Crash = 2 Channels and Missing Pieces

[soundsgood]

Audacity 1.3.6 crashed after I recorded a long stereo project about 3 hr 47 min, recorded as stereo mix. The auto recovery window popped up so I used that however after recovery instead of 1 single channel in the track there are 2 and they alternate with sound on and off. Looks like a bunch of missing pieces. I exported a short length as MP3 and that's how it sounds, the left and right speakers alterating on and off instead of playing together like usual. Any ideas how to fix?

[Gale Andrews]

Audacity 1.3.6 crashed after I recorded a long stereo project about 3 hr 47 min, recorded as stereo mix. The auto recovery window popped up so I used that however after recovery instead of 1 single channel in the track there are 2 and they alternate with sound on and off. Looks like a bunch of missing pieces. I exported a short length as MP3 and that's how it sounds, the left and right speakers alterating on and off instead of playing together like usual. Any ideas how to fix?

Sorry you had a problem, but you are using an obsolete Beta version that is no longer supported. Please upgrade to the current 1.3.13 where crash recovery is much improved:
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

Since you posted in the 1.2 Forum I have moved this to the correct 1.3 Forum.

I would suggest you force quit Audacity (CTRL + ALT + DEL) so that the incorrect changes are not saved, but you still have the autosave folder to recover from. Then launch 1.3.13. You will see the "Automatic Crash Recovery" dialogue again, but this time you should be able to click Help > Show Log and see if there are any error messages about missing files which would explain the gaps. Then you could search your computer for some of the missing files to see if you can find where they all are. Hopefully they are in the wrong subfolder in the _data folder for the project and if you moved them to the subfolder indicated in the log, the audio would come back.

There is no automatic way to piece things together. You can use the process mentioned in Crash Recovery, which means first of all you must sort the files in the subfolders by date, then rename them into a consistent alphanumeric sequence. However, even that will likely transpose the left and right channels in parts of the recording. I would use the information from the 1.3.13 log and see if there is a correctable error such as moving missing files to the correct subfolder.



Gale