Please help, projects won't open.

[jtsunami]

I recently recorded a podcast using Audacity. I saved the project, made a copy of the project, and opened the copy in order to edit it. I performed the necessary edits and imported the audio file of the intro music. Then I saved the edited version and closed Audacity. Now whenever I try to open the edited file, it says it can't find the necessary data folder. I never moved the folder, and it seems to have never existed. The original (non-copy) file I created won't open without creating orphan files and now there are periods of silence where there used to be audio. What in the world happened?! Can I get these files to work properly somehow, or have my dreams been crushed and destroyed for no reason? Please help me.

If it helps, I'm running the 1.3 Beta on a Windows 7 machine.

[jtsunami]

The data folder for the copy has now mysteriously appeared, but both the copy and the original now open with errors and missing chunks of audio. I still don't know why this is and can't use this audio.

[kozikowski]

I'm trying to follow this.

I saved the project, made a copy of the project, and opened the copy in order to edit it.

You can't make a simple file copy of an Audacity Project. You have to be in Audacity and Save the Project As two different names.

File > Save Project As... > TuesdayMusic
File > Save Project As... > SafetyTuesdayMusic

That will give you two identical Projects (shows) with different names. That's how we make safety copies of shows as we edit. Keep saving Projects with different time-of-day in the filename.

show1230hrs.aup
show1400hrs.aup
show1430hrs.aup

24 hour time is really handy here because you can't put punctuation marks inside filenames. Only dash and underscore. Do Not Put dates inside filenames. 20120110 is today, not 1/10/12.

The environment, filenames and management of external sound files is built into the AUP file. It's not music. It's a text file with instructions. If you change the name of an AUP file in Windows, it will no longer open the show.

So you need to go back to your original Project and try to open that. Chances are good your updates, changes and edits may be gone.

You can open up an AUP file in NotePad or WordPan and read it. Somewhere in the first two lines should be the real name of the show. Here's a simple example...

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

My original show name was "piano2split".

Further, if you change the music files, they won't open, either. Rename, move them, delete them, "organize them in a folder." Any change and Audacity will not be able to find them any more and there will be holes in your show where the music was.

Koz

[jtsunami]

Like I said, my original project is ruined just like the copy I made. Sections of the audio are gone, so there are just blocks of silence where there used to be audio at various points throughout the show. I never deleted that audio, so I don't know what in the world happened to it. I haven't renamed or moved any files since I edited the copy, and that was working just fine when I finished the initial editing. Upon finishing the editing, I saved my project again and closed Audacity. However, I've encountered all my problems since trying to open the project again.

[kozikowski]

We live on picky details.

project is ruined just like the copy I made.

How did you make the copy? Be specific. There are multiple ways of making a Project copy.

Sections of the audio are gone

What was in the sections? Specifically. Music stingers and production bumpers? Interruptions in the middle of a spoken word? Whole 3 minute songs?

I've encountered all my problems since trying to open the project again.

But you may have caused them much earlier. That's why we need sharp details. We can't see what you're doing, but sometimes we need to for accurate diagnosis.

Koz

[jtsunami]

1) I made the copy by right-clicking the original project, clicking "Copy" and then pasting the copy in the same directory as the original.

2) Aside from the intro song, which I imported instead of recording, it was all spoken dialogue. There were no drops or music in what I recorded, just what were saying in the podcast. Chunks of that have been replaced with silence. Dialogue is cut off in mid-sentence and replaced with 10-20 seconds of silence at random intervals.

I'll list exactly what I did as best as I can remember, if that's likely to help me somehow recover my work.
I recorded the audio, then saved the project. I closed Audacity. I then made a copy of the project how I stated above in #1. Later on, I opened the copy project in Audacity and proceeded to edit the show as necessary, deleting dead air or audio that I felt was unnecessary. Once I was done editing, I imported the mp3 with the 30-second intro song. I applied the Fade Out effect to the end of the intro song, clicked on the recorded audio track to align the cursor with where I wanted the spoken audio to begin. I selected "Align with Cursor" under Tracks, hit play to preview it, and it worked just as I wanted it to. I once again saved my project and closed Audacity. Since then, I have been unable to open either the edited copy or the original recording without errors and missing audio. Originally, the data folder for the project copy didn't even exist, but has since apparently been created. So now I have Episode1_data and Episode1 - Copy_data folders in the same directory where "Episode1" and "Episode1 - Copy" are saved.

[Gale Andrews]

For safety, always export a WAV file (one for each track if you have multiple tracks one above the other) before closing a project.

Please tell us exactly what three-section version of Audacity you are using by clicking Help > About Audacity. It will say 1.3.12 or 1.3.13 or similar. What is the third number after the "1.3"?

When you copied the project yourself, what exactly did you do - select both "Episode1.aup" and "Episode1_data", then copy and paste, and let Windows rename them to "Episode1 - Copy.aup" and "Episode1_data - Copy"?

As Koz says, File > Save Project As is the safer way to make a copy of a project. If you just did what I suggested in the paragraph above, you would have "Episode1 - Copy.aup" pointing to "Episode1_data" because the _data folder referenced in the .aup file was not changed. The project will open but if you make changes and save it, this will make the .aup file point to "Episode1 - Copy_data because "Episode1 - Copy" is the name of the .aup file. But obviously, "Episode1 - Copy_data" does not exist so the project won't open again - you have "Episode1_data" and "Episode1_data - Copy".

If you actually renamed so you have "Episode1 - copy.aup" and "Episode1 - copy_data" then the "Episode1 - copy" project will open but will still be pointing to the Episode1_data folder. When you edit the project and save it, the .aup will as above be written to reference Episode1 - Copy_data, but that isn't the _data folder where you were writing your data.

I made orphan block files and missing audio data block files occur by following the steps in the paragraph above. This may be repeatable, in which case we will have to see how (if at all) to handle this.

If you must make manual projects of copies, please do it by making a new folder first, then copy the .aup and _data folder, then paste into the new folder. This will work because the .aup and _data folder are in a different folder, so Windows (or you) do not have to rename them. The .aup will still point to the correct _data folder.

If what has happened is as I guess, then to fix it you will need to open one of the projects (for example, the copy). If there are warnings about "orphans" when you open the copy, do not delete them. Now click Help > Show Log... and note down the files that are "missing" including the full path to where Audacity is looking for them. It may be easiest to save the log by clicking Log > Save... . The missing files will probably be in the _data folder for the original project, so exit Audacity and use Explorer to move those files from the original project into the copy, making sure to put them in the subfolder indicated in the log for the copy project.

Now open the original project in Audacity, and look at the log. Hopefully you will now just have "missing audio data block files". Note down the file names and the subfolder Audacity expects them to be in, then exit Audacity, find the files (hopefully in the copy project) and move them into the original project.

Please attach both .aup files anyway, and the log after opening both projects so we can have a look. You can attach these using "Upload attachment" underneath where you post messages.




Gale

[jtsunami]

It's Audacity 1.3.3 Beta.

The orphaned files may have been deleted in an attempt to previously recover the project, since I don't remember if I had previously said yes or no to the prompt. I'm guessing this might be the end of the line for my project. None of the files that Audacity claims to be missing were able to be found in the data folder of the original, so I wasn't able to make any changes.

[Gale Andrews]

It's Audacity 1.3.3 Beta.

That is years old.

Please update to the current 1.3.14 Beta:
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows .

Please subscribe here:
http://audacityteam.org/#announce

to receive an e-mail when we release new versions of Audacity. To subscribe, enter your e-mail address and click "Add".

The orphaned files may have been deleted in an attempt to previously recover the project, since I don't remember if I had previously said yes or no to the prompt. I'm guessing this might be the end of the line for my project. None of the files that Audacity claims to be missing were able to be found in the data folder of the original, so I wasn't able to make any changes.

If you deleted the orphans in the copy project this (probably) harms only the original project.

I would open the projects (only one at a time) in 1.3.14 anyway, because there is more information in the 1.3.14 log than in the "Details" for errors in 1.3.3.

Have you searched your computer for the files missing from the copy project (as opposed to just searching the original _data folder)?

Also if you can restore the original project, at least that gets you back to the state where you finished recording (at which point for your next project it would be good to export a WAV).



Gale

[jtsunami]

I've searched my computer for the missing files, not just the _data folder. They weren't found. The original opens without any prompt (but is still incomplete with periods of silence), and the copy opens with a prompt of there being missing files. Like I said, those files cannot be found on my computer.

I have the backup file of "Episode1 - Copy.aup.bak" but it won't seem to let me open that. Is there any way to restore the backup? I haven't saved either project since the error occurred, so the backup should still be intact, right? If it's just the editing of the project that I lose, I can very well live with that.