Audacity Forum

Would like to know:

When one saves as an Audacity project, are ALL steps of creating the final project, such as even Undo Record, Record again, delete tracks, effects done and re-done, so that when on another session (a different day even) one opens the project again, one can go back in history as if one were still in the original session?

Thanks for any replies.

my understanding is that when you Save and then Close the project (by closing Audacity) the the history undo trail is no longer available to you the next time you open the project. If you just Save and then continue with te project then the undo history trail remains.

The best thing to do if you think you may need to go back is to save the project under different version names at known staging points in the development of your edits - then you can always return to any of those staging points.

WC

Thanks waxcylynder,

I will investigate further on what I have here.

Part of my question is from the huge directory size of a saved project, and looking at the contents, I was somewhat on the impression that different 'takes' were indeed saved.

Another reason is that I have had Audacity say "Audacity closed unexpectedly but your work can be recovered. Do you want to?" Or something like that.

I don't particularly need a save ALL, am happy the way it has so much level of do-undo, works well and am confident that I can always undo re-do at a session.

If your Audacity projects are recorded at 32 bit, then the project data will be twice the size of "normal" CD audio. Also, if the sample rate is 98000 Hz, then the size will be more than double again.

CD quality is 16 bit 44100 Hz stereo (about 10MB per minute). Recording at 32 bit 96000 Hz will be more than 4 times bigger (around 43 MB per minute).

"Undo" files will normally be deleted when you close Audacity, however, if Audacity crashes, they may or may not still be present as temporary files.

Great explanation, thanks Steve.

Isn't the file size of audio files also dependant on 'contents' in addition to time duration, though? Or is audacity only time-duration based, as to file size, even if i had long silences, for instance?

Audacity uses "uncompressed" audio data, so 1 minute of silence uses just as many bytes of data as 1 minute of noise. The only difference is that the data for the silence will mostly be zeros. For uncompressed audio, each sample value is recorded.

stevethefiddle wrote:Audacity uses "uncompressed" audio data, so 1 minute of silence uses just as many bytes of data as 1 minute of noise. The only difference is that the data for the silence will mostly be zeros. For uncompressed audio, each sample value is recorded.

Thanks for your good reply.

It's good to have correct understanding.