I have multitrack from two live gigs. For some reason, one of those entire gigs was saved as a bunch of 1 MB au files. How do I interpret the file names to either return the complete folder to it’s original state as WAV tracks or open them in the correct sequence in Audacity?
The “.AU” files are the audio data for a saved Audacity project.
When you save an Audacity project, it creates a small “.AUP” file, and a “_data” folder. By default, the audio data is saved (as “.AU” files) in the “_data” folder. The small “.AUP” file is the “Audacity project file”, and that tells Audacity how to reassemble the data to create the project.
To open an Audacity project, you must have both the “.AUP” file and uts “_data” folder.
WARNING: Do not manually edit or change the either the AUP file or the _data folder outside of Audacity, otherwise the project may become unusable. The AUP file and its _data folder must stay together.
To open an Audacity project, launch Audacity, then “File menu > Open Project” and select the .AUP file.
To create a normal audio file that will play in other applications, “export” the audio from the project ("File menu > Export > ")
For more information about Audacity projects, see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audacity_projects.html
I never actually saved a project. For some reason, the app took the multitrack from one of the two dates & saved it back to the thumb drive as six numbered file folders, each of which has multiple 1.037 MB .au files that are not in sequence. The original multitrack WAV files are gone for that folder.
Where exactly are these .au files saved? What is the full directory path?
They’re on a thumb drive as a pm-data file/e00/d00 through d05 then the 1.037MB files that begin w/ e000.
What’s the actual location of the .au files? For example: “E:/Recording/Wednesday rehearsal/wishing_data/e00/d00/”
F:/MDW6Strings1/R_20170929-082921pm_data/e00/d00
OK, so can you see the file:
F:/MDW6Strings1/R_20170929-082921pm.aup
While there is a file w/ that name, it’s the board mix from one set of the evenings three, & not the multitrack. The 1.037 MB files are sections of the individual tracks from the multitrack recordings, I just need to figure out how to recompile them.
Normally, Audacity will do that automatically when you open the .AUP file.
The .AUP file contains the instructions that tell Audacity what to do with all of those .AU files. Without the instructions (the “.AUP” file), you just have a load of useless 6 second clips.
It is therefore vitally important that you keep the .AUP file and its “_data” folder together, and don’t manually change them in any way.
For more information about how to safely manage Audacity projects, see: Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity Manual
For a new recording that has not been edited, it is sometimes possible to reassemble the .AU data files manually without the .AUP file, but it is difficult and will not work if any editing or processing was done. Information about this here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recovering_crashes_manually.html
In most cases, if you don’t have the .AUP file, then it’s time to cut your losses and start again.
I never touched the multitrack, & this only happened for one of the two dates that we recorded. The only thing I ever opened was the board feed to decide what I wanted to keep and/or try & fix. Unfortunately, this was the only copy of those files.
Oh yeah, we tried to recompile manually, but the logic behind the file naming doesn’t allow for determining what files are sequential. The one time we found two clips that sounded like they were in sequence, there was an obvious blip between the two when played.
the logic behind the file naming doesn’t allow for determining what files are sequential.
Right. The only way to put them back together is if you didn’t apply any corrections and you use a tool that looks at the time and date stamps. Those do track, but they’re not very accurate. You can get a stereo show with the left and right swapping occasionally.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recovering_crashes_manually.html
Koz