I recently left my phone’s audio recorder running for almost a whole day, creating a .91 gigabyte file, out of which I wanted to trim about 2 hours of myself jamming on guitar.
But, I have been unable to load into Audacity. I am running Audacity 2.2.2 on Ubuntu 18.04 PPA version.
Is there a size limit to files that can be opened in Audacity. (This is a .m4a extension file)
My hard drive is almost full, so, if it is trying to create a swap file on it, that could be a problem.
On import, Audacity will try to uncompress the file. That will require several GB of available disk space just to import the file. Any editing or processing will require additional disk space. As an absolute minimum I’d say you will need around 20 GB of available space, and more if you intend to process the file.
Ah, thank you. Plus another thing I thought of is, I have my import setting on: make a copy (safer); and that sounds like it would require more memory, too…
The “safer” option is the default and recommended. In this case, the audio data is copied into the project data folder at the time that you import.
With the “faster” option, this copying is deferred until the audio is modified, so the initial track import is a bit quicker. However, in the long run, there is usually no space saving because the track data will usually be copied sooner or later. The BIG downside of the “faster” option, is that if the original audio data has not been copied into the project, then the project is not self-contained and depends on the original file remaining available forever. If you move the project, or move the original file, or delete or modify the original file, the project will break. It is VERY easy to destroy your own work with this option enabled, and not know that you’ve done so until the next time you try to open the project.