Unable to open project due to "Unable to parse project Information" message

Hello, I’m having a problem opening an aup3 file.

I am not sure of the cause, I did run out of space whilst recording, but I was able to save it and then clear up space. When I attempted to reopen the project I was presented with the information in the image below.

I use windows 10 and Audacity 3.0.2 if that’s relevant information for helping with this problem.
parse.png

Unfortunately that is likely to be fatal for the project.

How big is the project “AUP3” file?
How long is the recording supposed to be?
Was the recording mono or stereo?
Do you recall what the sample rate was?

I’ll take a look at this file if you care to zip it up and upload it to a public file server, then post or PM me the link. No promises.

The project had multiple previous saves, and I was able to save it before I closed it out to clean out the storage. Also the computer wasn’t completely out of space but it was very low, enough to warrant a low space computer warning. Do you think this will make a difference, especially because there is information saved in the file (Amount shown below).

How big is the project “AUP3” file?
508,032 kb

How long is the recording supposed to be?
2 mins and 51 secs, with multiple tracks.

Was the recording mono or stereo?
stereo

Do you recall what the sample rate was?
I believe 48000 Hz

Will google drive work?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JCsNi_AeBMrIeXiazD66QbH_LoRslgzr/view?usp=sharing

Are there other resource I could use that would work better for you then google drive?

Got it. I am able to reproduce your error. I will look into this more tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.

Consider ourselves blessed. :smiley: I believe we were able to recover your entire project. :smiley: Please review it.

I have sent you the link to the recovered file via PM.

thank you so much

In the future, I would prefer that you start this kind of request on the forum, so that everyone can benefit from the experience.

OK, so we were very lucky last time, and as it turns out, we are lucky again. :smiley: While I don’t know exactly what causes this situation, I do know how to fix it, at least in your particular case. It is entirely possible that this solution may not work for others. The solution has previously been reported here: Unable To Parse Project Information may not have to be fatal. #1479, so the developers have been aware of the situation and the solution.

Rather than send you the repaired file, (I may not always be able to fix this for you), I wanted go give you (and others) the tools to be able to fix this yourself should the need arise. Steve is the one that first proposed this solution.

All we need to do is swap the “autosave” and “project” records within the .aup3 file.

Here are the detailed steps to do this:

1) Backup (make a copy of) your .aup3 file
2) Download and install "DB Browser for SQLite(3)"
3) File > Open Database
4) In the lower right-hand corner click the drop-down and select "All files (*)"
5) Navigate to your .aup3 file, then click Open.
6) Right-click on "autosave", then select Modify Table
7) At the top of the new windows, change the name of "autosave" to "autosavex", and click OK.
8) Right-click on "project", then select Modify Table.
9) Rename "project" to "autosave"; OK.
10) Right-click on "autosavex", Modify, rename "autosavex" to "project".
11) File > Close Database
12) File > exit.

I am unable to respond to Private Messages.

We haven’t seen any reports of this error since 3.1.3 was released. The first thing to try is running in 3.1.3.

If that doesn’t work, you can try the recovery steps outlines in this post: Corrupt or Otherwise Broken Audacity Project Recovery

Before you do anything, make a copy of your .aup3 project file, and try to work on a local copy (don’t use files on the cloud or files that are being replicated to the cloud).

Let us know how you make out.