Audacity Forum

Often, I will sabv an Aup file and come back later to work it some more. When I load it, the waves are there, and when I hit play, the bar travels across the waves as if it is playing but no sound. it only happens on some saves, not all, but when it does, I lose the whole project and have to start over

Audacity Projects aren't sound files. You can make actual sound files by Export As WAV instead of "Save," or you can make the Projects self-contained and less likely to break by clicking...

Edit > Preferences > File Formats > Make a copy of the file...

Your damaged shows may be gone forever.

Koz

I'm not sure I communicated correctly - normally, when I am not finished with a project, I click "save project" and come back the next day, listen to the tracks and proceed with my development. Once in a while, when I reload the project to continue, the tracks are visibly there, but no sound comes out when I play a track to review it. sometimes the project is intact and workable, sometimes it isn't.

The blue waves are drawn by two picture files and it's not hard to get them out of step with the show.

Projects are not sound files. They're Production Environment Managers. Their job is to point to all the parts of your show which can be many hundreds of different files all over your computer. If you do anything to disturb the relationship between all those files, you will get holes in your show.

Say you have a complex show with multiple imported sound files. You save your Project and only then clean up by moving all those messy sound clips from your desktop to kozMy Music. The show will turn to trash because the AUP file will not be able to find the music clips on your desktop. You moved them.

Any disturbance will do this. Delete a sound clip, rename it. move it. That portion of your show will vanish. A favorite trick is to use tracks from a Music CD. Take the CD out of the machine and the show instantly has holes in it.

This problem will largely go away if you change that preference to allow Audacity to copy all your music into itself for editing. Normally, it doesn't.

Koz

Thanks,
Makes sense now