Audacity Forum

<<<I saved it under a simple name, as instructed. >>>

Did you do that system change thing where Windows stops hiding the file names? We won't get very much further if you didn't do that.

When you Exported As WAV for your test performance, do you now have a file called "something.wav?"

Koz

Hi,
yes I did make that change, and yes, I do have .wav after the name of the test file.

Now that you can see the information after the dot in the file name, you can go into one of the _DATA folders and it should be full of something.au files. Those may feel and taste like sound files, but they're not.

When you Save (not Export), Audacity creates a something.aup project manager, a _data folder with a bunch of something.au files in it. That pile is your show. The whole pile, in the order and location it was created. If you moved, renamed, deleted, destroyed any part of that, that's the show in the trash.

Also, if you used a bunch of sound files in your show, those sound files need to still exist and in the exact folder they were when you used them. A favorite trick is to use music from a CD and then, without thinking, remove the CD. That's the show in a pile on the floor.

So your AUP file and the _data folder should have the same name and be in exactly the same place where they were made.

Koz

Ok, great, I fully understand what you are saying and understand the principle. I can clearly see the .aup file and the _data file, and the data file contains all those little wmp icons that are not actually wmp files, as you explained. The names are the same- they still however, contain capitals and dashes. The stuff you said is not good to be in a name.

So I can see that the data IS THERE, which is great. But how do proceed from here?

Do I need to change the names of the folders at all?
I understand that all the files I used for this project still have to be there(and weren't accidentally deleted or moved). AND have to be where they were when I worked with them.
Well in my desperate attempts last nights I moved stuff onto a LaCie external drive that is still connected to m laptop. I did that as I thought my laptop had no space. I now know that that was not necessary.

So I guess I move it all back to my laptop, which will take an hour or so.

I see you are in LA, I am in NY, so you probably won't be there anymore when it's done...I will wait for your reply before I move anything back.

When I moved my entire My documents folder over to the external drive last night, for some odd reason all my windows media player files disappeared. They are neither on the new external drive nor in my laptop...this is completely crazy. Without those files I am basically screwed. I tried to do a search (from the start menu) but...nothing. There is still a "footprint" in the wmp of them, but of course when you click on the names of those files, you just get a message that the files cannot be found. I know this has nothing to do with audacity, but have you come across this sort of thing before? It seems all music/speech files went missing during the transfer.

It's obviously vital to find them as without those I can't do anything now, despite being SO CLOSE to getting my work back (as it was saved as a project)...

<<<The stuff you said is not good to be in a name.>>>

Those are OK. Upper and lower case letters, numbers, dash and underscore are acceptable in all three computer platforms' file names. I need to exchange files in the company divisions all over the world, so I don't use spaces either.

<<<So I guess I move it all back to my laptop, which will take an hour or so.>>>

Keeping fingers tightly crossed while you do that.

<<<for some odd reason all my windows media player files disappeared.>>>

Hello, and welcome to Windows Copy Protection! Windows will not allow you to copy or duplicate purchased music from Windows Media. It should have not let you do that at all but left the originals in the Music folder wherever that is in Windows. I wasn't aware it would damage your purchase. That may be a new Windows feature. They call it Windows Genuine Advantage by the way.

Did any of your show come back at all?

Windows Drag and Drop copying can be a little on the magic side. That's what you did, right? Will Windows Media let you get the music again just based on you owning the license for the music the way iTunes does?

What do we know about the voice files? Were those recorded by you locally on that machine? You know the next step is you describing in painful accounting detail what your show is and where the parts came from.

Next time you do this, click the selection where Audacity copies all of its music inside itself instead of leaving sound files sprayed all over the machine. It slows down editing and makes the projects much bigger, but it also makes the projects much less brittle.

Edit > Preferences > Import/Export > [X] Always Copy All Audio Into Project (safest).

Koz

Hi thanks again:
ok it's about 1 am and I am still trying to do some damage control/ie recovery.

I will now explain as best I can what I have managed to do:

I took MOST of my stuff back from the LaCie drive into my computer/my documents.
That brought back all my wmp files, so that was a good start. So the 3 different wmp files I used in that audacity project I am trying to recover are there.

Now, when I was trying to save the project AS WELL as exporting it (because I also exported it as an MP3 track, which won't play either!), before it all disappeared, I made numerous copies in several places. DATA copies that is.

I did that to be absolutely certain it would save somewhere correctly and so that I would have a back up as well. i saved in the LACie drive, on my laptop in my music and on a memory stick. Ever time I saved (about 3- 4 times in total) I gave it a different name. Here's the interesting part: ONLY ONE time did it save what I believe to be the actual audacity PROJECT file (the one with the audacity logo) under one name, which was REAL MASTER First HALF 924.aup
When I opened it it said ...the system cannot find the file specified. As a layman I have to assume that that is because there is no data file with it (or at least no data file by the same name as the .aup project file).

However, I do have several _data files full with the entire project data, but every time under a different name and never the one I need: REAL MASTER First HALF 924_data

I have no clue why it saved the data seemingly fine (from what I can tell visually: loads of small wmp looking file as mentioned in my earlier post and as explained by you) several times- but never with the audacity project file.

The one time it did save the project file, it did not create a folder with the data (and the same name as the audacity project) with it. So I basically have the data saved 3 times each under a different name with no associated audacity project file and one audacity project file but no associated data file.

I tried simply renaming one of those data folders, giving it the exact same name as the audacity project but replacing the ".au" with "_data". (Guess i was trying to be smart LOL). You bet it didn't work.

So the annoying thing is, that I DO HAVE THE DATA saved. Even more than once. But how do I associate the audacity project with it? I have no idea where the data file for that audacity project file is ( I mean the data file that should have been saved with the same name as the project file). Please tell me there is a way to associate the two somehow...

It is somewhat ironic that the editing job itself wouldn't take more than 3 hours but i have been trying to troubleshoot for about 25-30 hours now. I could do it all again, but it would never be as good again, that is why I am so desperate to recover the original editing job.
Michael

I can throw more tools at you. You can open up your AUP file in NotePad or WordPad and read it. Remember, it's not a sound file. It's programming language.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/aup1.jpg

This one has had spaces and blank likes added to it to make it graphically clearer, but they all have the basic structure. Note the second line tells us the name of the _data folder.

Down around line seven, there is an "aliasfile=" listing and that points to the music file I used in the edit. That tells me the filename and the exact location on the drive.

As far as rescuing a "crashed" project, there are tools to do that, too.

Crash Recovery
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... shRecovery

Last note. I never Save Project. All of my work is in the form of one Stereo show, so I Export As WAV all the time. I keep the WAV files of each live performance capture and then the client master WAV file. I don't edit multi-channel or over several days, so I just neve needed Projects.

One other note. If you Save Project and then shut down your machine, you will lose all the UNDO layers. Projects do not save everyting.

Koz

We covered filling up the drive and you took care of that. Did you ever defragment or error check? Those are both pretty easy and usually well worth it.

Koz

Excellent, thanks for the tools and the advice. So I will try the recovery as well. But let me ask one more time so I understand it right: in a nutshell, there is no way I can associate the data I have with the project file? That would just be too cool! Or maybe open a new audacity project and associate it with the data (which i understand is programming language)?


And the second question (and last for today) is: I need to import 3 MP3's, edit them together, simultaneously, as 3 separate tracks and then I need to export EACH track separately as a WAV file: how do I do that? How do I select just Track 1 for export as a WAV file, then Track 2 etc
This is because I will take the 3 tracks on 3 CD's to a studio that uses a different software,for mastering and some other stuff.

It should be possible to do that, right? If so, how do I select just one track?

Thanks in advance!

michael