Incredibly Large Files in Audacity

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

Hello, I have been editing a podcast (raw footage for about 3 hours, trimmed down to a little over 2 hours at this point) in Audacity 3.3.3 for the last two weeks, and over time I began to experience slowdowns after each operation, which after some research I found to be solved by saving and relaunching Audacity. However, as of this morning, when trying to do any operation, including saving, splitting clips, deleting sections, or moving audio between tracks, I’m met with the message “Automatic Database Backup Failed”

With this under the “details” arrow:

{
    "timestamp": 1696456431,
    "event_id": "64f78a2541604104a3792feac15923f8",
    "platform": "native",
    "release": "audacity@3.3.3",
    "contexts": {
        "os": {
            "type": "os",
            "name": "Macintosh",
            "version": "10.16.0"
        }
    },
    "exception": {
        "values": [
            {
                "type": "Warning",
                "value": "Automatic database backup failed.",
                "mechanism": {
                    "type": "runtime_error",
                    "handled": false,
                    "data": {
                        "sqlite3.query": "INSERT INTO <path>(id, dict, doc) VALUES(1, ?1, ?2)       ON CONFLICT(id) DO UPDATE SET dict = ?1, doc = ?2;",
                        "sqlite3.rc": "18",
                        "sqlite3.context": "ProjectGileIO::WriteDoc::step"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Other forum posts on this appear to be for older versions of Audacity, but I tried some of the fixes that worked for other people. In case of a glitch with the envelope, I ran a Nyquist prompt that is supposed to remove all envelope control points, which ran for about 20 min before freezing and then turned up the same error message. I saw another fix that said to copy-paste the entire project into a new file, at which point I was met with this:

Screenshot 2023-10-04 at 2.52.27 PM
Screenshot 2023-10-04 at 2.52.27 PM1060×664 118 KB

My file, while longer than I typically work with, couldn’t POSSIBLY be over 600 GB. It’s roughly 2 hours at this point (after some cuts) and the audio is uncompressed so I expected a large file, but not on this level. The file on my hard drive is 27 GB, which is definitely larger than I expected, but I assumed once I exported it into a single file, the size would shrink considerably. I also have a backup save at around 12 GB that has the exact same problem. I appreciate any help!

I’m using an Apple M2 and the OS is Ventura 13.5.1

-Veronica

2

OK, so the first thing I would do is to make a copy of your existing .aup3 file, just in case anything you do in the future breaks something.

I believe you have found the right references. The first thing I would to is repeat your copy-paste the entire project to a new project, copying selected audio only. If this gives you problems, limit the copy to a few tracks at a time, then merge the copied tracks later on. I don’t know why the audio data size is so large - this is obviously a glitch of some kind.

So we know that your project is damaged. If you are unable to copy all of the tracks out, you are going to have to repair the project. To do this you will need access to a Windows machine. See: Corrupt or Otherwise Broken Audacity Project Recovery

Next I would get rid of the envelope control points on the copied database (back it up first). I don’t think you are going to get the error that you got before, but if you get the error on a repaired file post back.

Come to think of it, post back either way.

3

Thank you so much! So quick update, I tried to do it track by track, the first track, which has most of the audio, alone still displays as 330 GB, but this time I hit accept, in case there’s some kind of indexing error that causes it to inaccurately judge the file size. The estimated time was well over 24 hours, so I killed the process. I do have a Windows desktop in storage that I can go get, but it’s over 10 years old, runs on Windows 7, and has a very beat-up intel chip so there may be backward compatibility issues.

4

It may not take that long - I don’t know. For me, I’d probably find a time when I could spare a few hours. Perhaps, overnight.

Yes - it wouldn’t hurt to run that Windows thing in parallel - if you have enough storage. I’m thinking that since the repair app isn’t GUI based, it might run on Windows 7. Again, I don’t know.

5

Okay, so quick update, the Windows 7 machine was unusable due to other age-related problems, so I ended up using Dropbox so that my fiancee who has a newer Windows computer could try those steps. She said it was successful and sent it back over to me, but I’m having the exact same issues. The Nyquist prompt runs for about 5 minutes, then freezes pretty consistently. I tried to transfer the tracks out of the repaired copy but the massive file problem still comes up, allowing it to run makes it work on it for about 45 minutes and then send an error message that I don’t have the disk space. At the moment, I have about 200 GB of free space on my computer and I’ve made sure not to run anything memory-intensive while trying to do so. Is there anything else I can do?

6

Send me a dropbox link.

7

So I took at look at your “repaired” file and unfortunately I can’t do anything with it. Perhaps you have a copy of file before you attempted repairs?

8

I think it’s still true that Audacity creates “Undo” by memorizing everything you do and all the old versions of the show. So you may think you’re working with a two hour show, but the Audacity Undo system could be juggling several hundred hours of production.

This means your machine has to be in top-top, perfect condition with large memory capacity and lots of good drive room. Lots of Local drive room. Audacity doesn’t work well with drives other than the one in the machine.

Audacity automatically converts work into its own super high quality uncompressed format. That catches people trying to work with tiny MP3 or other compressed file types, but it expands normal uncompressed files, too.

Do you keep WAV or other good quality backups of all the original works? Could you back up to the First Edit if you had to?

Koz

9

I think it’s still true that Audacity creates “Undo” by memorizing everything you do and all the old versions of the show. So you may think you’re working with a two hour show, but the Audacity Undo system could be juggling several hundred hours of production.

My understanding, which may be wrong, was that it deleted the undo history upon closing. That was the reasoning I filled in in my head at least as to why relaunching Audacity was fixing the slowdowns for a time. It would explain why the file size got so big if that’s not the case though.

Do you keep WAV or other good quality backups of all the original works? Could you back up to the First Edit if you had to?

I have a FLAC of the raw footage but unfortunately, I hadn’t been in the habit of doing backups.

10

Yes. That’s usually the kiss of death when somebody writes in with a damaged show. Did You Close Audacity?!? If you did, that’s the end of Edit > Undo.

I used to be an elf on a video forum. Video (and Audio) represent possibly the first time the computer had to use all that memory on the motherboard. Any errors way up near the top could hide forever while you spreadsheet your cooking recipes or send emails. The first time you launch a complex show the system has to use everything and many ghosts come out of the machine.

The other common way to get instabilities is Cloud Drives. The manufacturers are getting terrifically good at making a drive in Philadelphia appear as though it was a drive local to your machine. Audacity can’t deal with that and you can get files with holes in them. The worst part about his failure is the instability. For Some Reason, this file is damaged. Same thing happened a couple of days ago…

So you’re limping, not dead. There’s nothing quite like staring at a screen knowing the only copy of the work just faded into the sunset.

Koz

11

So I am having the same problem with this as the other file. I had been hoping that you would have sent me the backup prior to the quasi-successful recovery attempts. Could you have sent me the same file twice, just with a different name ?

I’ll take a look at this again later, but it is likely there is little that can be done now.

12

Could you have sent me the same file twice, just with a different name ?

I just double checked, that is unfortunately the backup, from before the recovery process.

13

So, I discovered some additional recovery files hiding in the Audacity folder in my Library, constituting nearly 400 GB of data. I was able to roll back to a previous automatic backup done by Audacity and once I deleted some of the newer, corrupted saves, the problem seemed to fix itself (at least for now.) Thank you both for your help! I’ll return if there’s another issue.

14

Thanks for the update. :grinning: I’ll put your project to bed now.

15

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.