Label- Slows down and stops program

[dinosaur]

Hello,

Audacity 1.3.9 and 1.3.11 in two different linux distros, Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 have the same problem. This is a 64 bit system and I didn't have the problem on a 32 bit system.

I do a lot of transcribing into Label of a mono voice track. This works well for what I am doing. In both installs after a paragraph or two of type in Label the system starts to slow, as in it takes a lot of time after a character is typed to show up on the Label track.

As the amount of typing gets larger it slows more. It will reach a point where using Effects will stop the system and it will all turn dark gray for a while until "something does something" (This gets highly technical here) The program will eventually get unusable and will either just sit looking gray or will crash.

Help appreciated.

Thank you

[dinosaur]

Hello,

I also installed 3.5.9 on Ubuntu 9.10 on another older 32 bit computer. Same problem. After a good bit of word entry into the Label track the system slows to a crawl. This has to be an audacity problem. I did not have this problem with an earlier release of audacity in Ubuntu 8.4.

Help appreciated. This is for more than a hobby.

Thank You.

[steve]

I also installed 3.5.9

There is no "Audacity 3.5.9".

Same problem.

Not the "same problem" - dinosaur was very specific that he only got the problem on his 64 bit system. What you have is "similar symptoms", but the cause may not be the same.

dinosaur was talking about typing several paragraphs of text into the labels (which labels were not designed for - they were designed to be "labels"). How much text are you talking about? (how many labels and how much text in each label?)

[dinosaur]

Hello,

I was using only one Label track. I just tried adding another track but the same problem persisted in the additional track. I exported the Label track to text and closed the track completely, then started another Label track. The new track functioned well. This though is not a good solution as I need all of the text directly under the sound track to complete work.

This is speech which is being transcribed. Ok as to the number of words -by rough count is 620.

Thank You

[steve]

This does appear to be a limitation in Audacity. I've just tried entering several hundred words into labels and as you say the program slows down considerably. For some reason handling labels seems to use a lot of CPU power and with enough labels I get one processor running at 100% for several minutes while it is working. I'll bring this to the attention of the developers, but I don't know if it will be considered to be a "fault" as this only happens when using many times more text than would normally be used for the purposes of "labelling" sections of audio.

In the mean time, perhaps you could say more about what you are doing and why you need all of the labels under the recording at the same time. Perhaps we can come up with some sort of workaround that will help you to finish the job successfully.

[dinosaur]

Thank You,

I also noticed the same problem with CPU power. One processor will run at 100% and the other will be at around 10% after the system has set idol for a long time with audacity registered as sleeping in the system monitor. It didn't do that this morning though and I ran the monitor at the same time as audacity just to see.

What I am doing are voice reversals. Listening to these takes quite a trained ear. it would be like listening to someone with a heavy accent or something, until getting used to it. It is really convenient for others as well to be able to see the words while hearing the speech. It makes this speech much easier to grasp. There is also an emotional content to the speech which the printed words alone can not convey. Think of like watching a foreign language video with sub-titles.

If I must, I will just transcribe directly into a small text editor in order to finish the work but this isn't as neat as having the text move along in relation to the co-responding audio.

[Gale Andrews]

This does appear to be a limitation in Audacity. I've just tried entering several hundred words into labels and as you say the program slows down considerably. For some reason handling labels seems to use a lot of CPU power and with enough labels I get one processor running at 100% for several minutes while it is working. I'll bring this to the attention of the developers, but I don't know if it will be considered to be a "fault" as this only happens when using many times more text than would normally be used for the purposes of "labelling" sections of audio.

Steve, I have added to Bugzilla as PX.

* I have not tested on Windows yet - did you test on Linux, so that all these reports are on Linux? And the problem is both "many labels" and "a lot of text in a few labels"?

* Dinosaur, when you did not have the problem on a 32-bit computer, what version of Audacity were you using then?



Gale

[steve]

I've only tested this on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04). 900 labels with around 5 words per label and Audacity grind to a halt.
Exporting the labels and deleting the label track, then starting a new label track and the problem goes away until there are again several hundred labels.
I've not yet tried hundreds of words in a few labels.

[dinosaur]

Sorry Gale,

I don't quite remember which audacity I was running in 32 bit. I was running Ed-Ubuntu and downloaded the latest audacity available for Lenny at that time which was about July 2008.

Now as a note, I was new to this work and it would have taken me a while to get to over 600 words. Each label is about a sentence and a half long avg. Still I had no problem with it.

Thank You.

[Gale Andrews]

Dinosaur, there has been another report of this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/529337

that suggests EXPERIMENTAL_LYRICS_WINDOW (View > Karaoke) is to blame - it interacts with the first label track even if you don't have the Karaoke window open. So if adding an empty first label track isn't a good solution for you, you can comment out EXPERIMENTAL_LYRICS_WINDOW in Experimental.h and rebuild. Note you can collapse the first label track upwards using the upward pointing arrow below the label name.

Maybe the old version of Audacity you were using that did not have this problem pre-dates the Karaoke window?



Gale