Sound plays intermittently when editing track

[ghostmutt]

When I try to reopen a saved project, I lose the sound in the middle of my track. The beginning and end play fine. In the middle section, I can still see the blue waveforms, but I'm not getting any playback levels (no green or red bars). I tried opening my project in Microsoft Word to check the paths of the alias files. They're all correct; the source files haven't moved since I saved the project.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

[kozikowski]

First, you know that the blue waveforms are carried in the first two AU files in the _DATA folder? So if you affect the project somehow without Audacity finding out what you did, the blue waveforms won't match.

Close everything. Open Audacity cold and empty. Then File > Open > [your AUP file, wherever it is]. Did that work better?

Koz

[docartemis]

First, you know that the blue waveforms are carried in the first two AU files in the _DATA folder? So if you affect the project somehow without Audacity finding out what you did, the blue waveforms won't match.

Close everything. Open Audacity cold and empty. Then File > Open > [your AUP file, wherever it is]. Did that work better?

Koz

I am having the same problem but I could not see that this suggestion helped at all!

In the past I been working with AIFF files that I had imported into Audacity, so I just re-imported them, and went about my business. But today I face the situation of having a bunch of gaps in a file I have already edited. Unless you can fix this, I am facing the prospect of re-editing, which I find extremely disturbing.

Why should audio be dropping out of the middle of my file. If I look at the file in GarageBand, I can see the the gaps are intermittent and appear to be totally random!

[kozikowski]

<<<Why should audio be dropping out of the middle of my file.>>>

We do need to be very careful about our words here because Audacity doesn't do things like everybody else does. If you opened up a sound file in Garage Band (or QuickTime) and there were holes in the performance, then that sound was never there. No program I know of, Audacity or otherwise goes into a finished sound file sometime in the future and deletes work. Doesn't happen.

Unless I'm delivering a product to a client, I almost never go back into a long export and play it through to make sure it was all there, so this is pretty common. I never use Audacity Projects, either....

Audacity projects are subject to all sorts of magic behavior. Audacity Saves Projects but Exports Sound Files. Yes, there is something about how Audacity manages capture clips when you close a project. I gotta look that one up.

Koz

[docartemis]

<<<Why should audio be dropping out of the middle of my file.>>>

We do need to be very careful about our words here because Audacity doesn't do things like everybody else does. If you opened up a sound file in Garage Band (or QuickTime) and there were holes in the performance, then that sound was never there. No program I know of, Audacity or otherwise goes into a finished sound file sometime in the future and deletes work. Doesn't happen.

Unless I'm delivering a product to a client, I almost never go back into a long export and play it through to make sure it was all there, so this is pretty common. I never use Audacity Projects, either....

Audacity projects are subject to all sorts of magic behavior. Audacity Saves Projects but Exports Sound Files. Yes, there is something about how Audacity manages capture clips when you close a project. I gotta look that one up.

Koz

What I have been doing is using Audacity's ability to split stereo files to clean up interview recordings. Then I export them as aiff and that's what I put into GarageBand for my final editing. It was only when I found the gaps in the aiff file that I realized that Audacity had done something bad to what I had already edited! However, the sound had to have been there originally or I couldn't have edited in the first place!

[kozikowski]

Let me go through a capture and edit session.

During a live voice capture, I use the production breaks to export WAV files of the previous session. Almost nobody can perform at top form for hours (with the possible exception of Robin Williams), so sessions usually go no longer than ten minutes. At the end of a critical live capture day, I make copies of all the WAV files and lock them in a drawer.

Then, later, I open each of the WAV files and cut, edit, and produce my brains out. When I get a final show on the timeline, I export a final WAV for delivery to the client.

Please note that there are no "Saves" and no Audacity Projects in there anywhere and I have never had holes in my presentation or mysteriously missing segments. Those are almost always a symptom of a damaged Project. Projects are large, complicated, magic and brittle and represent a weak point in a production pipeline.

Avoid them when possible.

Anybody who captures a live performance (even if it's only a vinyl record), saves a Project "file" and goes right into editing, or worse yet, closes Audacity and opens it up later for editing is standing tall and loudly begging for trouble. Projects are not "a file." Projects are sometimes thousands of files in a cloud and it's easy to cause damage.

Koz

[kozikowski]

One more note. Audacity defaults to WAV files. Almost all Apple programs accept them just fine, including QuickTime, iTunes, and GarageBand.

Koz

[otsdave]

I'm having the exact, same problem!

I imported a file from Logic Express into Audacity to edit it as I was told this might be easier (?). I'm just producing a podcast (as opposed to music), although I do ultimately need up to ten tracks, as my casts have breaks, bumper music, and various elements which require track separation.

The lion's share of the work, however, is editing out um's and ah's and otherwise cleaning up the interviews themselves, which run from twenty to thirty minutes. That's a fair amount of editing (it sometimes takes me hours in Cubase or Logic), so I need to be able to fly through it in whatever is the fastest way available without sacrificing accuracy (of edits).

Audacity seemed like it was working great. The edits were easy, simple, and instant, and I got through my first episode in fairly short order. Then I went to listen to the file and ran into the problem. There are three file formats (.aiff, .aup, and .bak - I don't recall creating those...?). One of these (.aif) has one variation of the issue, and the other two (.aup and .bak) have the other variation:

The .aif version has random dropouts of the audio - and the graphical waveform - all throughout.
In the .aup and .bak versions the entire waveform appears, but the audio only plays intermittently (the cursor moves and the sound comes and goes).

The two variations (assuming they are "variations" of the same issue, but whatever) do not seem to correspond to each other. I.e., the places where the waveform and audio are missing in the .aif version are not the same places where the audio is missing in the .aup and .bak versions.

(By the way, my budget for audio production software is spent for the time being!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[steve]

http://www.wikieducator.org/Using_Audacity/Saving
http://www.wikieducator.org/Using_Audacity/Exporting

(and the .bak are backup files)