Audacity Forum

I have Audacity 1.2.6 on windows XP. I was recording mono input through my microphone jack. Everything was looking good when I checked about 2.5 hours into the recording. The timer showed about 244 hours worth of disc space left on the harddrive. When I came back about 12 hours later, every thing was still on but Audacity had stopped recording and there was nothing saved. The help files say it has no internal limit. Why did it stop and any ideas as to what happen to all the recording?

Thanks
PS
Unless someone broke into my home in the middle of the night just to stop my recording, noone went near the computer.

i had a similar problem. try defragging the drive first if you do a long recording. may or may not work for you. even without a stated limit, i would not try to record so much at once if there is any way to do it in segments.

You are not wanting an audio production system, you are wanting a surveillance system.

You can go to multiple hours with Audacity, but the requirements of the computer go nuts and seriously magic things start to happen. For one, we recommend Exporting As WAV as a first step in any production. WAV files max out at 4GB, so past about the four to five hour mark, you lose on Sports Call®.

As noted, you need a huge hard drive that's thoroughly error checked and defragmented. You can't be using other programs like email, Skype, or internet connections and it's a bad idea to have Virus Scanners and Auto Windows Update running.

There's a list here somewhere, and it's pretty serious.

You haven't lost the show, by the way. You can still use Audacity Crash Recovery to get it back, or as much as is there.

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

Koz

Oh, and I would not be doing any of this in Audacity 1.2. Download and start using Audacity 1.3.11.

You can install both versions safely, but only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 projects will not open in 1.2.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Koz

Thanks guys.
I was trying to record long segments from my satellite radio so that I could cut it up and then playback while on long motorcycle trips. I do multiday tours.

I had it set up to record overnight while sleeping and was going to edit out most of the DJ chat. I had tried to recover but nothing was there, it didn't really crash, just stopped and didn't save anything.

I'll check the fragment on my drive and I guess I'll record shorter segments, unless anyone knows of a better software package for this task.

Thanks

Total Recorder is an automated recording package that can be formatted to do a lot of these tricks on Windows. It's a money-based solution.

I think Audacity 1.3.11 can be configured to start and stop. I don't know if it can be configured to start and stop and start and stop.

Koz

johnfry wrote:Thanks guys.
I was trying to record long segments from my satellite radio so that I could cut it up and then playback while on long motorcycle trips. I do multiday tours.

I had it set up to record overnight while sleeping and was going to edit out most of the DJ chat. I had tried to recover but nothing was there, it didn't really crash, just stopped and didn't save anything.

I'll check the fragment on my drive and I guess I'll record shorter segments, unless anyone knows of a better software package for this task.

Thanks

What station are you listening to? Didn't think there was that much DJ chat - can't you just rig it up to play on your cycle?

kozikowski wrote:Total Recorder is an automated recording package that can be formatted to do a lot of these tricks on Windows. It's a money-based solution.

I think Audacity 1.3.11 can be configured to start and stop. I don't know if it can be configured to start and stop and start and stop.

Koz

I'll download 1.3.11 and see if it works any better.
thank
John

rickwaugh wrote:
What station are you listening to? Didn't think there was that much DJ chat - can't you just rig it up to play on your cycle?

Sirrius Spectrum is the station I listen to most, not alot of chat. Really I think I would have just cut up the long track I got into hourish long segments. Then saved them as mp3 files so that they weren't too big to work with on my cheap mp3 player. Kind of like recording a TV show then watching when you get home. I could just record a bunch before going on a trip so I didn't have to listen to the same show over and over.

I could rig up the radio to the bike but, sound cables, power cables, antenna and mounts for the radio would have to be purchased and then routed on the bike. Lots of work and money. All I had to buy to record with Audacity was a $7 sterio-mono adapter for the 3.5mm line out cable from the radio into the mic jack on the computer.

I was trying to be cheap and lazy.

johnfry wrote:I could rig up the radio to the bike ....

ROFL

I regularly record a two-hour show for extracting some music - but my application is a littele didfeerent to yours: I tend to listen to the whole show and place markers for the paricular songs I like (start and end marlkers). Then I delete all the dross and extract the few songs that I want.

What I recommend you try is to record the show and then zoom out a lot - possibly fitting the whole show in the window. With a bit of practice you will lear to visually determine what is the music and what is the dross chat - do tend to look a little different.

As to why your recording stopped (initial post in this thread) that's still a mystery

WC