au files missing

Hi, I’m using Audacity 2.1.3, and I’ve done a silly thing. I’m editing a two-hour podcast. It’s laborious, and I’ve spent over two days on it so far. Today, before starting Audacity, I decided to move the project to another folder. I knew I had to move the data folder along with the .aup file, but I assumed it was safe to do that. Well, it wasn’t. When I loaded the project, I got the error message “Project check of [my project] detected 448 missing audio data (.au) blockfiles [etc]” and the options of quitting or treating the missing segments as silence, either temporarily or permanently. A check showed that there is now lots of silence in my recording.

Can anyone tell, please, if there’s any way of recovering the project? I checked the log file and the au files reported as missing do all seem to be there in the data folder, though Audacity can’t see them for some reason. Can I get the program to recognize them again? Or have the files become corrupted in the process of moving? (I tried moving the project back to the original location, but it didn’t help.) I’d be very grateful for any help. :slight_smile:

I’m editing a two-hour podcast.

Hopefully, you’re editing copies of the original voice tracks?

Does the show have multiple tracks? More than two blue waves top to bottom?

I don’t know why a project would do that. A simple move should be OK since you made sure not to change the names of anything and you moved the AUP project manager file and the _DATA folder into the same location.

Is there something magic about the drive? Is it a Network Connected Drive or an Internet Drive (Google Drive)? Those are not recommended and can cause problems. Describe the folder you moved it to.

the au files reported as missing do all seem to be there in the data folder,

Do they play? The little AU files will play in Audacity—for six seconds each.

Koz

Hi. Thanks for your suggestions. To answer your questions:

  1. Yes, I’m editing a copy of the original recording (even I’m not that daft :slight_smile:).

  2. Yes, the project has two tracks – the two sides of the conversation, recorded from Skype.

  3. Yes, I moved the project to Dropbox, thinking it would be safer if there were a system crash. I’ve moved it back to the local disk now, but Audacity still won’t read the data files.

  4. Yes they play in Audacity, but at double speed, even though the playback setting is normal.

Is there any hope of recovery, do you think, please?

Hope people won’t mind if I bump this, just in case. Still hoping I may be able to rescue the project :slight_smile:

the project has two tracks – the two sides of the conversation, recorded from Skype.

Two mono tracks? Skype is notoriously difficult to record.
Pamela? I thought the settings in Pamela were to produce a stereo show with you on one side the the guest on the other. This lends itself to backing up as a simple WAV stereo export.

but at double speed,

So that’s no. They don’t play correctly. Do any of the little AU files play correctly?

I’m editing a copy of the original recording

Does the original play?

In my opinion, there’s no hope of bringing the edit back. Jury’s out on what actually happened, but Audacity doesn’t do well with Drives Not Local. If you can’t reach out and touch it, the damage possibility goes up. Schools run into this. Audacity is running over here but the students are over there.

Koz

I was about to tell you to open the original and export a WAV (Microsoft) sound file, but you can’t do that if the original is two mono files, or much worse, two stereo files.

What was the original format? I would restart the machine before I opened the main show, now the only backup.

Koz

Thanks for your replies, Koz. I’m grateful for your efforts.

To clarify: the original is a single stereo track, with one voice on each side. It’s an mp3 recorded with MP3 Skype recorder. The original mp3 recording plays OK.

I’ve discovered something. Somehow, the rate settings of the au files has been changed. It’s 44100Hz instead of 16000Hz. If I open one of the au files in Audacity and change the rate back to 16000Hz, it plays fine. Could this be the root of the problem? If I changed the rate of all the au files back to 16000Hz, might the project read them again? It seems worth a try, but I’m not sure how to do it. Once I’ve changed the rate in an au file, how do I save/export it to au format? Also – a long shot – is there any way of doing a mass rate change on all the 475 au files?

Again, thanks for your help.

K