Audacity crashes if playing after a certain time point

Hi all,

Have a really strange thing happening that I’d like to fix, if possible.

Using Audacity 2.0.2-alpha-July 19 2012
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64bit
16gb DDR3 memory
8.6gb free memory on the data drive where I store my audacity files.
25gb free on O/S drive
3.73gb linux swap drive (YES, I know that’s insanely huge!!)

I used this same version yesterday to make a podcast episode and had no problems. Most recordings I have are approximately 45 minutes in length. I open a WAV file from CD, do my editing and then export them to .mp3 format.

Today I was editing, going along just fine. I got to about 40 minutes in and then Audacity crashed. I reopened the application and was prompted about recovering from a crash; which I did. This is something that happens from time-to-time, so it didn’t alarm me much. It dropped me in about 20 seconds prior to the point I was at when it crash. I started playing the recording. All of a sudden it crashed again. I repeated the steps above with my cursor toward the very end of the project. However, it still crashed at a certain point.

I then exported an mp3 file to see if that would work. It did. What was odd, was that when I opened the .mp3 file using Rythmbox, it told me that the running time was only 18:40. I moved the slider to just before what was being displayed as “the end”. When it got to that point, the counter stopped at 18:40. But, it kept playing. Since I couldn’t slide it any further to the right, I uploaded the file to my website so I could try and listen to it streaming inside Chrome.

My website has a script which displays running time. According to that script, the running time was 41:05. Within Audacity it says the running time is 40:57. When I listened to the streaming file, it basically reached 2-3 seconds short of the end I was expecting. (FWIW: the unedited source .wav loads up at just shy of 45:00. Probably isn’t germaine, but figured I would mention it anyways).

I reopened Audacity and if I start playing any time before about 40:30, it will play just fine. HOWEVER, if I hit Play at a time after 40:35 it immediately crashes. It also, crashes when it reaches that point if I start playing prior to it. I tried saving to a new file. But, that apparently just saved whatever is causing it to crash.

The .aup file is attached below.
I didn’t attach the .wav file since it’s 476mb, and works just fine using alternate methods. However, can if requested.

The online URL for the ripped file is is: http://www.recastweb.com/media/Luke/Luke19_11-27.mp3

Perplexed.

Robert
Luke19_11-27_AM.aup (199 KB)

Just noticed an update from 07/20 for Audacity. After updating, by way of Synaptic, I can play the project just fine. Strange!

This is a know bug that slipped in with revision 11833. It has been partially fixed (the crash does not happen) but if you are working on a project that contains multiple audio clips there may still be some audio clips that do not play and may be missing when you mix down. Until this issue is resolved you should probably use Audacity 2.0.1 for “production” work.

That’s good to know. Fortunately, everything I work on uses only a singke track.

Even with one track, the problem can occur if there are any “splits” in the track (ie, not one continuous track"). If there are splits in the track then I think that you can work round the problem by “joining” the sections prior to mixing/export (select the track and press Ctrl+J)