I’m not an expert. I am using audacity to record he person speaking in our church. Twice now we’ve got to the end of a recording and found the first 15 or 25 min is now just a flat line. I searched around and found the log and I think the important lines are here:
10:24:18: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
10:24:18: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
10:24:18: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
10:24:18: Loading avutil from ‘’.
10:24:18: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
10:24:18: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
10:24:18: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
10:24:18: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
10:24:18: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
10:24:18: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
10:24:18: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
11:27:06: Error: can’t open file ‘C:UsersBGBCAppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject1040e00d00e000050a.au’ (error 2: the system cannot find the file specified.)
11:27:06: Error: can’t open file ‘C:UsersBGBCAppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject1040e00d00e000050a.au’ (error 3: the system cannot find the path specified.)
11:27:06: Error: can’t open file ‘C:UsersBGBCAppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject1040e00d00e000091b.au’ (error 3: the system cannot find the path specified.)
It seems to have lost contact with the temp file. Is this right? What can I do to stop this happening?
Version of Audacity and version of Windows? See the pink panel at the top of the page.
How much disk space is there on C:? Has your IT manager put disk space quotas on the disk so that you can only use part of its space?
Have you looked in “C:UsersBGBCAppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject1040e00d00”, sorted the files by time and checked if AU files corresponding to the first part of the recording are there? If not, then probably Norton or some file clean up app has deleted them for you. The solution would be to configure the clean up app to leave the Audacity Temp directory alone, turn off Norton’s Windows Temporary File Cleaner, or File > Save Project As… before you start recording and choose your Desktop or Music folder.
I imagine that they’ll just tell me to do what you have advised. I have scheduled the temp file removal for a weekly slot when no recording should be happening!
I’m not an expert. I am using audacity to record he person speaking in our church. Twice now we’ve got to the end of a recording and found the first 15 or 25 min is now just a flat line.
Computers are the least reliable things we own! A microphone or guitar amplifier can last a lifetime with no major problems, but everybody has a computer problem once in awhile.
If you are recording something critical where’s there’s no chance for “take two”, I always recommend a backup system recording in parallel. That could be a solid-state recorder or even a VHS recorder (recording only the audio if you wish), or whatever you can get your hands on.
…It’s not so much that computers are THAT unreliable, but there are LOTS of ways for the user, or another application, to foul-up the settings/configuration and there’s just a lot that can go wrong. And when something goes wrong, it can take more than a couple of minutes to fix it, and sometimes you don’t know something’s gone wrong 'till it’s too late.
It can help a lot if you have a computer dedicated to audio use, but I’m recording something critical (or using it for something critical in a live performance) I want a backup!