Is there a better way to share between platforms?

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi!

So that this doesn’t create a wall of text barrier of entry to people, I’ll begin the thread with a very minimal “short version”, but will include a more detailed “long version” as a reply-to-myself for those who are interested in getting a better picture of what I’m asking about and why. :slight_smile:

THE SHORT VERSION:

Is there a better way to share .aup files than to upload xyz to a cloud service (in my case, OneDrive), download it onto the destination device, open it, make changes, save changes, replace the old xyz with the new xyz on OneDrive, download the amended file on the new destination device, lather, rinse, repeat?

Even if I do use a .zip file, or do the compress [lossy] (.ogg?) file approach (which is what the FAQ in the manual suggest as options), rather than try to upload the .aup file, and associated [huge] data folder, that is still super cumbersome, and frought with the chance of getting my wires crossed.

Please let me know! And thanks in advance for all the help. Again, I’ll follow this up with a “long version” for those who are interested in reading it. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

2

…as promised, here’s THE [VERY] LONG VERSION:

I’m brand new to the forum, and very nearly brand new to Audacity. Please indulge me a brief “stage setting” introduction:

I’'ve had some very limited experience in Audacity helping family members with music production for their projects and businesses, but to date, all my own work on my podcast, and what very little music production I sporadically do for myself has been pretty much entirely done in GarageBand. I’m working on gradually migrating away from macOS and Windows 10 to Linux (the “slow road” approach, not the “jump off a cliff” kind), and that means migrating away from GarageBand as well, which is the only DAW I am truly comfortable with.

After a bit of reading, it sounds like the ticket is to make the distinction between “sound recorder / editor” (i.e. creating and manipulating individual sound files), and “workstation” (i.e. putting all the sound files together into a final project.) Based on what I’ve read (and corroborated by my own experience), Audacity is EXCELLENT for the former, and passably useable as, but not at all strong as the latter, whereas GarageBand is the exact opposite, minimally capable as a recorder / editor, but excellent as a workstation. So, my plan is to start using Audacity as my recorder/editor, but use a different program for workstation. For the moment, I’ll keep using GarageBand for that purpose until I can find a program that works across mac, Windows, and most importantly, Linux that I can replace it with (a cursory reading makes me think LMMC will be a likely candidate, but I am WIDE OPEN for suggestions, even if they’re not free).

One other thing that will help me in this transition will be to “untether me” from the basement studio. As I said, right now, all my own production happens in GarageBand, which, obviously, means that all my production happens on my mac, which is tucked away in a basement studio. Not only does the basement studio leave me feeling cut off from the rest of the world, but it would also give me a lot more freedom, flexibility, and time to work on my production if I could share my work between my “podcasting mac” in the basement, my “gaming [Win10] PC” upstairs, and my cheapie Chromebook, or *buntu laptop abroad (or on friends and family’s equipment when I’m over at their houses). Obviously, using GarageBand, I can’t do this except for with friends and family who also have macs.

I’m presently working on a blooper reel for an episode of the podcast (for a mini-series on the music of the PC Engine / Turbografx16 that I did with a guest collaborator who is a TG16 podcaster), and I thought “why don’t I use this as a great chance to get started with Audacity?” So, I got all the source files put together in Audacity on my mac, and then tried, for the first time, to share a .aup file with the PC upstairs. At first the file would not open at all, but I was able to relatively quickly figure out that it was because Audacity created a folder to go along with the .aup file and I did not upload that to OneDrive to send to the PC. However, when I tried to upload a folder that was 3.1GB on the mac, OneDrive only uploaded 1.99GB of it, and thus, only 1.99GB of the data made it to the PC. And of course, when I tried opening the file, much of my audio was missing.

After reading the FAQ in the manual, I did read ideas like creating a .zip file, which is a good idea, or even to save a compressed version of the project and use that instead. Only it comes right out and says that’s lossy, and I don’t know how much. I think that going the .zip approach is probably the better option - at least to try first. :slight_smile:

But is there a better way to share .aup files? Even if I am successful in sharing projects between devices (which, again, on my first try, I was not), it is a cumbersome approach indeed to upload xyz to OneDrive, download it onto the destination device, open it, make changes, save changes, replace the old xyz with the new xyz on OneDrive, download the amended file on the new destination device, lather, rinse, repeat? Even if I do use a .zip file, or do the compress (.ogg?) file approach, that is still super cumbersome, and frought with the chance of getting my wires crossed.

Anyway, I heartily welcome your feedback, and assistance!

Cheers!

3

You are not saving an AUP file. The AUP is the list of instructions of what Audacity should do with all that stuff in the _DATA folder. That’s where the actual sound is and you need both. If you lose your AUP file, that’s the end of the world.

Audacity doesn’t offer a Server/Client version…yet. Schools run into this limit all the time. One Audacity and a bunch of students.

One problem is having your editing performance tied to your network performance. It may not be obvious, but your home internet is usually aggressively non-symmetrical. Download is a bunch faster than upload, and both vary depending on how many people are sharing your connection. If you’re on a Cable connection, you can watch the activity lights as your neighbors share their cat videos on YouTube.

Audacity uses a very high performance uncompressed file system internally so as not to destroy your work when you apply effects, filters and corrections. This just kills people trying to make a podcast from download MP3s. Audacity decompresses them to their original file sizes and then converts them to the larger 32-bit floating format. Good night! Where did all that data come from? Even worse, Audacity saves copies of the whole show as UNDO while it’s open. Did you notice that even when you’re successful at transferring your show between machines, UNDO doesn’t follow you?

I don’t know of any good solution.

Koz

4

I can offer some good hints for file transmission. Today is 20190922, not 9/22/19. Don’t use punctuation marks in filenames. Underscore and -dash- are OK.

DontUseSpaces_in_file_names.

Don’t use Windows Reserved Words.

Reserved words are widely used during the DOS era and didn’t change those properties until now. Here are the Windows reserved words: CON, PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL COM0, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9 LPT0, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.

Isn’t this fun?

This is an actual filename from a piece I shot.

ZOOM0001FurryInside.mp3

Koz

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Thank you so much for all the info, Koz! It -IS- very helpful! Due to the time-sensitive nature of the blooper reel, however, I’ve decided to go ahead and just fall back on GarageBand for this one. But I certainly will still be planning Audacity / LMMC (or other) for the future.

I think what I’ll do next is try the zip file approach with the folder and the .aup and just send the zip. It’ll be a pain in the butt to have to do that each time, but if it works, then I at least have a working solution. I’m sure I’ll have to figure out something similar for LMMC or whatever program I use in place of GarageBand in the moving forward. Hopefully a more graceful solution will appear in time. But assuming the .zip thing is successful, it would at least be a workable solution that I could implement immediately, and hasten my transition away from GarageBand and Mac. I think because of gaming, it’ll take me longer to get away from Windows than it will to get away from Mac. :slight_smile:

Thanks so much!

p.s. the file name I was working with was “TG16 NNR Blooper Reel.aup” (as in, “Turbografx16 Nerd Noise Radio Blooper Reel”, of course.) :smiley:

6

How about using GitHub https://github.com/
This has the added advantage of giving you “version control”.