Recovering a Back-up Project?

[teedub66]

Hi, I have question about backing up a project.

I've been using Audacity 1.2.6 and and have several projects that I made copied to an external hard drive for the purpose of backing up the projects. Now when I try to open the backed-up version from my external hard drive Audacity is telling me WARNING - MISSING ALIASED FILE(s). It opens the project but there is silence in some parts of the playback.


All of the projects use imported WAV files that I have edited with Audacity. I have all my Audacity projects in a folder that also contains folders with the original WAVs in them. I copied this folder onto my external hard drive, and all my original data seems to be there.

Does this mean that Audacity cannot recognize the file path? Is there anyway I can correct this? I am having problems with the computer I originally used to edit these projects and I'm not sure if I can recover the projects from there. Thanks for your help!!!!

[kozikowski]

This is why saving a complex Audacity Project freezes your machine. The hard pathway to the music files is burned into the AUP file like this.

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

See where it says "aliasfile?" Audacity is going to go down that exact pathway every time to find your music. You can create that pathway in the computer, or you can edit your AUP file to reflect where the music files are now. If you edit the AUP file, keep in mind the file is in two halves, upper is left and lower is right and you have to catch both of them.

I blew out my AUP file with air and spaces for graphic clarity. Yours is going to look a lot more condensed, but that's the idea.

Audacity Projects are terrible for archive because of the scattered nature of the files. Much better to Export a WAV of the work and back that up. That just backs up the show or "The Deliverable" in commercial-speak. if you need to backup the actual editing project, you can force Audacity to make personal copies of the music.

We need to wait for the other elves for that. I don't remember all the spells.

I do remember not to use Audacity 1.2 any more.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/update.txt

Koz

[teedub66]

I understand that audacity remembers the exact pathway of the "aliasfile." what you're telling me is that to open the file for editing on a different machine (with a different file path) I have to manually go in and change what the file path is? And I have to do that for left and right channels of a stereo track? If that's the case, can you explain how I can do this? How do I get to and edit the hard pathway?

If I am going to start a new project is there a way I can set it up so that I can just copy the project folder later and I wont have to deal with it this way?

Thanks for your help!

[waxcylinder]

You can avoid Audacity using alias files altogther if you set you import preferences to always copy in the external audio data (the "safer" option).

WC

[steve]

If you upgrade to Audacity 1.3.13 (highly recommended) there is an option in the File menu "Check Dependencies".
This option will check if there are any "aliasfiles" external to the project and allow you to import them to make the project self contained.