My laptop crashed just as I was about to start editing a project. All I had done was rename the audio track in one project file (which is the project I am now having trouble with), and was attempting to copy a track from a second project when the crash occurred.
When my laptop came back on, I opened audacity and received the automatic crash recovery notice, with both projects listed. I selected for both to be recovered. The second project file appears to have been recovered with no issues, but the the first one then returns a blank āError Opening Projectā dialogue box. After closing the error message Audacity seems to remember the length of the project as thatās where the timeline appears, but there is no audio track visible. I cannot export audio and saving a copy of the recovered project results in an empty (320kb) .aup3 file. But the original .aup3 still shows the original file size (790mb or so). My hope is that the data is still there and somehow recoverable, though I am not holding my breath.
Zip up your .aup3 project, then upload it to a public server. Post a link or PM it me. Iāll take a look at it. Note, that all of your data may, in fact, be trashed or unrecoverable.
Thank you, jademan, appreciate you taking a look. I donāt have consistent internet access at the moment but will upload the zipped project file when I can and send you a PM with the link. It may be a few days.
Haha thanks! Looks like I donāt have permissions to send PMs yet, so hereās a dropbox link to the zipped .aup3 file - let me know if you have any issues accessing the file or anything. And thanks so much for taking a look - crossing my fingers but understand this all may be futile!
Well, we got very lucky. Even though your project was flagged as Error 11 - Corrupt Database, I was able to recover what appears to be all of what you sent. I have uploaded the ārecoveredā file and PMād you a link.
I was able to recover what appears to be all of what you sent.
By what method? Is this something an ordinary human can do? Is there a plain description of what happened? For example, the data listings and the actual data have become disconnected? Wild guess what could cause that? For example, closing Audacity before it completed saving?
You joined Audacity after All The Good Stuff. You know Audacity used to save a text AUP file with instructions what Audacity was to do with all those tiny sound snippets in the _DATA folder.
You probably donāt know that Audacity saved the AUP file last. So rather than be missing the last couple of notes of a musical performance, or a word or two from the governorās interview, a damaged or missing AUP file would flush the whole thing.
There were Secret Oral Teachings and rumors of people who knew people who could reconstruct a clean recording with no AUP file. This was made even more entertaining because the little sound snippets were randomly namedāon purpose. There was a perfectly rational data hygiene reason for doing that, but I guarantee nobody ever talked to a real-world entertainment producer before they did it.
To my knowledge, nobody ever brought an aup-free edited project back from the dead.
So thatās where the AUP3 file came from. Having an AUP3 project fail to open brings back very dark memories.
So koz, currently this is done by magical incantation and elbow grease. Tips and clues on how to do some of this have been posted by Steve and others over the years. I have a few tricks of my own.
Not currently. However, in the case of projects that are already excessively slow, AudacityRescue (see https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/3-0-3-experiencing-extreme-slowdown-and-is-not-responding/62439/18 ) can be run to remove excess baggage and 3.0.4 can be used to keep them from coming back. I am hopeful that, someday, a program will be written to recover from 11=Corrupt data base, and other broken .aup3 issues. I certainly donāt need to be doing this - these problems are a waste of my time and that of the users.
No. I am not going to hazzard a guess at this. In my opinion, in a perfect world, the SQlite structure and software āshouldā be strong enough to tolerate anything the user might do. But we are not there today are we? And I hesitate to blame the user on software/hardware limitations. One thing I try to do, is to not rush things even when I am in a hurry - to give the computer the time it needs to do things right the first time. But did impatience cause the issue? I think software/hardware limitations caused the issue.
THANK YOU! I am so eternally grateful for your willingness to help and unexpected expediency in getting this back to me. Thank you thank you thank you so so much.
So if you have a touch and feel relationship with SQLite and in this case the editor had not actually started editing, you could work in the subjunctive. Where would the sound have been if everything was working normally? Pull it out of the damaged project and see if the sound is rational. If it is, present it to the eternally grateful editor.
I havenāt figured out a good way to trash unneeded envelope control points. Could we go with a rational test here, too? What are the chances that the editor is going to place 500 control points in four seconds?
Average out the points to a rational number and trash everything else. Absolutely nobody is going to know.
Well, we got very lucky. Even though your project was flagged as Error 11 - Corrupt Database, I was able to recover what appears to be all of what you sent. 
