We record a three hour long podcast, and during the closing of the last show the computer froze. Admittedly my laptop has been giving me a few hiccups but the recovery tool has always saved my hide. Not so much this time.
When the recovery ran it gave me a series of errors, and when the file came up I only had the last hour of audio. The rest was just… silence. So I went through a few troubleshooting hoops and started importing the raw audio to stitch it back together. It’s all silent. At least as far as I can tell. Has anybody else run up against something like this?
The waveforms were all visible before the crash, it was recording. Any advice would be appreciated but I have a feeling that this episode has been lost to the ether.
Orphaned files don’t belong to the current state of the project (at least as far as the AUP file sees the current state).
Are any files missing? It is probably those that are producing silent audio. Look in Help > Show Log… for the names of any missing files and search your computer for them.
The error log shows the dreaded orphaned block file message. The data is consistent with the temp files from previous shows, and there are thousands of them. They’re just all importing as nothing no matter how I do it. I’ve never seen it before. I have imported temp files before to fix one previous crash without this issue that’s why I’m baffled.
Laptop is always plugged in during recordings, thanks though.
as far as the crashing, it’s always been due to having two large files open at once, and the laptop being unable to process it all in less than a day. Not so much a crash as a lock up situation. It’s an old Sony, I don’t blame Audacity in the least. It always runs perfect as long as I’m not multi-tasking.
Maybe you got a much better quality crash. If Audacity goes into the mud while it’s writing the last file, then sometimes the last file is garbage and everything else is OK. But if it goes into the mud when either it or Windows is trying to do file or directory management, that’s much more serious.
“Here’s all the file headers. I have no idea where the music is any more.”
Here’s a screen capture after I reproduced the error. It only happens when attempting to recover more than one project after a crash. Reproduced by having four open projects and force quitting the program.
I’ve given up on recovering my audio - so I’m just throwing this up here as a head’s up. Thanks everyone.
I have just recovered four unsaved projects fine. There were three harmless orphan files but this is expected.
Were these saved projects which each had an AUP file and _data folder, or projects which you had
never saved?
Do you still have that Audacity session open, if so can you post the contents of Help > Show Log…?
When you recovered those four projects, did you get just a single message box with only an OK button that said errors were found and to look at the log? Or did you get individual error dialogues that said explicitly “Orphan Block Files” or “Missing Audio Data Block Files” and you had to make choices in those dialogues to delete orphans and so on?
These were unsaved projects - the first big failure actually happened while in the process of saving.
I have been unable to recreate the glitch again so far today despite always receiving the error message which I will attach. Log always shows orphaned file errors as well. However, this log the recovery had no blank audio.
12:06:29: Audacity 2.0.0
12:06:29: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘MainPanelFunc’ in a dynamic library (error 127: the specified procedure could not be found.)
12:06:31: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
12:06:31: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘avformat-52.dll’.
12:06:31: Looking up PATH environment variable…
12:06:31: PATH = ‘C:Windowssystem32;C:Windows;C:WindowsSystem32Wbem;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesRoxio Shared9.0DLLShared;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesRoxio Shared10.0DLLShared;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesRoxio SharedDLLShared;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesRoxio SharedDLLShared;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesRoxio Shared10.0DLLShared;C:Program FilesIntelWiFibin;C:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0;C:UsersTitsandMayhemAppDataLocalSmartbarApplication;C:UsersTitsandMayhemAppDataLocalSmartbarApplication;C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesAdobeAGL’
12:06:31: Checking that ‘’ is in PATH…
12:06:31: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
12:06:31: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
12:06:31: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
12:06:31: Loading avutil from ‘avutil-50.dll’.
12:06:31: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avutil-50.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
12:06:31: Loading avcodec from ‘avcodec-52.dll’.
12:06:31: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avcodec-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
12:06:31: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-52.dll’.
12:06:31: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-52.dll’ (error 126: the specified module could not be found.)
12:06:31: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
12:06:31: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e0000422.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e000056b.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e0000618.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e0000746.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e0000780.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTITSAN~1AppDataLocalTempaudacity_tempproject11987e00d00e0000a1e.au’
12:06:35: Warning: Project check ignored orphan block file(s). They will be deleted when project is saved.
12:06:35: Warning: Project check found file inconsistencies inspecting the loaded project data.
12:06:57: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘G:stuffunkle dak show36_data36_datae00d09game_datae00d00e000029a.au’
12:06:57: Warning: Project check ignored orphan block file(s). They will be deleted when project is saved.
12:06:57: Warning: Project check found file inconsistencies inspecting the loaded project data.
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e00000c2.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e000059a.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e00007ad.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e000095c.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e0000bf2.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e0000d2a.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e0000e55.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Orphan block file: ‘C:UsersTitsandMayhemMusicDak clipsovertime_datae00d00e0000f71.au’
12:07:02: Warning: Project check ignored orphan block file(s). They will be deleted when project is saved.
12:07:02: Warning: Project check found file inconsistencies inspecting the loaded project data.
Thanks for the log. There is nothing apparently “bad” in the log or the message. The orphan files were for the undo/redo system but Audacity could not delete them because it did not exit cleanly. It will delete the orphans next time you save the project.
