I have a large project (4.39 GB) that has been having a variety of issues lately. The first think I noticed was that while the project is playing, I cannot edit certain tracks’ Realtime effects without the program freezing up; I usually have to end up closing it via task manager because it will not shut down otherwise. I had to set the buffer size to 400 because one day I opened the project and the playback was choppy and awful. Most recently, I tried recording a new track and almost 500 dropouts were detected over the cours of ~25 seconds. Please help!
Another thing: When recording, the waveform does not show up.
Edit 1: Grammar
Edit 2: Also, this all only happens in the first parts of the project. The project is roughly 20 minutes long, but these issues only occur when recording/playing back the first handful of minutes.
Edit 3: Adding these edit tags, I’ll add anything new I find to this message.
A basket of errors like this feels an awful lot like the computer running out of resources. The computer isn’t doing anything else, right? No email, surfing, X (formerly twitter), Photos, and etc. Each time you launch and use another app subtracts from the available memory that Audacity has to do all its real-time work. The instant Audacity runs out, it has to wake up the system drive and try to shuffle work back and forth quickly to make up the difference. This will never work because the internal drive is much slower and sloppier than the system memory, that and it hasn’t had its coffee yet.
All this is assuming your drives are internal. If you use external, network, internet, or cloud drives, the show will never catch up. Audacity only works well with roomy. fast internal drives.
Koz
A note about that. Audacity saves UNDO at each edit by memorizing the whole show. If you do need UNDO, Audacity just opens up the last show it saved. If you have a billion edits, that’s where the large show size came from. You’re hosting a billion individual copies of the show.
Koz
How do I erase those copies and just host one copy of the show?
I’m doing this on a pretty powerful laptop, and looking through task manager while I was recording none of the resources (RAM, Disc, CPU, etc.) were above 35% usage. Are you sure the issue is from resource consumption?
Are they? Cloud companies are getting really good at making an on-line drive system seem like a local drive… But they’re not. They have networking problems that companies try to pretend aren’t there, but they can create oddball problems such as you have. Pull or disconnect your network connection. Do you get system complaints or does your project stop dead?
Have you ever done a “clean shutdown?” Hold Shift while you shut down > OK > Wait for the system to settle and then start. Do not let anything else start.
This is different from Restart and plain, ordinary Shut Down. They can both leave stuff in the background. They don’t start fresh.
Did the problem change or get better?
I think there’s no chance you’re going to find one simple change to clear all your errors. There are too many different ones. I’m working on global changes or “shotgun” servicing.
Of course, any time now, a different forum elf can drop in and solve all your problems.
Koz
Missed one.
Audacity 3.3.3 and 3.4.2 are the current stable releases. If you’re using one of the two in the middle, you can move either up or down.
Koz
I’m in the most recent version, and my drive is internal. I’ve made sure whenever I open the project nothing else is open. I’m not sure what the problem could be.
I’m not either, but I am reasonably sure that the problem isn’t the individual glitches and presentation damage, the problem is you have a basket of problems. That points to machine issues.
I have had bad memory in a machine. It’s not fun.
It’s possible to get tests and analyzers that can reveal bad on-board memory and drives. That’s where I’d be going.
I was an elf on a video production forum and one thing we noted was production damage the first time people authored shows that went into upper memory. Their machines were fine with text files, spreadsheets, and email, but went nuts the first time they tried to edit a half-hour show. That’s how I know about memory testers.
Also we note nobody has dropped in here to argue with me.
Koz
Did you disconnect your network connection?
There is a much more serious possibility. You’re not the only user on your machine.
Have you ever done that thorough virus test that takes all night? This may be a good time for that.
Koz
Alright, I’ll look into doing these things. Also, is there a way to eliminate the other copies of the show from using UNDO like you mentioned before? I’d love to cut down the project size.
Someone will correct me. If you save a Project and close Audacity, it should delete all the UNDO layers.
If you have a relatively short show and still have an enormous file, then we get to wait for a Windows forum elf.
For reference, an ordinary, 20 minute long, stereo show will produce an Audacity Project of 643MB.
It will produce a stereo WAV file of 212MB.
Do you have like a billion layers or joined tracks?
Koz
Lots of tracks, over a hundred. I have begun splitting the project into smaller parts, so instead of one large project with over a hundred tracks, it’s several smaller projects with ~30 tracks each. This is better for the project anyway, as it helps keep things more organized.
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