Almost Finished Edit Now Has Big Holes in the Waveform!Help!

[KMcKnight]

I am ten hours into a rough edit to length of an audio interview using Audacity 1.2.6 on Windows XP. This evening when I opened the .aup file, it played fine for a few minutes and then much to my horror the waveform suddenly went flat, sound cut out and this error message appeared:
Can't open file. The system cannot find the file specified... The error message identifies the missing file as b00104.au...(the numbers change depending on where in the recording I encounter a flat wave form, of course.) My project now appears riddled with holes and missing files! When I look in the data folder for the project, indeed I cannot find the files named as missing. What can be going on here? How do I find and restore these files so that my project is once again in tact?? Any advice will be greatly appreaciated. Audacity Help and Troubleshooting info has very little info on editing -- much more on recording -- so I'm at my wits' end. Thank you in advance.

[steve]

Audacity project files are quite complicated. There is a "Project File" that is called "something.aup", and then there is the data. The data can exist in multiple locations - in the project data folder "something_data", in the temporary folder, and may also be in other locations, including removable drives !

The Project File tries to keep a record of where all the data is located, but if any of the data is moved or deleted, then Audacity will not be able to find it.

There is an option in "Edit > Preferences > File Formats" that tells Audacity to copy imported files (the "safer" option). When this is selected, importing audio will create a copy of the audio inside either Audacities temporary folder, or the data folder. Data in the temporary folder will be copied to the data folder when either you "Save" your project, or close down Audacity. If Audacity is shut down unexpectedly (for example if your computer crashes for any reason), Audacity will not have chance to copy the temporary data into the data folder and you are in trouble (cross your fingers and pray that Audacity can recover the data).

Until you "Export" your tracks as audio files (WAV or MP3), you have a volatile "pool" of data (koz refers to this as a "data cloud") and the only thing holding it all together is the project file (something.aup)

You can hopefully now see the reason why you should not try moving Audacity projects, or clean up any temporary files, but you should back up your tracks regularly (as WAV files).

Unless you can find "b00104.au" and put it back into the right location (probably the project_Data folder) you are sadly stuffed.

[KMcKnight]

Thank you for your reply, Stevethefiddle. Following an exhaustive search on Error 2, reading all of Koz's painstaking replies to panicked people like myself, and now with your input, I can only agree that I am, indeed, stuffed. There are far to many lost .au files to even begin searching for them, as evidenced by long stretches of flat waveform. This has been a big lesson in a) organization's downside -- I did move things around and put them in discrete folders, alas -- and 2) the false sense of security imparted by "Save Project.' The only positive is that I marked all my edits in a 44-page transcript so that I can now redo them. In all my spare time...

[steve]

organization's downside -- I did move things around and put them in discrete folders, alas --

This gives you a one-shot chance of recovery that may or may not work. In the location where you originally saved to project (let's say it was the Desktop), put the project file (has an extension of .aup - let's say it was called mywork.aup). Now create a folder in the same location (in this example, on the Desktop) and name it "mywork_data" (without the quotes). ALL other files that you "organised", put directly into the data folder (not the folders, just the files in the folders). You should now have a load of .au files, and perhaps also some .auf files in the data folder. Your project may now work. If not, then you are no worse off.