Hey there. I had started a new project using Audacity, and my computer had crashed before I saved it. After I rebooted my computer, a prompt for recovering the project came up. After I’d agreed to recover the project, the window for the project came up, but all of the sound files are all a bunch of flat lines that don’t play any audio. Is there any way that I can fix this?
Please remember, it is much easier for us if you tell us your version of Audacity and version of OS X (see the pink panel at the top of the page).
You should take Macs crashing very seriously. To begin with, open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and run repair or first aid.
Don’t quit Audacity from within Audacity or you will lose your data or save it in incorrect state. If you need to quit Audacity, open Activity Monitor and force quit Audacity.
Then in Finder, Go > Go to Folder and type:
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/AutoSave
Attach the AUTOSAVE file that is in that AutoSave folder. Please see here for how to attach files: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1
If you still have Audacity open, also attach the log from Help > Show Log… .
If you have already force quit Audacity, launch it again and it will try to recover again. Then attach the log.
I don’t want to worry you unduly, but there is also a chance that if you never saved the project before the crash, then the temporary data Audacity is trying to recover from may have been deleted. But the log would show us more.
Gale
Alrighty, I attached the file to this message. My Audacity version is 2.0.6
Thanks in advance for the help!
New Project - 2015-11-08 15-56-08 N-1.autosave (50.4 KB)
OK the AUTOSAVE file looks OK, but you did not attach the log file (Help > Show Log…).
If you open Finder, use Go > Go to Folder and type
/var/folders/9z/hrkr_dhn1474sm2vm2mdhp6m0000gn/T/audacity-david/
is there a “project778537167” folder in there? That is where the audio data should be, if it survived the reboot.
Gale
Thank you for the input! The project folder is there. The audio files seem to be separated into two different folders, but they are not all assembled into one project file. How do I open that saved project folder?
Given your Mac is crashing, I suggest you copy the AUTOSAVE file and the “project778537167” folder to your Desktop as a backup.
Inside “project778537167” there should a subfolder “e00”. Inside “e00” there should be two subfolders “d00” and “d01”.
If the subfolder structure is not like that, that is why you have no audio.
If the subfolder is as I describe then I need to see the log to have some idea what the problem is.
Is Audacity still open with the bad recovery showing? If so, open Activity Monitor and force quit Audacity. Then launch Audacity again. It should ask again if you want to recover the project. Say yes. Then show me the contents of Help > Show Log… . If necessary, drag from the top to the bottom of the log window. COMMAND + C to copy. Then paste into your reply.
Gale
Okay, here’s the log!
20:07:06: Audacity 2.0.6
20:07:06: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries...
20:07:06: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from default path, '/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Checking for monolithic avformat from '/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avutil from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avcodec from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avformat from '/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(/Library/Application Support/audacity/libs/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
20:07:06: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from legacy path, '/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Checking for monolithic avformat from '/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avutil from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avcodec from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avformat from '/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/audacity/libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
20:07:06: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is 'libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Checking for monolithic avformat from 'libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avutil from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avcodec from ''.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(.bundle, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Loading avformat from 'libavformat.55.dylib'.
20:07:06: Error: dlopen(libavformat.55.dylib, 1): image not found
20:07:06: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
20:07:06: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
Is that the whole log, and did you get that log after restarting Audacity? That’s what I need, so I see the log after Audacity tries to recover the project.
There are no data errors shown in that log.
Gale
Yeah, that’s the whole thing. All of the separate files in the project folder are all flat lines where there used to be recorded audio data, too
Then there is nothing to be done, I am afraid. 
Are you sure you did not save the recovered project with the audio missing? If you do that, you overwrite the any good data in the project folder with the missing or bad data: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/trouble-recovering-data/40448/2
I an not sure what happened otherwise. The AUTOSAVE file is correct, indicating non-silent files and that is written after the data is written. But if Audacity could not read the temporary data for some reason when it first tried to recover after the crash, then unfortunately it decides of its own accord to replace all the AU files with silence.
You still have not said what version of OS X you have. Have you tried Repair or First Aid? Is the Mac still crashing? If the Mac could not read the Audacity temp folder when it restarted then you might have permissions and/or file system or disk problems. Disk Utility is a good place to start fixing those.
Gale