Changed PC want to import all music

[cantthinkofanickname]

I have changed my laptop and have installed audacity 1.2.6. It is a clean install. I have folders one of which is music captured from tape. These are in folders labled <title>_data which is the audacity input format. There are many of these and in each are folders of the form: e00 and then d03 and in those files like e0005a2a, etc. When I go import these Audacity want to select each one.

How do I get Audacity to link to all of these?

[waxcylinder]

No those are the sound sample files - with extension .au - you also need the .aup project files which are the recipe for threading the sample files together.


When you save an Audacity project as <project_name> it creates a number of things

1. a top level master project file called <project_name>.aup
2. a folder at the same filing level called <project_name>_data
3. and within the folder a sub-folder structure with lots of little .au files - segments of the recording (mainly audio clips - but a couple of them are graphics files)

When you re-open a project with Audacity you should always open the <project_name>.aup top level file. This tells Audacity how to thread together all the little .au files. It is deliberately designed this way so that Audacity doesn't have to open and work with a single humungously large file, which would hamper performance. You should not be attempting to open or manipulate any individual .au files.

When you have finished editing your Audacity project you can Export it from Audacity as a WAV file or MP3 file depending what sound quality you wish to achieve. WAV files are around ten times larger than the equivalent MP3 files but are uncompressed and thus the audio quality is higher.

Moving Audacity projects around or excessive tidying up can cause real problems for some users - Audacity projects can be very fragile in such circumstances. On your new target PC you will need to ensure that you have the same directory structure and locations for the Audacity files and folders - the ,aup file has references to the locations of the dependent files - you can open up the aup files with a text editor and change the locations if you know what you are doing.

If You are just using simple single stereo pair projects (and not multi-track projects) then it is much better to export the projexcts as WAVs and thn move them around.

WC

[cantthinkofanickname]

Ah, thanks for that, but further problems. I have discovered I had 1.3.8 but installed 1.2.6 this time and it won't open them. How do I upgrade to 1.3.10 to get these open? Do I uninstall then reinstall or just download and run? Also note I have windows 7 and I don't see a version for that.

[waxcylinder]

You can get 1.3.10 from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

And see this sticky thread on Audacity & Windows 7: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 16&t=16111

WC

[cantthinkofanickname]

Yes, thanks done. Seems to be working OK.

[kozikowski]

We normally tell people you can't move an Audacity Project. They're insanely brittle and can be complicated depending on the content of the show. More than one poster has drilled his/her show into the mud by "just moving it to a new computer."

If you have a show where you imported music from a sound file, you're still not out of the woods. Does that Project still play? I'm betting a pint with the boys that it doesn't.

Koz

[nesta]

I have a similar question. I was recording a radio program off my sound card. The file got to long..over 2 hours...and Audacity crashed. I do have a bunch of .au files but not the master file you talked about. These .au files open and I can hear the sounds but they open singly. This is because the master file is missing. So, is there a way to join all these 32 .au files together and make one master file. Or, if Audacity can't do it...any suggestions, please. Thanks!

[kozikowski]

It's probably more serious than that. If your computer ran out of space in two hours, you have very much not enough room on your computer. See how much stuff you can push off to an eternal hard drive or thumb drive.

Audacity captures take up roughly 700 MB per hour. Your computer needs to have room for the recording -- twice -- and still maintain 10% free space on the drive. So that's 1.4GB plus, say 2GB on a 20GB hard drive. 3.4 GB.

Until you do that, the rescue tools aren't going to do you any good. The tools will have no room to put the repaired show. Audacity will not capture in a compressed form like MP3.

Koz

[nesta]

I now have enough space on my harddrive. What I need help with is this: how do I take all the .au files (32 of them) and make one single file so that I can edit the recording?

[steve]

The .au files are small fragments of audio data that are required by the Audacity Project. If you only have 32 of them then you only have a few minutes from the show.
See here for information about how Audacity manages its files; http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ement_Tips