Audacity 1.3.7 crashes while compressing

[hedera]

This isn't strictly an issue for the core team, because the compressor I had the problem with was the plug-in developed by Chris Capel, but I'm describing this in case anyone else has had the problem.

I use Audacity 1.3.7 on a Windows Vista Home Premium system, to prepare .WAV recordings of our chorus rehearsal and export them to a podcast; I compress the files and export them to MP3 using LAME.

Until today I've had no trouble using either the built-in compressor or the one developed by Chris; in fact, I usually used both, the built-in on the first of 2 recordings and Chris' utility on the second. I wanted to see if any of my singers would comment that one rehearsal file was better than the other; nobody has. Today, however, I decided to use Chris' utility on the first file, since it seems to be faster; and I'm now on my third effort to compress the file, because on the first two tries, Audacity crashed in the middle of the compression, leaving a corrupted .AUP which wasn't recognized by the program when I brought it back up. It simply vanished - no error message of any kind, the program just disappeared from my screen.

The first of my 2 files is usually larger than the second, and this .WAV file is 888 MB, unusually large; is anyone aware of a size limit to Chris Capel's compressor?

Microsoft dropped some updates on my Vista box just before I started this session - has anyone else had a problem with recent (like, March 10 or later) Microsoft updates pushed to Vista? My list of installed updates says the last one pushed was a Silverlight update on 2/25 but I know there was one last night.

In any case I successfully compressed my file with the built-in compressor and will use that one henceforth, despite it's taking longer. I hate it when things just mysteriously stop.

[allencmcbride]

I too am an avid user of Chris Capel's compressor. Just last week, I noticed that his latest release crashes Audacity when the selection I'm compressing starts very near, but not quite at, the beginning of the track. I've been meaning to write Chris about this, but I've been putting it off until I can run more tests and give a better description of the problem.

Other than that, I've noticed in the past that Chris's compressor will hang, but not crash, if I try to compress a selection whose size approaches the size of my computer's RAM. I've figured that probably makes sense and isn't a bug exactly, but I don't really know.

--Allen

[kozikowski]

<<<isn't a bug exactly>>>

A Bug is a defined event. Unintentional evil software action or event easily reproducible on multiple different computers by multiple different people at any time.

It doesn't have to fail on all machines, but it gets everybody's attention if, say, ten people from around the world all show up with the exact same problem. Then we swing into action to make sure it's not software interaction or other common error. Or [cringe] it's not something the developers intentionally designed.

There is an actual bug in Audacity 1.2.5 when run on a Mac/Intel/Leopard machine. It was very difficult to find and doesn't happen very often.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

I too am an avid user of Chris Capel's compressor. Just last week, I noticed that his latest release crashes Audacity when the selection I'm compressing starts very near, but not quite at, the beginning of the track. I've been meaning to write Chris about this, but I've been putting it off until I can run more tests and give a better description of the problem.

Other than that, I've noticed in the past that Chris's compressor will hang, but not crash, if I try to compress a selection whose size approaches the size of my computer's RAM. I've figured that probably makes sense and isn't a bug exactly, but I don't really know.--Allen

Chris's compressor is a Nyquist plug-in and the Audacity built-in compressor is LADPSA. There are lots of issues with the outdated Audacity implementation of Nyquist in current Audacity releases, poor memory management being one of them (I would be surprised if 888 MB did not crash almost any Nyquist plug-in). However in our development code we have now rewritten a lot of the Audacity Nyquist implementation and updated to the current Nyquist v3.03. You can try the new code here and see if it helps:
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... -alpha.zip



Gale

[r0bb1e]

I have experienced a very similar (possibly the same) problem exporting to MP3 from Audacity 1.3.7 under Windows Vista Home Premium. The exported file is saved and works fine, but Audacity 1.3.7 crashes immediately the save is completed. I've moved back to 1.3.6 which doesn't seem to have this problem

[Gale Andrews]

I have experienced a very similar (possibly the same) problem exporting to MP3 from Audacity 1.3.7 under Windows Vista Home Premium. The exported file is saved and works fine, but Audacity 1.3.7 crashes immediately the save is completed. I've moved back to 1.3.6 which doesn't seem to have this problem

Your issue exporting to MP3 is nothing whatever to do with using Nyquist effect plug-ins. You need to use the latest lame_enc.dll from http://lame.buanzo.com.ar . This is noted in the README.txt accompanying 1.3.7, and on:
http://audacityteam.org/download/features-1.3-a

where it says "Windows users will require the latest version of the LAME encoder". If you have got that recently, please get it again, using the current .exe installer that is now up there. Instructions are here:
http://www.audacityteam.org/manual/inde ... ns#winlame


Gale

[hedera]

Gale, thanks for the tip, I'll give that code a try.

[hedera]

I'm a little confused - I downloaded the code that Gale Andrews mentioned, with the Nyquist updates; and what I have seems to be an entire upgrade to Audacity. I was sort of expecting a plugin. Um - how do I install this?? I don't see a setup executable. Do I just copy the files over into the Audacity directories, replacing existing files?

Sorry to ask such dumb questions...

[Gale Andrews]

I'm a little confused - I downloaded the code that Gale Andrews mentioned, with the Nyquist updates; and what I have seems to be an entire upgrade to Audacity. I was sort of expecting a plugin. Um - how do I install this?? I don't see a setup executable. Do I just copy the files over into the Audacity directories, replacing existing files?

This isn't an installer. The simplest way is really to just extract the zip to a new folder then launch Audacity from there by double-clicking audacity.exe. That does not affect your current Audacity installation at all, except that if you change a preference in 1.3.8 alpha that will also be reflected in 1.3.7. Alternatively do as you suggest and extract the zip into your current installation folder, letting it overwrite existing files where they are different.


Gale

[allencmcbride]

That does not affect your current Audacity installation at all, except that if you change a preference in 1.3.8 alpha that will also be reflected in 1.3.7.

Does this only apply to Windows? Because other sources say you can't have two different installations of 1.3.x installed at the same time. --Allen