look, I’ve opened my Audacity project after it crashed and all my files went silent and it said that over 6000 block files are missing. they are still in the right place in the project but the files are missing from my computer. how do I go about recovering it considering I still have all the audio files on my computer?
log.txt (802 KB)
The .au files are little six second sound files and they will all play in Audacity. Open some of them and make sure they still have sound.
koz
Audacity v. 2.4.1 on MacOS 12.1
I have the same situation, and the
.au
files can be sorted by filename and played. I’m wondering if Audacity has functionality for reconstituting a new
.aup
file from an existing
_data
directory.
I can presumably concatenate them using code , or by adding them manually to a new
.aup
file. But it would be nice to know first if Audacity has a tool for this purpose.
The files were last saved in 2010.
I have the same situation
I don’t think so. teplik opened his show normally and the AUP file turned up thousands of damaged or silenced .au files.
Is your show an edit? If it is, then the chance of recovery is zero.
If it’s a straight, simple recording, then recovery is insanely annoying and time consuming.
The .au files are intentionally named in a scrambled and random manner. There is no simple aligning of the names. There was a system reason for scrambling of the names and I don’t remember what it was.
You should know that the six-second AU files in a stereo show alternate Left, Right, Left, Right.
Times and dates do line up. You should be able to bunch the files into time baskets and then order the baskets manually.
Load timed files onto a time line and listen. If the production content lines up, go on to the next batch of files. If the content doesn’t sound right, re-arrange the files until they do. I’m not kidding. Line up words in a spoken piece or notes in a song. There is no chain, macro, batch, or single button push.
Again, if this is an edit, then the times won’t line up and you’re stuck. There is no rescue.
Koz
There was an interesting thought experiment. You can work the averages and create software that lines up the .AU files by start and top differences. Again this only works with a straight recording, not an edit, but the end of one snippet and the beginning of the next logical snippet will have the least difference.
The theatrical idea is something like ending one snippet with an “ee” sound, the beginning of the next snippet is likely to have an “ee” sound, too, but you can also use bit level analysis here. You know if you view the blue waves at high magnification, you can see the individual up and down motions. Natural sound doesn’t have sudden changes in that motion. That’s how we analyze when people have ticks or clicks in a sound file. We look for an abrupt change in that natural motion.
So you can use a combination of techniques. The character of the sound and the matching up of the blue waves. That may still not give you a working show, it doesn’t work if the files are silent, for example, but it will be a lot closer, faster than starting with baskets of random files with time signatures and strong coffee.
And also know what Audacity doesn’t do it that way any more, so you will be playing to an audience of one, you, or a limited group of people still using legacy software.
Koz