Trouble opening a project file - Mac OS - 2.3.1

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi all and thanks in advance to whoever reads this –

I recorded an episode of our company’s podcast yesterday evening. We finished recording, I saved the project file to my desktop, and then proceeded to listen to the episode back. Everything was there and working fine. I did some noise removal editing, re-saved the project and then closed my computer down for the evening.

This morning, I went to open the project file and got an error saying that the project was missing 540 audio blocks. I also get a separate message saying that Audacity has detected 540 orphan blocks that it doesn’t associate with any particular project. I’m confused because I never moved data files around, messed with anything else, etc. All the .au block files exist and I can listen to them through Audacity in 6 second increments.

I’m trying to see if there’s any way to re-constitute or repair the project file such that it recognizes the correct .au files in my _data folder. I never specified where to save the _data folder but it appears Audacity automatically created it on my desktop since that’s where my project file was saved.

I’ve attached the .aup file to this post as well as the Audacity log that comes up when I try to open the project.

I’m willing to try whatever to salvage the episode, though I’m certainly well aware now that it was a mistake not to immediately export the raw .WAV file. I’ll be doing that going forward.

Any help would be tremendously appreciated and I’m more than happy to provide whatever other attachments might be of use.
Episode_1_Podcast_Log.txt (148 KB)
TheArtOfRealEstate_Episode1_Project_File.aup (83.2 KB)

2

it was a mistake not to immediately export the raw .WAV file.

Not exactly raw. File > Export > Export as Wav > wav (Microsoft) 16-bit. It’s the same basic format and perfect quality as an Audio CD. And yes, they make terrific backup audio files.

that’s where my project file was saved.

There’s a few slippery words there. An Audacity Project has a Project Manager (AUP file) and a Project _DATA folder with the 6-second snippets.

Those two have to exist in the same location or folder, they have to have the same name and you can’t edit or change either one outside of Audacity.

If Audacity is still open, you can Edit > UNDO your way out to the original show. If you closed Audacity on an original performance, there are sometimes manual ways to rescue the work using the music file time and date stamps.

If you closed Audacity on an edited show, that may be the end of the world.

projname=“TheArtOfRealEstate_Episode1_Project_File_data”

That’s a reading from inside the AUP file. So it appears that part of it is OK.

re-saved the project

You edited the raw performance and saved the corrections to the same show.

[Ding] Strike 2.

Edit a copy of the performance, or Save As the corrections as a different filename.

This is the process of manually editing the individual AU files.

Koz

3

To make you feel better, I think you made all the common production errors. You had a working show in your hands.

You left out having the battery die in the middle of the performance and running out of hard drive storage.

Koz