I’ve written a short script to extract a list of sample files used in a song. I noticed in at least one Song.xml file that there’s a an asterisk ("*") at the end of some of the file paths.
Like this:
<FileName>//File:K:\ReaperProjects2\110bpm_SGP_20170309a\0309a_001_09_d4_110bpm.wav*</FileName>
What does that asterisk indicate?
One possibility (not saying that this is correct) is that it indicates that the sample data has been modified from the original by the Renoise sampler in some way? For example, load a sample into a blank song, then say cut part of the sample out. Save the song. An asterisk may appear after the filename entry in the resulting song.xml.
One possibility (not saying that this is correct) is that it indicates that the sample data has been modified from the original by the Renoise sampler in some way? For example, load a sample into a blank song, then say cut part of the sample out. Save the song. An asterisk may appear after the filename entry in the resulting song.xml.
Empirically this is correct. Just tested it out, and after editing a wav sample the Song.xml had an asterisk next to the matching FileName entry.
Thanks!
(This experiment also showed me my script is buggy and fails ot list al the samples, so thanks helping me catch that, too!)
Side note: My script was not extracting all of the sample file paths because not all samples are listed as such. It seems that any sample that gets sliced is then stored in Song.xml as an Instrument. In that case the file path of the source wav is not included. 
This is not (probably) a big deal for me since I’ve been giving my wav samples unique names. The Song.xml has the base name of the source wav (e.g. “0301_00102_116bpm”) which will be good enough for me. My concern is to know if I’ve inadvertently reused the same sample in multiple songs, and to help avoid reusing a sample as assemble new songs. Or at least know that I’m reusing something and need to make sure there’s some sufficient additional transformation to avoid having songs sound too much like one another.
Side note: My script was not extracting all of the sample file paths because not all samples are listed as such. It seems that any sample that gets sliced is then stored in Song.xml as an Instrument. In that case the file path of the source wav is not included.
This is not (probably) a big deal for me since I’ve been giving my wav samples unique names. The Song.xml has the base name of the source wav (e.g. “0301_00102_116bpm”) which will be good enough for me. My concern is to know if I’ve inadvertently reused the same sample in multiple songs, and to help avoid reusing a sample as assemble new songs. Or at least know that I’m reusing something and need to make sure there’s some sufficient additional transformation to avoid having songs sound too much like one another.
The simplest way to check for two files is they are the same or not at bit level is to take a Hash like MD5 or SHA-1 or SHA-256. We use this a lot for everything from custom file type detectors to duplicate removers. Dunno which language you are using but all languages have a crypto library to perform simple hashing routines. These format discussions in the forum might help me later as I delve deeper into Lua and Renoise API so kindly ignore if what I am posting is irrelevant to your purposes now.
