) on my external hard drive and in two locations on my computer.

Everyone does it a little differently, but a general pattern is as you describe: a drive or directory dedicated to audio projects, subfolders as needed ("clients", "personal", "testing", etc), sub-sub-folders as needed ("albumtitle"), with a sub-sub-sub-folder for each project ("songtitle"). It's up to you, but for song-based work it's a good idea for each project to have its own subdirectory which contains all the related files (except perhaps when projects are sharing a substantial number of audio source files: e.g. multiple remixes of a single song, etc.)

Also be mindful that sometimes a VST points to a file that may not be in the project directory: e.g. if you use ReaVerb to load a convolution reverb file, and you copy the project directory to a USB drive and load it up on a friend's computer, their ReaVerb may not have access to the same convolution reverb file, so you may need to take steps to make that work, etc etc. Same thing for sample libraries used by VSTi's. Using Reaper's feature to "copy all media into destination directory" doesn't always apply to such files (though it does for ReaVerb files, IIRC).

In terms of VSTs, it's nice to keep them in one place when you can, but in practice VSTs with installers end up in a few different places, with auxiliary files in still other places, etc (which is annoying, IMO). Not always a simple solution for that, but it's generally manageable.

Always make backups and, ideally, keep them off-site. Hard drives fail all the time. Or are stolen.

[upside24]

I appreciate your advice and suggestions. Moving forward I'll be on the right path. I just need to keep practicing and reading posts, watching tutorials. I really do appreciate the responses I've received from the forum.