Corrupt Audacity file + Audacity no longer works

[Siddy]

Hi,

I have been using Audacity for a while, i love it.
Today i was recording, (i should state this was my first time using it on Vista), after a while i got an error and had to close it. (It said there was some issue about the recording device, but everything seems to be working fine in other programs)
Luckily after re-opening it recovered my recording. BUT i cant play back the re-covered recording, or save as mp3, it seems to be corrupt.
After that i made some more recordings, there was no error message or issues. I saved and quit. Now when i try to open and play any of them, i either get an error message or it simply wont play.

If i open an old audacity project (that i recored months ago on my old XP pc) it opens and runs fine.

Ive uploaded the corrupt aup file, if anyone could get it working that would be great!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=56FZWCQO
Or any advice on what i can do to try and fix it?

here is the error message:
---
Unhandled exception
An unhandled exception occured. Press "Abort" to terminate the program, "Retry" to ext the program normally and "Ignore" to try to continue.
---

Here are my system specs:
73500 Pentium dual core 2.26GHz
3gig ram
Vista sp1
audio card is inbuild, driver is supplied by microsoft

[Siddy]

I got it work on Linux, but still cant open it in Vista.

I could export it to mp3 in linux and then open in vista, but i think i will loose quality. Also i use the vista box mainly so id still like a fix to this problem

[waxcylinder]

Export it to WAV (preferrably 32-biy float if you are using Audacity's default project settings) - and the import the WAV in Audacity on yor Vista machine.

WC

[Siddy]

Thanks for the reply.

But, the audacity project is 37 audio clips, each about 4seconds long. If i export multiple i get 37 separate files. How can i open all 37 in audacity (sequentiality)?
(With out opening 37 audacity windows)

[steve]

The good news is that the project appears to be fine. That means that the bad news is that your Audacity installation on Windows 7 is broken in some way.

Are you able to open Audacity normally (on the Win 7 PC) and start a new project?

[waxcylinder]

Thanks for the reply.

But, the audacity project is 37 audio clips, each about 4seconds long. If i export multiple i get 37 separate files. How can i open all 37 in audacity (sequentiality)?
(With out opening 37 audacity windows)

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.

WC

[Siddy]

Thanks for the replies

WC, thats not what im talking about.
Im not mucking with audacity's file system. Im opening the .aup file.
I made multiple tracks within the one audacity project, thats what im talking about when i say 5second audio files.
----
I managed to export each (via export multiple) as wav, and they work on my vista box, and i can open them with audacity (for some reason i still cant open any aup file i created that day with audacity on vista).

Im now editing each wav file separately, its slow but ill get there.
I think i just have to keep the amount of separate files in the one audacity project around the 20 mark, cause it crashes and burns after 30ish. On vista is corrupts the files, on xp or ubuntu it just tanks the system.

I think everyone who downloads audacity should be warned not to record an audio file longer than 1hr, or more than 20-30 separate files in the one audacity project.

[waxcylinder]

I think everyone who downloads audacity should be warned not to record an audio file longer than 1hr, or more than 20-30 separate files in the one audacity project.

I regularly record a one hour 45 minute show off air from the BBC with an extra 10 minute buffer either side. - and that always works fine.

In fact sometimes when the Timer Record function fails to honour the required stop-time (which it does sometimes - a moonphase bug) I can end up with a 9-10 hour show which I can then successfully edit down to the 1:45 that I require.

WC