Sent Project with AUP file and .AU files not opening

Hi there, I had someone recently send me their Audacity project file. They initially sent me just their AUP file over email and the I went to their place separately and dowloaded the AU files. You can see in the attachment all the .AU files are there in 6 different folders. The message I get when I try and open the AUP file - which is in the same folder as the .AU file folders - is "Couldn’t find the project data folder: “Hollywood - Tommy_data”…I have also tried downloading the Audacity recovery software although it doesn’t appear to work with my Mac. Can you please advise what I am best to do? The audio files appear to be there so I assume there’s a way?
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Maybe the .aup txt file got corrupted in transfer?

Could you post the .aup file so someone can check?

In general, it’s far better to zip up the .aup file and the data folder into one .zip file to move projects. And I always export wavs first, as a backup.

Depending on what you’re doing exactly, it might be wiser to transfer wav files anyhow. But we don’t know what you’re trying to do.

If both of you will be working on the project, it could be an advantage to move the project.

If only one of you is working on it, moving wavs seems safer to me.

Thank you for your response. I have attached the AUP file. I had someone try their first Podcast and interview someone. I was going to intro and outro the discussion and then convert to MP3 before posting it on iTunes. Let me know what you think of the attached?
Hollywood - Tommy 2.aup (195 KB)

Open the AUP file in a text editor and read it. Scroll down to where it says projname=" .

projname=“Hollywood - Tommy_data” version=“1.3.0”

There you find that the Project Name is not Hollywood - Tommy 2.aup but Hollywood - Tommy.aup.

The show name is burned into the AUP file and it must match both the _DATA folder and the AUP file. Not optional.

Koz

If it still doesn’t open, I need to come back in a bit.

Koz

Another problem. The AUP file cannot be inside the _DATA folder. They should be separate but in the same folder or location.

Koz

Thanks Koz, I appreciate your support on this one. I went to the persons house who saved the file and now he’s created multiple versions in order to originally try and send me the file, it’s caused a bit of a mess. I have the original AUP file but I don’t believe I have the original data file. I do have the data file with all the smaller files, totalling 1.3GB for a 1 hour discussion. If there anyway to salvage the data files? I have placed them in a dropbox folder here for your review: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dgx6uig9hu5h77t/AAAGRJqgjxdJZLI19k8BX0Osa?dl=0

I have attached the original AUP file
Hollywood - Tommy.aup (195 KB)

Hi Koz,

Wondering if you had a chance the loo at the above for me?

Many thanks,
Cam

Without going through the thread again, is this the raw recording? Capture the voices and Save the Project?

As a fuzzy rule, we recommend doing all this file juggling and show management with WAV (Microsoft) sound files, not Projects. Projects have a nasty habit of doing tricks like this unless everybody is surgically on-board with how they work.

As I think it’s mentioned above, if you do need to move a Project, pile everything into a ZIP archive and ship that around instead of trying to manage the individual pieces.

I’m posting to one of the developers to help out.

Koz

Ok understand Koz. Really appreciate you helping out here, life saver!

And yes, this is the raw recording here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dgx6uig9hu5h … X0Osa?dl=0

I have attached the AUP file above but it doesn’t seem to pick up.

If it’s the same AUP file you sent earlier, I have it.

We’re both on Macs. That will put a hitch in our gitalong, so to speak. I think there is a Windows utility that will try to put an AUP-less show back together.

Here’s the manual posting.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recovering_crashes_manually.html

We’re going to pretend your computer crashed before it could write the AUP file to tell Audacity where everything is. I think that’s in effect what we have here.

Do you know if i’s a mono recording? Even if it’s stereo, if it’s only one voice, it may not make any difference if Left and Right get repeatedly swapped which is what happens if you try a free-wheeling recovery in a stereo track.

Koz

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Scroll down.

???

Koz

Sorry, heres the proper link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dgx6uig9hu5h77t/AAAGRJqgjxdJZLI19k8BX0Osa?dl=0

It was done in stereo. two voices.

Many thanks

OK, well, the good-ish news is the tiny fragments seem to be in good shape, at least the one I checked. Generally, if you’re going to have problems, it’s going to be global. Attached. Each of the AU files will open in Audacity.

What’s the possibility of getting the recordist to gather everything up into a zip file and resend it? The snippets are intentionally named crazy-at-random to avoid system management problems, so the only hope is follow the instructions in that link I gave you. I think it tries to sort by times/dates and that’s why it occasionally scrambles left and right.

I’ve never tried to rescue a crashed project, so you’re no further ahead than I am.

There was one poster who did it completely manually. He opened up all his thousands of AU files one at a time and sorted them on his timeline by pasting.

Jury’s out on why the show will not play with that AUP Project Manager file. Are you sure it’s from the right show? I’m frightened the DropBox service didn’t start with one single _data folder instead of charging right into the sub folders. I know the other elves are pretty clear it’s not a good idea to spread out the files and folders like that.

Koz

There is one other oddity. Illustration. That name is different from the ones you gave me. Is that a feature of DropBox, or does the name really have a “1” in it? All the names in the show have to exactly match.

By the way, this is why I never uses spaces in filenames. I know it’s a holdover from the paleolithic when we were computing with rocks, but it’s accepted by all three computer systems and it doesn’t have problems like this.

Koz
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I mentioned previously he created a mess on his Mac to send me the file originally. I went to his house and there were files everywhere. The original dad file I could find only had 520MGB where the actual file is 1.3GB. I do have the zipped version, but not sure why that would make a difference. They’re still all in smaller files. What should I do with that?

I went to his house and there were files everywhere.

I’m picturing the YouTube Cat Video where the owners put the toilet paper roll on the wrong direction.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audacity_projects.html

The _data folder contains a top level folder like that e00 folder. That in turn holds millions of six second au sound files which also contain other production data. I think if your show goes over a certain length, it folds over to a second e00-type folder (d00??) and starts the whole sub-folder dance again.

Anything from that Project document?

Koz

I made an hour and one minute project. This is what it looks like.
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I opened the d00 folder and it contains 257 AU files.
Screen Shot 2017-09-27 at 19.48.37.png
All of my times and dates are the same because I created a “fake” show in a couple of seconds. Yours should show increasing times and dates if you can talk Windows into showing them to you.
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Koz