I’m editing a song that’s ~3.5 minutes long, and have been doing so for a few hours. I saved it, reopened the project because I had to restart my computer, and there was 336 hours of silence at the end of the project. I tried selecting and then deleting it, and it doesn’t work. I cut it, and it went from 336 to 432 hours. I cannot have 432 hours of silence at the end of my track. I have no idea how it got there. I can’t just mute it either, because it’s, well, silence.
I think as a first order of business, I would select the work, one track at a time if needed, and File > Export Selected into their own WAV files. WAV (Microsoft), 16-bit, Stereo (or mono depending on the work). Drag-select, the active blue waves, don’t select the whole track by clicking just above mute.
My fuzzy suspicion is you have a badly corrupted AUP file. That’s the one that tells Audacity how to configure your show from all that stuff in the _DATA folder.
When was the last time you restarted your machine?
Are you aware that “empty space” is not the same as “silence”?
“Silence” is real audio data with zero volume (zero amplitude). It appears in an audio track as a flat blue line, as shown in the upper track shown below.
“Empty space” is not audio - it’s nothing. The second audio track shown below has empty space. Empty space beyond the end of a project goes on and on without end - that’s normal. To find the “actual” end of a project, zoom the project to fit in the Audacity window (Ctrl + F).
