Recording is not complete after saving - Please help

A few days ago, I recorded my set at a festival and the set of someone who was playing after me. I just let audacity recording both sets (4h total), save the set as a audacity project and export the file to an mp3 file. While I was checking my set and the set of the other guy, I realised that the set was not complete. Instead of 4h, it was just 2,5h. I thought it was because someone turned Audacity off, but when I was listening it back, I heard that audacity had recorded the whole set, but skip true some numbers. For example, when a new number began, audacity skipped the track from the begin to the end. A few tracks after the skipped one are complete and then some tracks aren’t. U just really don’t know how this is possible. Never before I had problems with recording a (long) set. But now I can’t use the recording, because not all the tracks are complete in it because of the skipped parts. I used an audiocard (behringer ufo202) and a macbook pro running on high sierra. Does someone have a solution for me? I still have all the .au files, and i just really don’t know why Audacity skipped true some parts of the recording… The programm was running for 4h, so it wasn’t turned of… :frowning:

Is the Audacity project the same as the MP3 file?
Could someone have paused the recording and then restarted it?

Yes, the mp3 file and the Project file have some parts were some tracks were skipped… I was there the whole time and the programm was running the whole 4h. The strange thing is that when I stopped audacity, the recording was 3h and 55 minutes. But it isn’t now… I thought it was maybe because at some parts we were playing “in the red” on the mixer. Is it possible that Audacity skipped that parts automatically? Thanks anyway!!

The only feature in Audacity that’s anything like that is “Sound Activated Recording”. When enabled, Audacity will automatically pause when the input level drops below the activation level. The default activation level is -50 dB, which is pretty low level.
More info: Transport Menu: Transport Options - Audacity Manual
(needless to say, sound activated recording is off by default)

hmm no that can’t be the problem (i also checked it). I do have all the .au files. Is there a way to manually replace all the files into one set? maybe that the recording is complete when I try this? Or is this hopeless? Maybe that audacity do not opened all the .au files because of the size. Don’t know if this can be a reason, but just to make sure. Thanks for the thinking!

3 hours stereo WAV is one of the natural file limits (2 Gb). That’s the first thing that came to mind when you were describing the problem. Possibly nothing to do with it, but still.

Koz

If, when opening the project, Audacity does not complain of “orphan block files”, then there is no point in manually importing the .au files. In other words, there are no .au files that are not already referenced in the .aup file.
– Bill

How do you know that?

That is totally bizarre. Audacity does not know about “tracks” or “songs”.

So something happened between the time you “stopped audacity” and “now”. If the recording was showing 3h55m when you stopped it, then all that time was indeed recorded. About 1h25m has been deleted (not just silenced), and those deletions comprise selected songs from the recording. I can’t imagine how a technical glitch in Audacity could cause that.
– Bill

ok thanks for the update!

Your right, I don’t know that, but I do know that I have a map with different .au files. I read that sometimes, audacity won’t load all the .au files if there is a error. So I thought that when I do this manually, I will have all the .au files that are on my laptop and have a chance to get my complete recording back

Let me put it this way: I have a recording from my set (2h) and 2h from someone else which contains different tracks that are mixed together. Some tracks aren’t complete in the recording, while the whole track has been played. Audacity skips some minutes of the set, but somehow it merged it together into one piece. What do you get? Skipped parts of some songs. Maybe this is more clear? if i look to the time frame: you don’t see seconds or minutes that are lost. Also the strange thing is, that the last track at 3:55:00 is there (in this recording you hear it around 2:35:00?!)




True! so it isn’t the last part of the recording that is missing, of the first part etc. It are just many small sound pieces that are missing true the whole set (in this case tracks that aren’t complete and you hear that Audacity skips some parts). But you hear the many tracks that are played (even the last track of the second set), but from min 18 to the last part, you hear tracks that are not complete (while they were played completely).
i’m affraid that I just lost the parts because what I read from everyone, this is not a familiar complaint (for example a bug or something). But it is so strange. I use Audacity for a long time, even with the same audiocard. This is really the first time something like this happend to me.
Thanks anyway, really appreciate it!

What do you mean by “map”. How do you know they are “different”? Different from what?

At any point in this process, did Audacity give an error message when opening the project?

– Bill

No error messages at al. I mean with different just a lot of small audiofiles (see picture). I think this is normal, because it look familiar with other times.
Screen Shot 2017-11-28 at 00.11.14.png
What i do notice is that Audacity do not open all the .au files. I was trying to open some .au files. Some files Audacity opened (could even listen to the fragments), but at some files Audacity wasn’t responding at al and I had to use the “force quit” option from mac.

If that is a raw recording with no editing at all, the folders d00, d01 … d0a should all be the same size, the final folder d0b is likely to be smaller.
What size are they (including their contents)?

If there are more .AU files in the data folder than are required by the project, Audacity will throw a warning about “orphan block files” when you first try to open the project.
If there are less .AU files in the data folder than are required by the project, Audacity will throw a warning about “missing block files” when you first try to open the project.

Did we establish whether the “missing” parts of the recording are periods of silence (as if the recording level was temporarily set to zero during the recording), or completely missing (as if the recording was stopped and then resumed)?
How many separate bits are missing?
Is it always complete songs that are missing?

The sizes of the folders:
d00: 271.604.736 bytes (272,6 MB on disk) for 257 items
d0a: 271.604.736 bytes (272,6 MB on disk) for 257 items
d0b: 196.544.064 bytes (197,3 MB on disk) for 187 items
d01 up to d09: 271.604.736 bytes (272,6 MB on disk) for 257 items

Haven’t had a error message as far as I know. Maybe that I missed it, but I really doubt it, because I opened for the first time yesterday (after saving and exporting it Saturday)

second, as if the recording was stopped and then resumed. But the strange thing is that while I was performing or the other guy, nobody touched my laptop. It even didn’t go on sleeping mode or something…

hard to say, because it are some parts during the recording. have a example of a skipped track here: this is around the 1:45h (the first 2h it happend around the 4 times, but in the second part it is almost at every track).

As you can hear, it looks like at some parts someone pressed the stop button and resumed or something. But this is not the case, it just can’t be. I was there all the time… oh and ps. I know you guys don’t know the track, but still you can hear that it skips true the number I think? otherwise I can upload a larger part if necessary.

Not always, first 2h just 4 times but the second two hours are almost complete failure like the example I gave (listen to fragment above).

That is also bizarre. You apparently have damaged .au files in the _data folder. If Audacity crashes when trying to open them I’d expect Audacity to crash when trying to play them as part of a project.

What is the file size of the damaged .au files compared to good ones?

– Bill