I Need help opening a long audacity project (15 hours)

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi
I am disparately Need help opening a long Audacity project (15 hours), I was able to open the all 9 and 10, even 11 hours projects. but this project is obviously long. I tried mass rename and other things but I still cannot open the project. this is a very very important project and I do not mind PAYING FOR HELP, THANKS
Kal

2

Projects with 2^31 samples or more (just over 13.5 hours at 44100 Hz) will not re-open correctly. Higher sample rates mean proportionally shorter times - so just over 6 hours at 96,000 Hz. We know the cause, and do intend to address this bug. Workaround: Before saving or closing the project, export to audio files of appropriate size, or cut and paste sections of audio containing less than 2^31 samples to new Audacity projects and save those.

This thread posting has the same problem you do.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/copying-one-channel-to-another/167/1

Audacity is not a surveillance recorder.

Koz

3

Thanks a lot KOS
I tried using 2.0.6, project open blank even though it shows correct number of hours on the time line, 15:09:35
I tried mass rename, tried deleting some folders (the project has 72 folders) from project copy (to preserve the original project)
I can open individual files

is there any options? this is a very important project to recover, I do not mind even paying for help
thanks again

4

Using 2.0.6, please open the project then attach the AUP file and attach the log file from Help > Show Log… .

Renaming the AU files while sorted by time will only help if you use the Audacity 1.2 Recovery Utility to create new WAV files from the data AND these AU files are a recording that was never edited. If it’s a stereo recording that was never edited, you may still get blocks of sound in the wrong channel here and there.


Gale

5

thanks a lot Gale
here is the log file from 2.0.6
log.txt (1.2 KB)

6

and here is the AUP file.
FYI, when I first saved the project this file was a lot bigger became 1 kb in size when I tried to the project
7-31-14.aup (1003 Bytes)

7

I thought to give the recovery script https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/alternative-recovery-tool/30964/6 a try for my 15 hours recording project, I am getting syntax error line 46 when I ran the script

will it help me help me with such large project?

thanks
kal

8

Does that mean when you tried to save the project? It seems when you did that you saved in Audacity 2.0.0 (an old version of Audacity) as only an empty track. So that explains why there was no audio when you later opened the project in 2.0.6.

What actually happened when you reopened the project in the first place? Did you see the correct length of audio but just containing a flat line, and thousands of orphan block file errors? I would have expected that (because the track is too long for 44100 Hz sample rate), but at that point you should have just closed the project and opened it in 2.0.6.

So unless you have a backup of the AUP file, or unless you never closed the project in 2.0.0 and can Edit > Undo the audio deletion, you can’t open the project with an AUP file any more.

Saving and closing the project in 2.0.0 with no audio in the tracks would also have removed all the AU files in the “7-31-14_data” folder, so do I assume you made a copy of that data before closing the project in 2.0.0 with no audio?

Is this a recording you never edited? If yes, try dragging about 10 of the AU files into Audacity. Do they contain audio from the recording, or silence?


Gale

9

Please answer the questions above about why you have an AUP file without audio.

I’ve asked a couple of times now - is this an unedited recording? If you did anything else other than stop recording, save the project and quit, then without a correct AUP file you can’t recover properly. Both the 1.2 recovery utility and the script at https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/alternative-recovery-tool/30964/6 require unedited recordings where the timestamps of the AU files still reflect the time position of the audio. Once you start editing the recording, that is no longer true.

Please drag some of the AU files into Audacity. If the AU files are silence, neither the 1.2 Recovery Utility or the python script will help.

Also note that the python script will most likely fail with a later python version than 2.7.2.


Gale

10

Hi and thanks a lot again and MY APOLOGY for the delayed response
yes, I actually working on copy to preserve original files. also, I tried couple of things, however, now I been able to use Audacity Recovery Utility:

1-Project Has 72 folders with 256 files in each folder
2-Sorted files in each folder by Date Modified
3-Recovered the data in each folder separately using the utility
4-The Utility created Two files in each folder named “recovery_block1_channel1.wav” and “recovery_block1_channel2.wav”

NEXT I am planning to do the following:

1-Import the Two WAV files from each folder into a new project using IMPORT> AUDIO
2-Use MIX and Render to make them one track
2-Save each project separately (will end up with 72 small projects)
3-import the files from each project into ONE large project, (will make them two large projects to get around the 13.5 GB size limitation

Does this sound the correct steps to take (I know it is time consuming but the project is very important)

thanks again Gale, and MY APOLOGY for the delayed response

Kal

11

Use 2.0.6 for this, then it won’t have the 13.5 hours limitation if you want to save the complete audio as a project in one track.

The recovery block files for each channel will import as mono tracks into Audacity, so Mix and Render would make a mono mix. If you want to try stereo, use the Track Drop-Down Menu and choose “Make Stereo Track”, but that may have some sections with transposed channels.

I think you can make it simpler. To avoid confusion, rename each pair of recovered files in the same order as the “d” folders you recovered from, so “recovery_block1_channel1.wav” and “recovery_block1_channel2.wav”, “recovery_block2_channel2.wav” and “recovery_block2_channel2.wav” and so on.

Import the first pair of files and mix them or make them stereo. Then import the second pair into the same project and mix or make stereo, and so on.

At the end you will have 72 tracks in the project. Edit > Select > All then Tracks > Align Tracks > Align End to End. Then you can optionally do a final Mix and Render but you don’t have to because the export will make one continuous file.

You will need to take care what format you are exporting the result to. You will be OK with MP3 but WAV has a maximum file size of 4 GB, and many players won’t accept more than 2 GB.


Gale