About 1 out 3 times that I close my Audacity file, Audacity ‘Compacts the Project’ takes about 10 minutes to close the file. I have 3.2.3 and I hope there is a fix to this, because it wastes so much time.
So this is likely due to undo information that is integrated into your project file. For example, if you amplify your entire project by a factor of only, say, .1, then the size of your file is doubled as Audacity retains a complete copy of all of the original audio as well as the newly amplified audio. It is not until you actually Close the project file (or exit Audacity) that the undo information is actually deleted.
When I have regular operations such as amplify, compress, filter, etc. that I normally apply to an audio stream, I’ll do those operations, then close the project file and reopen it to eliminate that “undo” overhead. Simply saving the project is not enough as that does not delete the undo information.
Please help me, too. All of a sudden I’m getting that message that my file is compacting. It didn’t do it before. Is it because I run ACX check and then press Normalize once again? Is there a way to stop that? What should my settings be if I’m exporting 192, with 16 bit rate. Is there another setting I need so it doesn’t do that? And why is it compacting and what does that mean?
My new audiobook class I’m taking always says to export “selected audio.” I was never doing that, I always just pressed export audio to MP3 and never had a problem? What’s the difference?
It is hard to say why. Perhaps your audio is one second longer than before and you hit some threshold. ACX check will not change the size of your project and won’t cause this. Normalize is the same as amplify and will double the size of a new project.
As you edit your project (deleting here and there and running effects such as noise reduction and normalizing), the audio data in your project gets manipulated, moved around and replaced, and the size of your audio file increases, but typically never decreases. Every so often, Audacity (and the underlying database project manager) will reorganize so the project works more efficiently and takes up less space. Unfortunately, when it starts to do this you just need to sit and wait it out. It is not a good idea to interrupt this process as it could potentially leave your project scatterbrained.
If you just want to export one track or just a small section of your project, you can select (highlight) just that part and do File > Export > Export Selected Audio. If you do Ctrl+A to select everything, it is the same as File > Export > Export As … The available export option maybe slightly different, but this shouldn’t affect most users.
Note that MP3 files are of inferior quality and are a lossy representation of your project. If you re-edit an MP3 file, the damage accumulates. Be sure to save a 16-bit WAV backup file if you think you will ever need to edit in the future.
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