Audacity Forum

I have had a problem recently with the tracks in my project being silenced, most likely because of the circumstances but I wondered if anybody else had experienced the same. I have a PC running Windows Vista Ultimate and Audacity 1.3.11 and was working on an audio project. I then had problems with the PC and had to return it to the supplier, before I did so I copied all Audacity Project Folders to an external hard drive.

While my PC was being repaired I purchased a new PC running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I downloaded Audacity 1.3.11 and then tried to load up various projects from my hard drive, the projects loaded OK and every track is there but each one is silenced. I have also copied the projects to my new internal hard drive with the same result. The only thing that I can see is different is that on my old PC the Audacity Projects hard drive was called D: on this new PC it is I:.

I have lost quite a lot of work with this and wondered is there something I should do to stop a reoccurrence in the future

Elbeardo

Audacity should work OK as long as you have the AUP file and the _data folders in the same folder. You may have gotten burned by another unfortunate Audacity default.

Are the shows collections of music from files? Did you bring the music files over, too? Audacity doesn't copy music files inside itself for editing. It uses them -- continuously -- right where they are. The usual complaint is the blue waves are still there, but the show is silent or has silent patches.

There is a Preference where you can say... [x] Copy music into the Project (Safer).

If that's what you did, you have very little choice but to wait for your other computer to return. Audacity is pretty vicious about it, too. The music files have to be present and in the exact name and location where they were. In that case, the D: and I: swap will kill your show.

It is possible to go into the AUP files one at a time (they're text files and should open in NotePad) and change where Audacity is looking for your files, but unless you knew to actually move the music files in the first place, that's not going to work.

Koz

Thanks for the information, however could you please clarify further so I can avoid problems in the future.

My projects are a combination of music, voice and sound effects with some having 30 to 40 individual tracks to be combined which I then use as a sound track for an AV show. Are you saying that if I had ticked Copy Music to Project (which I hadn't) then I would have been OK.

If not how can you back up an Audacity project to another drive so that in the event of a disaster you can recover without a lot of problems?

Elbeardo

ElBeardo wrote: Are you saying that if I had ticked Copy Music to Project (which I hadn't) then I would have been OK.

Yes that is what he is saying.

IMHO this is a poor default - and some of the forum elves are currently canvassing the developers to get it changed (including me).

It is currently set that way (i.e. to "fastest") by default for a couple of reasons:
1) to speed up loading of imported files (but only speeded up as you have found out by not actually doing the import - as the name of the command suggests)
2) to reduce filespace used (but this can be a spurious reason as you start to make substantial edits to the project).

Personally I don't care if it takes a while to load in - and I always ensure that I have plenty of (de-fragged) space on my hard drive - I prefer the safety of proper import.

The key reason that I would like the default changed is that it burns so many newbies - we get lots of postings like yours on the forum. My belief is that defaults should set to the safest set of options for the naive user so that they don't suffer from simple mistakes/misunderstandings.

BTW it's not only Audacity that works this way - my video editor Nero-9 similarly works with external video files and manages just the edits in it's project files - and unlike Audacity I can't find an option to override that ...

WC

Thanks for the help will make sure that Copy Music to Project is ticked in future as so far I have spent 3 days recovering my project and am just over half way through.

Thanks to everybody for the advice

Elbeardo

ElBeardo, if you're interested there is a slightly more technical explanation of why this happens here.

Peter, I know you feel strongly about this, but I think there is a strong case why we want to do more than just set the default to copy in. There are a couple of good suggestions for a solution here. Your point about the strength of the "Import" word is a good one, though I don't know what we can do about a "better" word.

And it's a question of changing warnings too so they are more understandable. ElBeardo would have received a warning when he saved the project that it depended on "other files" and been given a chance to copy them in.


Gale

Gale,

I have added a couple of notes in the Wiki proposal that you reference above.
1) about the confusing use of the word "Import"
2) about the graphical waveforms confusingly remaining visible - even when the dependent audio is gone.

Peter.