Audacity Forum

Hi,

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I've been using Audacity on and off for a couple of years, but now I intend to use it to record fairly long interviews or seminars for later podcast use. I'm a little stumped by the "Save" function in Audacity. It seems that you cannot save or re-save your project file while you are still recording. You must stop, save and then restart the recording. Is this right, or have I missed something?

Since I'll need to record fairly long events, this worries me. I don't want to have gaps in my recording as I keep starting and stopping, but if don't save, what happens if the computer crashes 56 minutes into a 60 minute seminar?

Any help would be appreciated!

Best,

MS
Montreal, Canada

mtlwriterguy wrote:Hi,

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I've been using Audacity on and off for a couple of years, but now I intend to use it to record fairly long interviews or seminars for later podcast use. I'm a little stumped by the "Save" function in Audacity. It seems that you cannot save or re-save your project file while you are still recording. You must stop, save and then restart the recording. Is this right, or have I missed something?

Since I'll need to record fairly long events, this worries me. I don't want to have gaps in my recording as I keep starting and stopping, but if don't save, what happens if the computer crashes 56 minutes into a 60 minute seminar?

Any help would be appreciated!

Best,

MS
Montreal, Canada

no stupid questions
maybe stupid answers though

yup
there is a risk with a pc andor audacity could fail at some point
and
you do have to have gaps when you save
but
dont they ever take a coffee break
or switch the presenters on stage or somesuch

i wuold use a zoom H2 or similar - at least as backup
record at least 4 hours onto an SD card - more at podcast quality
drag and drop the file onto the pc when you are done

question - can audacity handle a multi hour file reliably ??
you might really want to save more files that are smaller

or use two pcs and alternate them
or three pcs and use two at a time for backup
overlapping which one you stop to save with while the other two keep going

or
use an analog tape recorder

<<<Since I'll need to record fairly long events, this worries me. I don't want to have gaps in my recording as I keep starting and stopping, but if don't save, what happens if the computer crashes 56 minutes into a 60 minute seminar? >>>

I don't think you have a lot of danger with a 60 minute lecture. I do several 120 minute recordings each week and the machine hasn't crashed yet. Our company meeting presentations go for an hour and I've never lost one of those, either.

Our concern is with the pioneers who want to do 6+ hours of recording in one go. Those people need to become very comfortable with failure. Those people really need surveillance systems, not Audacity.

Having said that, I'm working with well behaved Macs and very large Linux machines with no competition from other software. You can significantly stack the deck in your favor by error checking and thoroughly defragmenting your hard drive and at no time even consider going over 90% full. Make several hour-long captures of nothing in particular and see if anything uncomfortable happens.

Make the hour-long lecture be a toss-off old news compared to the three or four two-hour recordings you made of birds chirping last week.

Koz