Audacity 2.0.3
Windows XP
I was listening to an internet radio program and streaming it through Audacity to save and
listen to later. AT the end of the project, I was intending to save it in a folder in MY MUSIC
I had the screen saver set for 300 minutes
After around 40 minutes of recording my screen saver came on and as usual I pressed a
random key on the keyboard to bring the waveform back on screen. Then only a screen width
of new recording was there (8 or 9 sec.) and the File dropdown commands were all in light
print and frozen to any command. I exited Audacity and restarted it and started recording
again from zero time for 30 minutes; the screen saver did not come on and I saved this 30
minute recording in MY MUSIC.
I suspect that Audacity stopped recording once the screen saver came on. A guess because
the wave form could not be viewed
I wonder why the screen saver had such a powerful effect on recording the project?
Is there any way to recover the lost 40 minutes of recording or did the computer delete it
somehow when the screen saver came on ? Using my limited skill, I could not find it from
EDIT, PREFERENCES, DIRECTORIES etc.
Thank You for your consideration
It is best to disable screen savers if you are recording. See point 16 here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Managing_Computer_Resources_and_Drivers .
That said, on Windows 7 the screen saver does not affect the audio stream or Audacity recording (and does not affect Windows Sound Recorder recording).
Does the audio stream stop? If so, that may cause Audacity to freeze.
You may want to check Windows Control Panel to see if screen saver comes on with some other event, independent of the screen saver’s own timeout setting.
If the screen saver shuts the disk down even if it isn’t idle, Audacity cannot record.
Did you quit Audacity from Audacity itself and said “No” to the question about saving changes? If so the recorded data would be deleted.
If you force quit Audacity, then the “Automatic Crash Recovery” dialogue would appear if the temporary “autosave” project file still existed. If not, but the data was still in existence, it would be in the location noted in the Directories Preferences, in a folder called “projectxxxxx”, where the xxxxx is a number. You can open Explorer to check. If you did not change the Audacity temporary directory, you may have to show hidden files and folders .
The “projectxxxxx” folder would be deleted as soon as you quit Audacity cleanly and said not to save changes.
By the way, the consensus is that screen savers don’t “save” power. Highly animated screen savers cost a lot of power.
Gale
Thank you Gale for the information, it was most helpful. I was able to resolve the screen
saver problem and so far it has not been an issue.
Regardless of the music source, I am constantly amazed of the high quality output
from Audacity 2.0.3 and it’s perfect fit with Windows Media Player (Windows XP)
blairhansler