I’m using 2.3.3 in windows 10.
Every morning I try to get back to work by going to FILE and then to OPEN or RECENT FILES. Sometimes one of those works but only after several aborted tries where I get NOT RESPONDING.
What am I doing wrong?
Where are you saving to?
FILE, SAVE PROJECT, SAVE AS
What steve wanted to know is the location where you save the project. Is it an external drive?, USB location, LAN location? Internal HDD/SSD location?
I don’t know the answer to the question regarding the location in which I saved my work and the manual doesn’t say anything about that as far as I can tell. All I see is go to FILE, SAVE AS. And it usually comes up when I go to FILE, OPEN or FILE, RECENT after five or six tries. This time however? Nothing.
I appreciate your help.
OK.
aup?
That’s what it says at the end of the name for my project that I find when I try RECENT FILES.
It wasn’t saved to anything external.
And as I said, simply going to FILE, OPEN or FILE, RECENT has worked before. But now I get NOT RESPONDING.
Maybe if you start a new project and try to save it, you could determine the default location for projects saving. It uses to be something like:
C:\Users<your name>\Documents\Audacity
And from now try to remember that the secret for graphical operating systems is the same as for real estate: “location, location, location”.
Well, indeed the project IS in DOCUMENTS.
So I open it from there. Still not responding.
So let me just forget all that work and record a new project. Can you tell me the specific steps to save it to continue work on it the following day?
Saving in AUDACITY is the same procedure like saving documents in f.e. WORD. So you always should know what is the best filename and where is the best folder to find it again.
For me your problem sounds like a tippo in the filename. Using “special characters” in the name can cause problems in re-finding it. Therefore I would recomment not use this characters: “.” and “:” and “/” and "" and SPACE key . Also a good idea is to choose a logical and informativ filename, a combination of songname, musician, instrument and version. f.e. “Lovesong_Peter_Piano_V13.WAV”.
AUDACITY has two possibilities of saving tracks. One is the saving of the PROJECT, which means that all relevant datas and tracks are saved in a (very) AUDACITY-special format. Sounds good, but sometimes has barriers, if one of the (thousand) part-files is corrupted.
So my favorite way of saving files is always to additionaly EXPORT all tracks as WAV-Files.
MENU-FILE-EXPORT-EXPORT MULTIPLE:
Create a NEW FOLDER every day to have several backups of your song.
Path
C:\Users*yourname*\Documents\Audacity*Lovesong_V13*
Format:
WAV (Microsoft) 24bit unsigned PCM
If you gave your tracks individual name, the exported WAV-files will also have this names.
At the end BEFORE CLOSING AUDACITY I always take a look into the “C:\Users*yourname*\Documents\Audacity*Lovesong_V13*”-folder to ensure, that the file are really saved.
As today harddisc space does not matter any more, you can save a lot of backups and copies. Some time this will help you in a worst case scenario…
Thanks. I have not used any special characters except a number.
I’ve been just going to FILE, SAVE AS. And the problem has not been finding the project. I go to FILE, OPEN and it comes up. But then when I try to work with it I get NOT RESPONDING. These are three hour reads. Could that be a problem? Because I tried a ten second test, went through my usual save routine, turned it off and brought it back up. No problem.
Ok, this changes everything… perhaps it is not a file problem, but a RAM problem. Maybe the file is to big. Did you try to wait for 10 minutes after opening before clicking anywhere and trying to start playback?
Did you try to close as many other apps on this computer?
Did you ever export the file instead of “saving” it?
Have a look on the project’s folder… open the Windows Explorer, right click on the folder name, then click “Properties”. What is the total size of the folder in MByte?
I would suggest to change your forum post headline from “newbie starting…” to something like “Is my Project to big for loading?” or “How to repair AUP file?” So you have a better chance to find the optimal expert for this problem.
So you don’t just FILE, SAVE AS. You also EXPORT, WAV with a new folder each day. Or do you only EXPORT? You don’t use SAVE AS?
I thought EXPORT was only necessary when you were done and wanted to put your work on a flash drive. In fact I was able to go to DOCUMENTS, find my audio project and click and drag to my flash drive (which the computer calls DRIVE E.) I didn’t actually drop it there. I just saw that it would click and drag.
My project is not music. It’s just a spoken word reading of a book. The book has 14 chapters and I’m only through 4 of them. I did as you suggested and checked out the size of the file in EXPLORER, FILE, PROPERTIES and it’s 750 KB. A previous try had 600 KB and another previous try had 400 KB. They’re all in the same folder. Is that too big?
I also did as you suggested and waited 10 minutes after opening to try to work on the thing and, hey! that worked. Who’d a thought? You have to wait 10 minutes. Still a problem though. The first ten minutes were missing.
I’m still a little confused, but I think I’m learning. I never would have thought I had to wait ten minutes.
Thanks for your assistance.
I also never had to wait for 10 minutes, but if your computer has a RAM problem or harddisk-space-problem it needs a lot of time to re-organize the swap-file… It was worth a try… and it worked.
Now to your questions…
Yes I never use the SAVE-AS option, because I already had several problems, when re-opening it. I heard, that th new version 2.4 will use a new concept, we will see…
On the other side, also OGG-files, which are my favorite EXPORT-format, already made problems. This is why I always try to open the new file immediately after saving it, before closing the current AUDACITY window. And I also keep the yesterdays work as as emergency backup. I’m pessimist…
Whether MUSIC or SPOKEN does not matter. But a file size of 750kB is extrem small. Perhaps you talk about MByte and not kByte? 750kByte means 5sec of reading… 750MByte means 2 hours
My biggest files are around 150MB and need 15sec of loading. I guess 750MB (if MB is what you mean) would need 75sec of loading, if the RAM is big enough. Do you really need the whole book in one audio-file?