Audacity memory hog

tlm · January 23, 2024, 10:45am

Is Audacity is using more memory than it used to? Is there a way to save differently so that all that memory is not needed? I think there was a compressed option earlier?

Over the last year or so I run into a problem often when I try to save a project and there isn’t enough disk space available. It seems Audacity needs 15G or so and that is near what I have left on my hard drive (M1, 2020 MacAir). I have 16GB RAM but only a 256G hard drive. I have Audacity 3.4.2 on Mac OS 14.2 now, but it seems this has been a problem over the last year or so.

Trebor · January 23, 2024, 2:14pm

When Audacity introduced non-destructive editing in version 3.1, about 2 years ago,
that inevitably (and massively) increased memory usage.

tlm · January 23, 2024, 2:19pm

@Trebor thanks for the response. It could well be 2 years ago because my use of Audacity, though intense, is sporadic over many years.

Is there anyway around this problem? Does the user have any choice to fight against this bloat which limits the usefulness of this great tool?

Trebor · January 23, 2024, 2:33pm

Mixing & rendering a track can purge the hidden “smart-clip” memory-bloat …

github.com/audacity/audacity

Allow deletion of unused smart clip data

opened 10:38AM - 21 May 23 UTC

adrien1018

Enhancement Request Design / UX Clips medium feature

### Your idea Add a function to delete unused / hidden smart clip data from t…he selected clips in order to reduce the project file size. One way to achieve this is by disassociating the clips from the original clip data, and creating new clips that only contain the trimmed sections of the original clips. It will be equivalent to repeating the following process on each of the selected clips: 1. Move the clip to a new track 2. Perform "Mix and Render" on that track while preserving the clip label 3. Move the rendered clip back to its original position (and delete the new track) This will allow future compaction to clean up the stale data if no other clips are using it. ### Problem to be solved When editing a long original audio file, it is common to first select some usable clips by splitting and trimming the audio. However, currently there are no straightforward way to permanently trim the audio, so the project will keep storing the entire original file even if most of them are unnecessary. ### Prior art _No response_ ### Additional context @virgilON suggested a similar idea in #3963 and #4047, though for a different (and solved) issue.

tlm · January 23, 2024, 5:51pm

Thanks, @Trebor – I’ll try it. But I hope the developers can address it in a way that avoids the need for tricks.

I think users should always be given choices, just in case what the developers see as improvements aren’t for them. I know developers calculate that “it’s worth it” when it comes to things like extra memory, etc… But if they realized some avid users actually didn’t see “it’s worth it” they would give users a choice.

I had a friend who while driving was always saying “don’t help me!” to other drivers who thought they were being polite but actually were causing him problems. But of course they were oblivious…

system · February 22, 2024, 10:46am

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