I’m using Mac 10.13.6, High Sierra and Audacity 2.2.2
I had a long file half-edited, so I wanted to make two versions, one with only the edited portion, the other with the unedited portion.
Unfortunately, I used the computer’s “duplicate” feature instead of “Save project as” out of Audacity.
That duplicated the .aup file but not the _data folder.
I opened the duplicate .aup file and deleted the edited half the file, saved and closed.
I reopened the original .aup file and got the warning that files are missing. I opened with the 2nd option, temporary silence for the missing files, but I can’t find a means to re-link this aup to its audio files, which are still in the _data folder.
It’s a lot of editing gone to silence.
Can I show the original .aup file that the audio is there … relink or redirect or rejoin?
Is it possible?
Intense deadline pressure. Searched but can’t find solution so far.
Many many many thanks for help!
If you never closed Audacity, you should be able to Edit > UNDO your way back to the original show. Audacity forms UNDO by making complete copies of the whole show. The down side of that is an UNDO that always works in reverse order.
If you closed Audacity in the middle, that may be the end of the world. Audacity flushes everything when it closes.
It is recommended that you Export a perfect quality WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit file of a show at critical points. You should never need to perform anything again because you can just go back to the WAV you made right after each performance (for example). There should be a WAV of the first completed show.
This doesn’t work if you have a multi-channel monster. You’re stuck with Projects for that.
Audacity Projects are not recommended for backup jobs like this because of little “gotcha” problems like you experienced.
Just thinking about this. Did you duplicate the AUP file outside of Audacity? That’s dangerous because the Mac will change the name of the duplicate file and the name changed file show will not open.
Koz
If you don’t have a backup (Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, or similar) then the deleted part of your project is gone.
When you “opened the duplicate .aup file and deleted the edited half the file, saved and closed” you deleted the audio from the one and only _data folder, which contains the actual audio data.
– Bill
My very big thanks for your immediate responses!
Bill hit the nail: I saved, therefore I lost.
Koz, though I hadn’t quit Audacity, I had saved and closed the dupe file, which I had created at the OS level (file duplicate); what’s weird is that I was ever able to open the dupe file, oh well. I actually work with wav backups abunch, and just … this … sleep-deprived-once … I was sooo stoopid (= incautious).
It’s a relief to simply re-edit the raw file, knowing that I didn’t miss some time-saving method.
A million thanks for your responses!
Yeah, I know, that seems weird. What’s happening is that inside the .aup file is a link to the _data folder. So even though the dupe was renamed, it was still “pointing to” the same _data folder as the original .aup file. Thus both files were editing “the same” data.
Saving and closing the file clears the undo data, as you found.
– Bill