Been catching up on a lockdown project where I’d been digitising my vinyl. I had a massive folder with all the Audacity files (_data folders and .aup files). Everything was going fine when suddenly tonight I was getting an error message that there were missing project files. OK fine I thought, maybe it’s an update needed which I did.
Now however things are worse, first I get the message - “Missing Project File e.xxxxxxxxxxx.au Inserting Silence Instead” - I click OK, Audacity quits and I get a massive error message.
So it seems there is issues with both the old and new versions.
I’m a Windows guy, plus I don’t know much about “recovery”. Someone else will have some suggestions…
The current version of Audacity uses AUP3 project files which are “fully self contained” as one file and they are supposed to be more robust. But people still occasionally have problems.
The new version can open older AUP projects as long as they are not damaged/corrupt.
The AUP3 database format requires an NTFS drive so you should always “work from” your local hard drive. It’s OK to temporarily move the files to/from a thumb drive or “the cloud”.
It’s a good idea to make a WAV or FLAC file immediately after recording whether you make an Audacity project or not. These files are even more simple and robust. If you are working on something critical you should make back-ups, etc. Digitizing vinyl usually isn’t that critical and worst case it takes 45 minutes or an hour to digitize it again. Plus you lose any work you’ve put-in for noise reduction, etc., but it’s not like losing a recording of a one-time performance.
When I digitized vinyl I never made an Audacity project. I just work with WAV files, and maybe export to MP3 when I’m done.
Thanks Doug, all of what you say is true of course! I was on a run with Audacity and meant to do the conversion to .aiff but then life got in the way. Sadly I’m looking at weeks of work to re record as there’s over 100 files lost.
It’s gutting though as all the data files are there, Audacity just refuses to recognise them, I’m sure there much be an answer, well hoping so anyway.