My friend and I recorded 2 hours of commentary and I saved it but now when I go to load it it won’t load it right, just a blue line with a cuple of sound waves, then it says that audacity is not responding but when I load a 20 min audio file everything is fine. Is this something I can fix or do I have to record 10-20 min commentaries from now on.
Two hours for an audacity project or most audio formats should not be a problem.*
Did you save it as an Audacity project or export to an audio format (WAV, MP3, etc)? I usually like to export to WAV, and then either make a back-up of that file for editing, or save-as an Audacity project. That way, I can edit one WAV file (or the Audacity project file) and I’ll have the “original” WAV as a back-up in case anything goes wrong.
If it’s an audacity project, did you move your AUP file after saving? The AUP file doesn’t contain actual audio and it has to “find” the files that do.
If it’s an audio file, please give us the details of the format (sample rate & bit depth, number of channels, file size, bitrate… or whatever you can tell us).
There is a file size limit to WAV files of (2GB or 4GB depending on which spec you read or which application you’re using). Depending on the sample rate & resolution, a 2-hour WAV file could exceed those limits.
when I load a 20 min audio file everything is fine.
At this point, I would assume it’s not a “loading” problem… Have you tried recording, saving, and re-opening a short recording?
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- But, it’s always “dangerous” to record for 2 hours when you’re not 100% sure everything is working… Especially if you’re recording with something as unreliable as a computer and/or if you are recording a live event where there’s no chance of “take two”.
Also read the pink panel at the top of the page and give us the version number of Audacity and Windows version.
If it’s a WAV file you are importing, importing is quicker (and there is no hang after the progress dialogue ends) if you enable " Read uncompressed audio files directly from the original (faster):" in Import / Export Preferences.
If you enable that option, do not move, rename or delete the WAV after importing it.
Gale