Audacity Forum

So I went to open up an aup file that I recorded last night that I was able to open several times last night and once twice today.
Now when i try to open it there is an error saying that its not recognizing the type of file and I should try to open it as raw data. When I tried to open as raw data its blank...
I am using version 1.3 for Windows, the data file and the aup file are in the same place, my computer didn't crash, I didn't try to rename or move either file and I didn't touch the au files at all but for some reason it still isn't working.
I've attached the aup file in-case anyone can figure out what might be wrong....
Please Help!

You can open an AUP file in notepad or wordpad and read it. It's a text file.

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

When I tried that, yours was blank. That's why Audacity couldn't figure out what it was.

I can't imagine how you could create a completely blank Project Manager file. You posted in the Audacity 1.3 section of the forum. Are you in Audacity 1.3 and which one? Which Windows?
Koz

What did you do to the show the last time you had it open? Filters? Effects?
Koz

When I go into properties its listed as: Audacity 1.3 Beta2 (Unicode)
I'm using Windows Vista and the last thing I did before I saved it again was turn up some volumes, no effects or anything...

ausetgoodwin wrote:When I go into properties its listed as: Audacity 1.3 Beta2 (Unicode)

Windows is just assuming that from the file extension (the ".aup" at the end of the file name).

What is the exact version of Audacity you are using?
Please look in "Help > About Audacity" and copy the full and complete version name - the FULL version name is important.

kozikowski wrote:When I tried that, yours was blank.

It's not quite an "empty" file. It contains about 36 kb of "null data" (zeros). That is mysterious.

I'm using Audacity ® 1.3.14-beta (Unicode)

The .aup file is unusable. Did you try and edit it in some other program?

Did you see any error messages when you saved the project last time?

Have you closed Audacity since you unsuccesfully opened this .aup file? If not, please click Help > Show Log... then click Log > Save... to save the log file. Attach the log using "Upload attachment" underneath where you post replies.

Did you export a WAV file at any time from this project? If so you can import the WAV back into Audacity if you still have that file. It is strongly recommended to export a backup WAV file before closing a project.

If you did not export any files but still have the _data folder it may be possible to recover the small .au files in the _data folder. It may not be possible to recover the files in the correct order. If you want to try it, you have to follow the steps here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Crash ... very_tools

to sort and rename the .au files then once sorted, you can recover them to one or more WAV files.


Gale

I didn't try to edit it in another program or get an error message when I saved but I did close audacity since I unsuccessfully opened it.

I just found shadow copies under previous versions in the properties tabs and managed to find one that would open! I was happy to find that its not too different from the one I was trying to open!

I have now saved this one as a WAV file and also as several other aup files just in case...

Thanks for the advice!

Glad you were able to find a usable .aup file, though it doesn't explain what happened. When you save a project, the .aup file is saved last, so it is the most vulnerable part of the save.

You might want to run error checking and defragmentation on the disk just in case.

For others' benefit, I think the feature ausetgoodwin used is the Windows Vista*/7 shadow copy feature in System Protection (right-click over Computer > Properties, then click "System protection" on the left). If System Restore or Previous Versions is enabled in System protection, you can look to see if Windows has saved a previous version of the file. To do this, right-click over the file > Properties, then click the "Previous Versions" tab.

System protection is only automatically turned on for the drive that Windows is installed on.

On Mac you might be able to find older copies of .aup files if you have "Time Machine" turned on.


Gale


* I gather Windows Vista Home Edition lacks the "Previous Versions" feature.