My student created a podcast using the audacity application. When she tried to open it last night, there were 186 separate files, each with a tiny sound clip from he original recording. Can anyone explain what happened or, more importantly, how I can help her fix this? Thanks in advance.
Have a look at it’s project and check the export method she uses.
Her sound tracks should have been mixed in only one track before exporting. (eg duplicate project, save duplicated, mix it, then export)
While “export multiple” (in case of) give attention to “split files based on” if track are not merged in only one duration signal it may split. Pay attention to your labeled selection also.
in a selected whole compositing track, use “edit” “clip boundaries” “join” to have a continuous wav form.
Hope this may help. at least give a clue (without knowing her project structure)
There are two parts to a saved Audacity project. There is the “project file”, which has the file name extension “.aup”, and there is the “project data folder”, that has a name ending in “_data”.
Inside the “_data” folder, there are other folder, which ultimately contain lots of little data files. This is probably the “186 separate files” that she is seeing.
IMPORTANT: Don’t mess with the “_data” folder. If you manually modify this folder or it’s contents in any way, you will probably destroy the Audacity project.
To open the Audacity project, double click on the “.AUP” file, or from the Audacity “File” menu, select “Open”, then select the “.AUP” file.
For more information about safely managing projects, see here in the manual: Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity Manual