Files require restart of Audacity

[djblanch]

A search turned up nothing related to this, so I’ll post my idea and hope someone sees it who can utilize it! I’m running Audacity 2.03 on a Mac with OS 10.7.6, and one thing I find frustrating is that when I’m creating several sound files at once, I sometimes have one that hangs, and requires a restart of Audacity. When it reopens, I have the option of reopening ALL of the files I was working on, or NONE of them. What I’d like is to be able to select the ones I want to reopen; that way, if I suspect that just one caused the hang, I don’t have to have it happen all over again. I know it should be simple to put such an option in place. If there’s already a way to do so that I’ve missed, I’d appreciate a point in the right direction. Otherwise, please consider supporting such a change in the next release. Thank you all for contributing to such a great, free program!

Dave

[Gale_Andrews]

@djblanch

A search turned up nothing related to this, so I’ll post my idea and hope someone sees it who can utilize it! I’m running Audacity 2.03 on a Mac with OS 10.7.6, and one thing I find frustrating is that when I’m creating several sound files at once, I sometimes have one that hangs, and requires a restart of Audacity. When it reopens, I have the option of reopening ALL of the files I was working on, or NONE of them. What I’d like is to be able to select the ones I want to reopen; that way, if I suspect that just one caused the hang, I don’t have to have it happen all over again. I know it should be simple to put such an option in place. If there’s already a way to do so that I’ve missed, I’d appreciate a point in the right direction. Otherwise, please consider supporting such a change in the next release.

I split this out of the Feature Requst post about Effect Categorisation and simpler Graphic EQ because this is nothing to do with either.

If Audacity is crashing then it’s a bug. Please post the Mac crash report.

If you suspect a particular type of file as responsible for the crash, it is still a bug. Please post an example file somewhere on the web or tell us more about the file.

Are you talking about recovering multiple Audacity projects that were in separate project windows, or individual files that were part of the same project? In the first case, there is a very high risk of user not choosing all the projects they wanted to recover, or becoming confused, especially if the projects were never saved (in which case they have no meaningful name).

In the second case, Audacity has already imported the files or a reference to them, so it wouldn’t help.


Gale

[Gale_Andrews]

@djblanch

in archived 2.0.4 release candidate topic
Im running OSX 10.7.5 on a MacBook. I downloaded the latest build (quasi-2.0.4 candidate) and am having the same problems I was experiencing with 2.0.3: I’m unable to directly open sound files (either by dropping on the app or opening from the “File” menu), and there is no crash report generated. At Gale’s suggestion, I made sure I tried files with simple names (short, no spaces or characters other than alpha) but still no luck. In 2.0.3 I was able to create a new file, add blank tracks, then import wav or mp3 (or other formats) into it; then I could work with and save/export the file as wav or mp3. But with the 2.0.4 even trying to import produces a crash. If I drag and drop, the program opens and gives me the option of recovering the “new” file from the last crash, but the dragged file does not open, and if I try to open it from the “File” menu, I get a crash with no report generated. There must be something conflicting, but I have no idea what, so any suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated. I was not able to find anything by searching the forum that addressed the troubles I’m experiencing. I suspect this is not directly related to the latest build, but there was a newly added problem in the 2.0.4 candidate, so I thought I’d post anyway.

David,

Thanks for posting in the release candidate topic (now archived). The crash report you sent to feedback@ appeared to be the same problem related to Unicode characters that would cause crashes in 2.0.3.

I don’t know why there would be no Mac crash report, but I would try opening Audacity after a crash by double-clicking its icon, not by dragging a file to the icon. If the crash recovery dialogue appears, discard the unsaved changes, use File > Close to get rid of the temporary data, then Tracks > Add New (if that helps) and then import the file.

Or if you want to save the unsaved changes from the crash recovery dialogue, do File > Save Project As… and save the project to a new name.

Unfortunately the nature of this problem is that you only have to edit a completely unrelated file in Finder that has an accented character (or the folder it is in has such a character), and then dragging in any file may crash (even if there are no accented characters in the file name or the folder path).

Have you tried rebooting? This is the best cure, even if you have to reboot several times.

When Audacity has stabilised, try using File > Import > Audio. It’s less convenient than drag and drop, but drag and dropping files (and File > Open) is probably the most prone to this problem.


Gale