Recently I was recording at a conference and told my tech support, my mom, to press the stop button and then close the computer when the meeting was over. When I opened the computer later I found that I couldn’t press any of the buttons in Audacity??? I researched on Google and found that if I simulated a program crash, Audacity would save the file in the Temp folder and I would be able to reopen the sound file there… bad idea!
After I simulated the crash, by CTRL+ALT+DELETE and force closed the program, I went to the Temp folder and found that my 2 and 1/2 hour recording had been split into 1,605 separate Audacity Projects! (.aup)
I need to know if there is an easier way to put all the tracks together again than placing them in one at a time and rearranging them.
No, the files in the Temp folder are AU files (small data files). A temporary AUP project file called an “AUTOSAVE” file is at UsersAppDataRoamingAudacityAutoSave. Like a saved AUP file, the AUTOSAVE file is a text file that knows how to piece the AU files together in the correct order.
1605 AU files sounds about right for a 2.5 hours mono recording at 44100 Hz.
Follow Steve’s suggestion, but first shut down the computer, restart it then reopen Audacity, in case your machine was out of resources. When you restart Audacity it should show you a dialogue where you can choose to recover all projects that have unsaved changes (for each of which there is an AUTOSAVE file) or discard those projects. See Automatic Crash Recovery - Audacity Manual for more information.
So what happened exactly when you restarted Audacity? Did you see the Automatic Crash Recovery dialogue, looking something like this?
If Audacity froze after you chose to recover, that might be understandable or fixable if there is some error in the AUTOSAVE file.
Good - but you said they were AUP files the first time.
There is an application that could try to piece them together into one or more WAV files, but you still have work to do sorting and renaming the files before you can use that application.
So first we should figure out if you have an AUTOSAVE file we can use. It is possible there is a TMP file there that would serve the same purpose. If so, renaming the TMP file extension to AUTOSAVE would make Audacity try to recover the project when you launched Audacity.
I’ve set the hidden files and folders to show. I’ve also searched my whole computer for any kind of autosaved file and nothing showed up. I assure you, I’ve done everything to find the autosaved file, I’m a techy, but all I’ve found are the 1,605 two second clips. If you know how to merge them please let me know. D:
The tiny clips alternate right and left in a stereo show and they’re not all sound files. If there was any damage that disrupted the cadence, then even the manual method may give you a show whose performers trade places or are missing words and phrases.
The system is intended to make automatic disaster recovery easier. That’s why finding those files and folders is important. If they’re just not around, you may no longer have a working show.
