Data files switch from *.au to *.auf and go silent

[jbcooke]

I am creating in Audacity 1.2 a sound track for a video. The track is now about 19 minutes long. Just discovered there are silent gaps in 3 places in the first 13 minutes of the track, although the audio waveform is unchanged. When I look at the data files for the track, the files in the silent sections have an *auf extension instead of *au. I'm wondering, of course, (a) how did this happen? and (b) short of renaming each file back to *.au, how can I correct the problem?

[whomper]

i am not the expert and cant find this in any of the docs but an old msg said: (a)
.......may have problems is that he has .auf summary files, which are not complete audio data. These probably indicate that the projects depended on audio files imported into the project, which will be on the other computer. These audio files are required to open the project even if you have the .aup file, but as Steve says, the Beta tries to explain the issue of saving projects..........
(b)
i gather from other comments that renaming them does not work.
prevent? tell us what you did. i suspect you imported a bunch of files somehow to mix down and then did some things that made audacity lose the pointer to the real data. maybe you could dupe the files and save the originals far away then open the dupes next time.

i wish the documentation got more attention than new features.
and then that human factors would get the attention instead of more features.

[kozikowski]

Audacity does not pull sound into itself for editing unless you changed it in Preferences and few people do. The practical impact of that is once you tell Audacity you want to use a sound file in your show, that sound file can't be changed or moved in any way.

If you decided to use a portion of a Nine Inch Nails song from the jbcookeMusic folder and then later decide to delete that song or move it, then that portion of the NIN song will vanish from your show in Audacity, too.

There is an Audacity Preference called "Copy music into Audacity (Safer)" or words to that effect.

To rescue your current show, you need to put that music back where it was and then Audacity will see it again. If the music files you used are gone forever, then that's the end of your show.

Koz

[steve]

There is a pretty thorough explanation of what Koz is describing in the Audacity documentation: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/File_Management_Tips
It's not the most fun thing to read on a Sunday evening, but can go a long way toward avoiding tears over future projects. (highly recommended).

[whomper]

Audacity does not pull sound into itself for editing unless you changed it in Preferences and few people do.

There is an Audacity Preference called "Copy music into Audacity (Safer)" or words to that effect.
Koz

that safe way should be the default IMHO

[kozikowski]

<<<that safe way should be the default IMHO>>>

It's being considered.

Koz

[jbcooke]

THANKS to everyone who responded. After posting the original query I was traveling, then jammed up with other things. Sorry not to check the responses until now, but they are still much appreciated:

The information Koz and others offered is right -- Audacity is looking for source files that it couldn't find. I've recently acquired a 1 TB external hard disk for video and audio storage. I had moved some folders containing Audacity source files, and even though I moved complete folders, with both the *.data and *.aup files for the project in question, Audacity couldn't find something.

Luckily, the music elements that had silent gaps came from other Audacity source files and I was able to fill in the gaps quickly the same day I posted the question. The same thing just happened to me again, and thanks to posted responses, I'll look for the "Copy files to Audacityf" option and use it. I agree, this should be the default, and choosing *not* to do this should prompt a warning window about this very problem.

jbcooke

[jbcooke]

Okay, I'm searching in Audacity for the Preferences option:

In Edit > Preferences / [tab:] File Formats - there is an option to check "Make a copy of the file before editing." In my Audacity 1.2 stable, that option was already checked, but it didn't prevent the problem.

Have I not found the right Preferences option, or . . . ??

jbcooke

[steve]

If you upgrade to Audacity 1.3.12 there is an option in the "File" menu for "Check Dependencies". This will tell you if there is any data used by the project that has not been copied into the _data folder and gives you the option to copy external data (dependencies) into the _data folder.

[johnaudac]

Thanks Koz for you explanations. The default should definitively be modified, I just lost a large amount of work.
I did reorganize my music files, although I kept the original .wav file, .aup file and _data folder in the same folder. So I think the reference should be relative and not absolute. In that case one would not loose the original sound.
QUESTION: If could "re-arrange" my folders and files the way they were when I created the project. Is there any way I could find out where (path) audacity is expecting the original .wav to be?
Thanks for you help.