Audacity Forum

(1)Will not load aup files from desktop - loads mp3 & aiff fine !

(2) Effects appear to be global i.e. if 2 tracks present reverb goes on both !

(3) Unable to 'zoom' one track at a time - both zoom.


Mac OS X 10.6.8; MacBook Pro. 2.3 Ghz Intel Core i5, 4GB

Marc Woodland

1) See here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Projects
2) See here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Selection
3) I don't understand the question. If you "zoom in" on a shorter period of time, then of course you see a"zoomed in" section of whichever track(s) you are looking at. I don't understand how it could be otherwise.

Thanks - I have already read the details on aup. files and I think I understand what is being said. BUT.... It still refuses to open these files.

Maybe you just cant edit mp3 aiff files in this software ?

The comment on zooming is if I have a track from my surbahar and I wish to lay down a background Tampura track I may wish to zoom in on the elements of the first track while leaving the background track untouched - both zoom - and more importantly if I try to loop the tanpura track BOTH tracks loop. I know I must be doing something stupid but everything seems to work in a global manner not just on a single track. Maybe I should return to Garage Band - but on the face of it Audacity does claim to have some useful tricks IF I could get it to work.

Thanks for your time anyhow

Soundchap wrote: It still refuses to open these files.

Any error message?
Do you have both the .AUP file and the _data folder?
Have you moved or renamed either the .AUP file or the _data folder?

Soundchap wrote:Maybe you just cant edit mp3 aiff files in this software ?

What does that have to do with your original questions?
MP3 is a format for audio files - it uses a form of data compression that reduces the file size at the expense of some loss of sound quality.
AIFF is a format for audio files that uses uncompressed audio data.
An Audacity Project is not an audio file (as explained in the previous link.)

Soundchap wrote:more importantly if I try to loop the tanpura track BOTH tracks loop

Audacity does not directly support "looping". To repeat a section, select the part that you want to repeat then select "Repeat" from the Effect menu.
Effects are applied to the currently selected audio.
By default, if you have not selected any audio, then Audacity will select everything when you apply an effect.

It still refuses to open these files.

People who use those exact words generally think that AUP is a music file. It's not. It's a management file that points to your _data folder and all the other music files you used in your show.

You can open your AUP file in TextEdit and read it. Here's a simple one.

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

It uses almost English words.

If you don't have your music files and _data folder handy when you try to launch the AUP file, it will not be able to reconstruct your show.

The other common misconception is that if you opened up an MP3 file in your show, that it's still an MP3 file. It's not. Audacity converts all its music into an internal format.

Koz

Hi I understood the info re the creation of a folder for data and a seperate .aup file and I was getting an error message - unrecognised file type, error line 6 ?
Anyhow I re-installed Audacity and that problem has been solved.... BUT the selection for effects etc problems remain - of course I select in the usual click on desired track then click & drag manner and the shade changes - It is probably something I am missing.Or the sequence in which I do things is wrong for this software.

I understand that mp3 aiff are not the same as .aup files and are converted on import. (Without wishing to be rude I would just mention that I spend a lot of time doing DNA sequence analysis, sequencing and analytical protein studies as well. My job. So while not a computer expert I know where the keyboard is)

Thanks very much for your time - it is still a bit unstable and has crashed several times - but it is a free beta

Marc - BSc(HONS), Ph.D

unrecognised file type, error line 6 ?

That's very different. Open up your AUP file and read it. It's pointing to a bad file or there's something else wrong with your process. You can get problems like this is you like to put dates or punctuation in your filenames or put punctuation in your metadata comments. 20110905 is today's date. Not 9/5/11.

You might be able to open your AUP file in TextEdit, count down to line 6 and see what's there (remembering that TextEdit will try to fold long text lines, and TextEdit will also try to "hide" bad data).

OS-X hates slashmarks.

it is still a bit unstable and has crashed several times

Maybe yours is. Ours is just short of release for the next stable version. Are you completely sure you're using Audacity 1.3 and not 1.2? Audacity > About Audacity. You have the unstable behavior typical of Audacity 1.2.

Koz

Definitely using 1.3.13 sorry should have clipped the error message - dont use slashes but hyphens or underscores.As for 20110905 as a date well it took me a relatively long time (5s) to recognise that as a date. Here UK 05092011 usually 5-09-2011. Clearly for certain purposes your way is more logical e.g. in filing systems.
Thanks

If there are crashes we need specifics about what actions led up to them.

Generally, Audacity Beta (but not 1.2) is a Unicode program. So in principle it supports any legal Mac character. Only colon ":" is illegal on Mac (forward slash is the file separator but Mac can handle it by internal translation).

• However there is an Audacity bug that entering a backslash "" in a file name when saving a project gives a "Could not save project. Path not found." error.
• There is also an Audacity bug that when using Export Multiple, asterisks (*) or question marks (?) in labels are wrongly rejected as illegal characters, and forward slashes (/) cause a false "cannot export audio" warning. To force use of "*" or "?" or "/", export each region with File > Export Selection instead.
• There is a current bug ( http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 17&t=60278 ) that Audacity may crash importing audio files from a path containing Unicode characters - "日本語.mp3" is not a problem if the folder path has Latin characters or numerals, but "song.mp3" is a problem if it is in a "日本語" folder. I am not sure if this bug occurs opening an Audacity project in a Unicode path even it contains no imported file in such a path. Could Bruno or Bill test it and post there?

Of course, always stick to numbers, Latin characters, dashes, hyphens and underscores if you have to distribute files over the internet or to a user on another computer.

Otherwise if one project tends to crash but others don't, try selecting each track of the project in turn, File > Export Selection as AIFF or WAV, import the AIFF's/WAV's into a fresh project window and save as a new project.

If you were previously using an earlier Beta, projects created in that earlier Beta that include imported files could fail to reopen with a line error message similar to the one you suggest. See:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Relea ... nd_Exports

Hope this provides some clarification.



Gale