Audacity 2.0.6 Cannot Find Project Data Folder

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I have been working on a project for months that I had been anticipating finishing up this weekend. Needless to say, it has NOT started out to be a good morning.

I am using Audacity 2.0.6 on Windows 7. Yesterday I opened the sound files like normal in Audacity, and exported all 36 audio tracks (which were showing normal sound waves in Audacity) as WAV files. This morning I imported all of the WAV files into my presentation to start putting things together…only to realize that there was no sound in any of the files!! The files have sizes attached to them which match what they should be, but the files are just a straight line…no audio at all! I’ve tried opening the exported WAV files in multiple media programs and get the same result.

So I tried to open the .aup file to try and figure out what happened to the sound files, and all of the sudden I get the Couldn’t Find Project Data Folder error. I saved 3 versions of the .aup file…one with the raw audio I recorded, one with the edited audio pre-music, and one final version with edited audio and music, and NONE of them will open. They’re all giving me the same message.

I saw all of the information on the .aup being created last and needing a _data file to match, but I haven’t moved anything! I haven’t cleaned anything up, and I haven’t re-named anything. In fact the two older projects (the raw audio and the edited pre-music) I haven’t touched in weeks. How is it possible that the _data files could be separated…or gone?? I haven’t done anything to my computer in the mean time…no cleaning up or anything at all.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how I start trying to find the data files? (I did open the .aup file in Wordpad, and I was able to find the title_data in there in about the third line of text, so I’m not sure what’s going on.) Or better yet, how I can get the audio to play on the exported WAV files that are now silent for some reason? I’ve never had any issues with Audacity before but I’ve been working on this project for months and I REALLY don’t want to re-record the whole thing when it all appears to still be there.

**Moderator note:**Please don’t double-post it only annoys the Forum elves who work on the Forum as it wastes their time. I removed the duplicate where you tagged it the end of another albeit related thread http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=81556&p=261142#p261142 .

2

Yesterday I opened the sound files like normal in Audacity

What sound files? Audacity Projects?

How long is the show and how long are the clips and segments?

I haven’t done anything to my computer in the mean time…no cleaning up or anything at all.

No you haven’t, but Win7 is constantly optimizing and arranging itself and checking for updates, patches and corrections. If you have a Virus Protection program, that’s constantly inspecting things and may do updates when it feels it needs to as well.

I generally forbid my machine from doing any changes or updates while I’m in a show.

The Windows elves will be along shortly. I trust this has never happened before? Even in a tiny version like having a Project lose sound or a clip?

Koz

3

Which virus program, and do you like to put punctuation marks in filenames? What’s a typical filename, say one of the longer ones?
Koz

4

Hi guys! Thanks for your help! To answer your questions:

What sound files? Audacity Projects?

How long is the show and how long are the clips and segments?

Yes, I was referring to the Audacity project. Sorry for not being clear. The project consisted of 35 tracks. The tracks ranged in size from 20 seconds (278KB) to around a minute and a half (1.1 MB) I can’t tell you how long the show was anymore, since the project has gone kaput and the data files have disappeared.

No you haven’t, but Win7 is constantly optimizing and arranging itself and checking for updates, patches and corrections. If you have a Virus Protection program, that’s constantly inspecting things and may do updates when it feels it needs to as well.

I was wondering if this would be an issue, so I did a system restore back to last week (I know it was working then) and it did not fix the problem.

Which virus program

I’m using Microsoft Security Essentials.

do you like to put punctuation marks in filenames? What’s a typical filename, say one of the longer ones?

No, I do not put punctuation marks in file names. I know that those are illegal because they are often seen as programming commands, and if you use them they can screw things up pretty bad. When you ask for a filename, are you asking for the project or one of the specific tracks? I am assuming you mean a track, since you reference “one of the longer ones”. The file name for one of the longer files was Final Myth .

As an update, my husband and I were able to find the data folder that audacity was trying to find…and it is indeed empty. He ran a file recovery tool, and it did recover the file, but no data from within the file. So I am left with an empty shell and no project.

I’ve kind of just accepted that I’m going to have to re-record all of the audio tracks and re-edit them again because this project is lost. But since I don’t know what caused this issue in the first place, I’m reluctant to use Audacity (Last time I recorded the files directly into Audacity using my microphone). I am thinking of doing the raw recording with the audio software that came with my microphone and only use Audacity for final clean-up if that software is not robust enough. Is there anything I can do to prevent this happening again? I like Audacity and it does a really great job with editing and clean up, but I can’t keep losing 2.5 days worth of work for seemingly no reason.

5

Oh, so you have one single Project with 35 tracks. I was obliquely alluding to the people that insist on recording 13 hour shows. That usually doesn’t go well.

Without going back through this again, did you Save a Project with slightly different filenames as a backup? For example timed backups? 20141206-1430Edit.aup. And then a different one a half-hour later at 3:00 O’Clock? Or it’s always been one project?

I don’t know what caused this issue in the first place

Yes. This is the first time I’ve seen this much devastation and smoldering ruin in one place. Even the backups failed, although I think I can account for that. If Audacity for some reason went into the mud before you did the WAV exports, then you would get blank WAV files and what little good news there is comes from the WAV files perfectly matching the Project like they’re supposed to.

I can tell by the blank looks from the other elves they’ve never seen anything like this, either. I’m a Mac elf, but I’ve had my shots.

Koz

6

I opened the sound files like normal in Audacity, and exported all 36 audio tracks (which were showing normal sound waves in Audacity) as WAV files.

That seems to be “Patient Zero” for this problem.

I would click just above the Mute button on one track to select it and then File > Export Selected > WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM. How did you do it?

Koz

7

I’m reading through that.

Is anything else missing? You seem to have walked into an echoey, empty, dusty room where you were expecting shelves and jars of pickles.

When was the last time you did that virus scan where you can’t use your machine for fifteen minutes?

How large is your hard drive and how much is left? Actual numbers, please.

~~

On a supersonically bad day I can’t think of a scenario that can cause that much damage. Is there anybody in your office who would benefit if your show turned to trash? You have some of the symptoms of a bogus post.

Loose mouse connection?

The other elves will be along.

Koz

8

I saved 3 versions of the .aup file…one with the raw audio I recorded, one with the edited audio pre-music, and one final version with edited audio and music, and NONE of them will open.

When did you record/save those? I can’t tell if this was weeks ago or yesterday.
Koz

9

Oh no…the whole project was probably 30 to 45 minutes in total. One project with 36 tracks. :slight_smile:

I never saved a copy with a slightly different file name. Without going into specifics, after I got the raw audio recorded (It’s for a personal project I’m working on at home) I saved a version called History Presentation.aup. I used that file to get the audio cleaned up, and then did a Save Project As to create History Presentation Pre Music.aup. Then I imported some entrance and exit music into two of the tracks, and did a Save Project As to create History Presentation With Music.aup. I saved them all to my desktop. I did this over a period of two weeks or so, just on the evenings and weekends when I had time. In between creating the back ups I just did a Save Project in the file I was working with.

When I did export, I created a new folder on my desktop called Sound Files and I did the Export Multiple option. I told it to divide the files by Track Name and fixed the Metadata for each track. I made sure they were all un-muted before I exported them. I did select the WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM. I got a message that the tracks were exported successfully. They were all in the folder on the desktop after that, although I must admit I just trusted they actually had the audio and didn’t listen to them since they were all different sizes. I did have to re-export the files again after I realized I’d messed up something in the Metadata, but I used the same method, told it to export to the same folder and when prompted told it to overwrite the existing files. Maybe that could have been the problem?

The exporting was last weekend. This morning I imported the WAV files into my project, only to discover they were empty and that I couldn’t open any of the .aup files from my desktop. I hadn’t run a virus scan on my computer in that time…in fact the software was yelling at me to run one :wink: In trying to work with this nightmare today, we did discover that my Windows profile appears to be a bit “buggy” in that it’s giving me access to things on my desktop if a navigate there through My Computer which aren’t there on my actual desktop…but either way when we found the _data file for the project it was empty. My hard drive is an SSD 223 Gig with 112 Gig still available.

Since myself and my husband are the only people with access to this computer (and he knew nothing about Audacity until all of this mess happened and he was trying to help me figure it out) I don’t think it was sabotaged. At this point I’m just chalking it up to gremlins in my system playing some kind of evil prank to aggravate me on a Saturday.

I re-recorded the files tonight. I split it up into 7 different projects, and this time I saved the .aup files to my Google Drive. I checked and both folders are there and they contain everything they should as far as I can tell. To be extra safe, I also exported the raw tracks as WAV files into the Google Drive, so that if worse comes to worse I can import them. I tested them all and they are working and they have sound. I’m hoping that will negate any Windows 7 optimization issues since they were saved directly into the Goggle Drive. Although I must admit the Projects are all still open on my task bar…I’m afraid to close them for fear I won’t be able to open them again!! :cry:

10

This morning I imported the WAV files into my project, only to discover they were empty and that I couldn’t open any of the .aup files from my desktop.

And it’s at that exact point that you stepped through the looking glass — or actually, the step just before this one. This was the land mine step where you realized every place you stepped turned into colorful pyrotechnics.

Whatever happened, it also gutted the older, known, good, working pre-production Projects from last week.

That’s extraordinarily hard to resolve.

It’s worse. Most people want us to turn a _data folder back into a show missing the .aup file. Rarely do people lose the entire contents of a _data folder with an intact .aup file.

Do you still have one of the .aup files from a damaged Project? You can either copy and paste it here under the “Code” tag or attach it.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1

Koz

11

Unfortunately no…I deleted the old files yesterday before I started re-recording the project. :frowning:

I appreciate all of your help to try and resolve this! I wish I would have thought ahead enough to have kept the file so that it could be gone over to make sure something crazy didn’t happen, but I was understandably frustrated and just wanted to move on.

12

That problem is fixed from 2.0.6 onwards.

Gale

13

But presumably it is not in the same folder as the AUP file, or does it have a changed name?

If the folder was present with the _data folder but empty, the error would be “Missing Audio Data Block Files”, not an error that it could not find the project’s _data folder.

Whatever happened, it would seem the data was not accessible to Audacity when you exported. If one deletes the AU files or the entire _data folder then exports, Audacity blithely exports a silent file without popping up a warning. There is a warning in the log, but that is not pushed to the user in a message box.

You probably saw a warning about importing uncompressed files when you imported the WAV files. You have a choice to copy WAV files into the project or to read them directly from the source file without copying them in. Where Audacity reads the WAV directly from the source files, it can actually regenerate lost project audio from the source file. So if you imported a WAV without copy in, did not edit, lost access to (or deleted) the _data folder for the project then exported, the exported file would have audio.

Unfortunately that falls down as soon as you edit the project, because Audacity copies in the data from the section of the WAV pertaining to the edit, then for that edited data it is again completely reliant on the _data folder continuing to exist.


Gale