So last night I had done a solid one and a half hours of recording for a my YouTube channel, and seemingly for once, everything had gone right, Audacity hadn’t crashed, the project files were saved and ready to use and everything was going my way. So I closed the program and got some shut eye, thinking that I would simply be able to open it again in the morning. No such luck. While the project file and all of its various parts are there and accounted for and there is even a space where my audio should be, it simply isn’t, nothing but a recording space.
I also received the following message; Warning - Orphan Block files
“Project Check of “Bioshock Infinite 12 part 2_data” folder found 18038 orphan block files(s). These files are unused by this project, but might belong to other projects. They are doing no harm and are small.”
Please select an action: Continue without deleting; ignore the extra files this session
Close project immediately with no further changes
Delete orphan files (permanent immediately)
The main problem is that the files detected aren’t orphans, as according to the Audacity log, they are the essential AU files that comprise the project.
Here is the Audacity log, minus all the “Warning: Orphan Block file” stuff which would have taken up the whole page.
14:43:50: Audacity 2.0.5
14:43:51: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
14:43:51: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘avformat-52.dll’.
14:43:51: Looking up PATH environment variable…
14:43:51: PATH = ‘C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefox;C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWindows Live;C:Program Files (x86)NVIDIA CorporationPhysXCommon;C:Windowssystem32;C:Windows;C:WindowsSystem32Wbem;C:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0;C:Program Files (x86)QuickTimeQTSystem;C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWindows Live’
14:43:51: Checking that ‘’ is in PATH…
14:43:51: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
14:43:51: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
14:43:51: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
14:43:51: Loading avutil from ‘avutil-50.dll’.
14:43:51: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avutil-50.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
14:43:51: Loading avcodec from ‘avcodec-52.dll’.
14:43:51: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avcodec-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
14:43:51: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
14:43:51: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
14:43:51: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
14:43:51: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
Please help me solve this mystery and get my project back into working order.
You want to fix your computer if Audacity is continually crashing as per your previous post (which you did not reply to). Audacity 2.0.5 is not that unstable.
What is the make, model number and specifications of the machine?
Exactly what are you recording?
You’re recording at way too high a project rate - that’s probably why Audacity keeps crashing. Record at 44100 Hz.
Because you recorded at 384000 Hz, Audacity up to and including 2.0.5 can only record just over 1.5 hours of audio before you run into an issue that you cannot reopen the saved project. You would have needed to export the audio in order to use that recording, or split it into to two separate projects.
Yeah, not my proudest moment. Turns out it was not a problem with Audacity, and more a combination of the file being very long, so it took about ten minutes to load and also the fact I was very low on hard drive space, so Audacity was having trouble recovering it. That issue has since been resolved, thus why I didn’t reply, as I was not even aware there was a reply. The problems with Audacity crashing so regularly are also related to the lengths of the recordings (as you said), not my computer or Audacity itself being unstable (sorry if I gave that impression).
I am recording the narration for a Let’s Play series for YouTube. I use Audacity, as opposed to the built in microphone recorder for FRAPS (the program I use to record footage), as it gives me finer control over the audio. That is also why the recordings are so long.
Yeah, I think I shall in the future, the reason it was that high in the first place, was that I was trying to get the highest audio quality possible, and one of the tips I received was to record at the highest project rate.
Is there a direct, step by step guide on how to split the project into two smaller ones? I did try the alpha build, and it still gave me the same issue, maybe a future build will be able to resolve things, but for now, I may have to attempt a different method.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond, and sorry if I seem like a bit of an idiot.
I think the specific problem is the high sample rate. 384000 Hz 32-bit float takes about 170 MB of space a minute. Six minutes of recording take about 1 GB of space. Even if you have the disk space you need a powerful computer to push that much data around so fast.
We don’t give that “tip”. Young humans can’t hear frequencies higher than about 20,000 Hz, and as humans get older their ability to hear high frequencies declines. 20,000 Hz is capturable by a sample rate of 44100 Hz.
Will you YouTube let you upload audio files at 384000 Hz?
Are you sure you quit 2.0.5 before running 2.0.6-alpha? Please try again.
Splitting the project will work if you follow the forum topic https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/please-help-open-aud-project-orphan-all-files-opens-blank/29787/5 but I don’t have time to write out all the steps coherently to make it easy to follow for someone who was not experienced with command-lines. It would be quicker for me to create your two new AUP files myself, and I’m not offering to do that unless I have to.
