Audio disappears in middle of audio track

[steve]

How do I get that in the course of a normal edit--on a Mac, which doesn't normally have virus or stability problems? And how do you afflict only two people out of the whole class?

Well that's the question isn't it

You could well be right about a bad VST plugin (assuming it's not the work of the classroom joker).
We've still to hear from Judy about a few things, such as whether they have any VST plugins installed, if she can reproduce the fault, etc.

Perhaps Clayton can help with this as he seems to have exactly the same problem.

The things that I would like to know are:
Is Clayton also using v.1.2.6 on a mac?
Are there any zero byte (or very small) .au files in the data folder?
Are there any VST plugins installed?
Is the problem repeatable?
Does removing the VST bridge resolve the problem?

[Clayton]

To answer some of these questions:

I'm using 1.2.5 on a Mac.
The data file has many many small files of 16KB
I don't find any VST plugins on my HD
I won't know if the problem is repeatable unless it repeats when I try to edit another track, and I'm not sure I want to take the time to do that given what's happened before. If I do, I'll let you know the outcome.

Clayton

[xgipper]

Hi
Audacity Newbie speaking! I am just trying to make a very basic recording, fading between a few imported clips of music from CDs, and I believe I'm having a similar problem. So far this has taken me hours, because when I play back, the waveform stays intact, but the sound cuts out in seemingly random portions, and the level meters indicate no sound. So I keep starting again. To import the audio I used the project > import audio command and navigated to the CD track. I'm afraid I haven't fully analysed all the files in the project folder as suggested. But is the earlier post in this thread saying that, as soon as the CD is ejected, that would affect audio that I assumed Audacity was actually importing by using this command? Is it better to use another method to import, like firstly copying the AIF file to a relevant directory or converting it to another format? I think I'm using the stable version (not sure as the About menu is greyed out for some reason) on Tiger.
Cheers

[steve]

If you are using tracks, or parts of tracks from CD's, you need to have the audio (Aiff, or wav) on your hard drive before you import into Audacity. Audacity does not necessarily copy the entire audio into the data folder, it also uses "pointers" to files, so the audio that you are processing must exist and be accessible.

[xgipper]

Thanks I hadn't understood that. I will try copying tracks to hard drive first to see if it helps.

[waxcylinder]

Or set Audacity so that actually takes a copy and does'nt just use the pointer: Edit>Preference>File Formats in the "When importing uncompressed files into Audacity" check the "Make a copy of the file before editing (safer)" radio button. And on the "When saving ....." check the "Always copy all audio (safest)"

WC

[xgipper]

And on the "When saving ....." check the "Always copy all audio (safest)"

Er, I can't find that option....

[kozikowski]

<<<"Make a copy of the file before editing (safer)">>>

I believe that option only appears on the latest unstable version of Audacity (1.3.x) and it will appear on the new release version 1.4.x.

Koz

[glow]

I had a problem similar to Judy's, which I just fixed after reading this post from stevethefiddle:

>If you are using tracks, or parts of tracks from CD's, you need to have the audio (Aiff, or wav) on your hard drive before you import into Audacity. Audacity does not necessarily copy the entire audio into the data folder, it also uses "pointers" to files, so the audio that you are processing must exist and be accessible.<

I had built my project file by copying segments of a .wav file residing on my hard drive. While editing the project file, I moved the .wav file from my hard drive to a remote drive and renamed it. Later, just before I went to export the .aup project to an .mp3 file, I found that about 10 segments of the project has gone silent--for anywhere from 8 to 30 seconds.

After I put the .wav file back on the hard drive and gave it its original name, the sound for all of my silent segments (about 10 in a 7-minute piece) reappeared. Whew!

I use Audacity 1.2.6 on a Mac Mini running OS 10.4.11.

Dave