Recording time remaining

[Peter]

Hi, I'm new to using Audacity - just got a USB turntable as a birthday gift and am busily (happily?) transferring 30 odd years of vinyl & cassette onto my PC. Just started so it could take me a while!

In the bottom left corner of the Audacity recording window it says "Recording time remaining" and currently shows 34 hours and 18 minutes. Please could someone tell me what this means (none of my albums are that long, not even the 1970's prog rock ones!) and what happens when it reaches zero?

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before - I searched both the Audacity help & these forums but no luck.

[alatham]

It's just telling you how much data you can record before you run out of hard drive space, at Audacity's current recording settings.

You should note that if you set Audacity to record in Mono this number will be twice as high as it is when you set Audacity to record in Stereo. Likewise, if you set Audacity to record to 32 bits it will be half as large as when Audacity is set to record to 16 bits.

Also, if the amount of free hard drive space you have changes this number will change.

Be aware that Audacity has a hard time recording if your hard drive space is getting very low due to disk fragmentation and increased write/read time to/from the hard drive. If you're writing these LPs to CD then you can delete your older project files to free up space. Just make sure the CDs are OK before you do.

[Peter]

alatham,

Thanks very much for the prompt response. I'll keep an eye on my hard drive although I do defrag it on a fairly regular basis. I'll stick with 32 bits to get the better quality.

Regards,

Peter.

[waxcylinder]

just to add to alatham's excellent advice - In addition to burning to CD I would also recommend storing your WAV files for archive on an external (USB) disc (the're very cheap these days). You will have worked hard to make those transribed and edited recordings - it would a pity to lose all that work.

Anyway discs are getting so large these days even on portable devices (e'g. the latest iPod Classic at 160Gb) that soon one can consider nice lossless WAV file on an iPod instead of lossy MP3s.

WC

[Peter]

waxcyllinder,

Yes, I've been pricing up some usb drives. 8 GB should store about 1200 - 1400 tracks for about £60. I just need to decide do I buy one big enough to take everything or buy a few smaller ones so that if one goes faulty I don't have to re-record everything. I don't want to keep them on the PC cos of the space they'll take up. I could buy an external drive as back up to the usb drives I suppose. Even though the wife has suggested I get rid or sell the albums afterwards, I can't bring myself to do it. I've only known her for about 18 years but I've had some of the albums more than twice as long! Are you allowed to sell women on ebay? Mind you, who'd do the dusting & make my brews?

[kozikowski]

<<<if you set Audacity to record to 32 bits it will be half as large>>>

But only in floating point. If you record in straight 32-bit, you will get a much larger file.

Koz

[kozikowski]

<<<if one goes faulty I don't have to re-record everything>>>

We use the two spindle approach. You need to be able to point to two different rotating platters with the same valuable data for a successful safety backup. C: and D: physical drives inside the computer counts as does one huge slow external USB drive versus all the internal drives.

Partitions do not count. If a spinning platter hits the toilet, all the mounted drives and partitions on it will go, too.

Do not go over two; main and backup. If you start using three and four backups, you will never keep up with the bookkeeping.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

Peter,

Don't mess about with little discs/clips - 8Gb for £60! My 250GB Buffalo from Amazon cost £60 last year, it's brother cost £90 the year before. IIRC today's Guardian had an ad with a 320Gb disc for £60.

And do do as Koz suggests and use two separate discs, duplicate backups - hardware does fail - and you don't want to lose all that work (particularly if you don't have the LPs any more - I solve the LP storage problem by giving them to my son after I have digitized them.)

BTW: I don't know what format you export your tracks to - but I export to both WAV and MP3 (at 192) - the MP3s I use on my iTunes/iPod - the WAVS are kept for backup (as they can be reloaded back into Audacity later for re-editing if you need to) also I keep the WAVs against the time when discs on portable devices get even huger (the latest iPod Classic is 160Gb) and then I can use lossless WAVS rather than lossy old MP3s.

WC

[Peter]

Everyone,

Many thanks for the advice and suggestions.

WC, I must be shopping in the wrong places! I think I'd best make 2 back ups as you suggest. I'll be keeping the albums somewhere safe as there's too many memories to just get rid of them.