Audacity locks up when trying to save

[steve]

Perhaps best to go back to Audacity 2.4.2 for now. You can get it here: https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-old.html

Audacity 3.0.1 is due to be released very soon. Worth trying that as soon as it becomes available.

[D.Gale]

3.0.2 doesn't work any better than the earlier versions.

[jademan]

3.0.2 doesn't work any better than the earlier versions.

There were some new diagnostic error messages introduced in 3.0.2. Are you getting any of them, or is your machine just locking up with no indication?

[linsr]

Problems with Audacity locking up after upgrading from Audacity 2.4.2 to Audacity 3.0 & 3.0.1:

1. Editing and saving commands take an extremely long time to fully execute. Using previous versions to execute those functions was reasonably quick and much less time consuming. I expected the larger file sizes in 3.O to increase executing times, but the resulting time lag is making the recording and editing process take so long it's almost un-manageble. Saving and editing has now slowed down to a crawl.

2. After taking great pains to save and close files in the proper sequence, I continue receiving messages indicating that I failed to close the file properly. Selecting the option to recover the indicated file, does not present me with the obvious location of a recovered file. What appears is my usual listing of what I've assumed to be my undamaged files. It would be helpful and reassuring to receive a message or response indicating that my working files are still complete and undamaged or a flag indicating the newly recovered file.

My computer Features: ( Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900 CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz, 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable), Windows 10 Pro OS. I have 1 1/2 Terabyte of free hard drive space. This system has worked flawlessly with previous versions of Audacity. The above mentioned problems began after updating to the 3.0 release and are still present using the 3.0.1 release, which I downloaded and attempted to use this evening. Every other program I run on my computer executes as fast as before. I find it hard to believe that the problems I've listed above are not showing up among a large number of current Audacity 3.0 & 3.0.1 Windows users. If that is the case, I would greatly appreciate any suggested work arounds that would allow me to continue using what I've considered (up to now) to be awesome program? Thanks

[waxcylinder]

Problems with Audacity locking up after upgrading from Audacity 2.4.2 to Audacity 3.0 & 3.0.1:

1. Editing and saving commands take an extremely long time to fully execute. Using previous versions to execute those functions was reasonably quick and much less time consuming. I expected the larger file sizes in 3.O to increase executing times, but the resulting time lag is making the recording and editing process take so long it's almost un-manageble. Saving and editing has now slowed down to a crawl.

There was never a 3.0.1 - we went straight to 3.0.2 from 3.0.0

1. Editing and saving commands take an extremely long time to fully execute. Using previous versions to execute those functions was reasonably quick and much less time consuming. I expected the larger file sizes in 3.O to increase executing times, but the resulting time lag is making the recording and editing process take so long it's almost un-manageble. Saving and editing has now slowed down to a crawl.

I did a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of QA speed testing of the new Unitary Project 3.x throughout the alpha development and the Release Candidate stages.

This was done on Windows 10 PC and Macbook Pro under 11.2.x Big Sur with hour long stereo projects. My measured results showed us the in general most things were roughly the same in time taken, but some of the effects were quicker in 3.x. We would not have releases 3.0.0 if it had exhibited the sort of serious slowdowns that you are reporting.

The one thing that we know takes longer is exiting from Audacity - and that is because Audacity has to clean up the project database on exit and release the unused temporary space it was holding. If it did not do that your projects would quickly become huge.

I've also been using the alphas and RCs for my weekly production work where I capture a 2-3 hour show from a Webcast and then edit it an output to MP3 for later use. I have not found that processing to be made slower by using 3.x

So I am more than somewhat puzzled by your report here ...

WC

[waxcylinder]

2. After taking great pains to save and close files in the proper sequence, I continue receiving messages indicating that I failed to close the file properly. Selecting the option to recover the indicated file, does not present me with the obvious location of a recovered file. What appears is my usual listing of what I've assumed to be my undamaged files. It would be helpful and reassuring to receive a message or response indicating that my working files are still complete and undamaged or a flag indicating the newly recovered file.

There were a couple of issues found in 3.0.0 shortly after release which none of the QA testers had found - and indeed even after they were reported by users they proved impossible to provoke on demand and thus very hard to diagnose..

One of those was a false recovery (which sounds like what you are reporting here) - this caused no damage, one could either discard the offered recovery if one new for certain there had not been a crash to cause a recovery - or you could accept it and it would "recover" an empty project.
See: https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2732

We think that this may occur when you exit Audacity without saving the project and then relaunch later - but we can't repeat this in tests.

We have made some database changes for 3.0.2 but at thus stage we don't know if we have fixed this (because as I said above we can't provoke this when testing). One of the changes is to add some more diagnostic information to the error message - so if you get this again and are offered a diagnostic log please do generate that and post us a copy here on the Forum.

WC

[waxcylinder]

My computer Features: ( Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900 CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz, 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable), Windows 10 Pro OS. I have 1 1/2 Terabyte of free hard drive space.

Both my machines are pretty similar in Spec (yours is higher spec):
Both are 2-7GhZ 8GB RAM dual-core
Both have 256GB SSD ( Win has 60GB free, Mac has 90GB free)
Both are Intel processors - Win is i7 Mac is i5
I'm using windows 10 Home on the PC

Yes I'm using SSD - but my PC also has an onboard 1TB spinning metal disk - I recently did timing tests of SSD versus HD and was surprised to find very little difference between the two.

WC

[D.Gale]

There were some new diagnostic error messages introduced in 3.0.2. Are you getting any of them, or is your machine just locking up with no indication?

No. Same thing. Record, save as mp3, the save box pops up then locks up. Still can't name and save.

[jademan]

So, I am at a loss. I don't believe any of your files are network drives - if they are, that could be the cause of the problem. Also, there was a Windows update earlier this week - you can see if this helps anything. And I believe you said this happens with 2.x Audacity as well as 3.x, so changing versions doesn't seem to help you.

I believe Kuropon was thinking that Audacity or Windows was somehow choking on the file name - I have seen this happen before. Have you tried first saving the project, and then recording in to it?

[D.Gale]

I did as Steve suggested above and went back to 2.4.2. It works just fine for the last 3 days. Just like it always did.