Audacity for Mac recongnizing my Audacity PC files

[robmee]

I have been using Audacity 1.2.6 for a PC with Windows XP for the OS. I will be changing to an iMac and downloading the appropriate Audacity for the Mac operating system on the new computer. After I have completed the downloading and installation, will Audacity on the Mac regonize, i.e. open for editing, etc., the Audacity files I created on the PC with the Windows XP OS?

Thanks for any help with thisw.
Rob

[billw58]

Yes.

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

People have trouble going from PC to PC. I think going between platforms is begging for trouble. We generally tell people they can't easily move projects at all and to export the work as WAV and move those.

People fail to understand that Audacity Projects can contain thousands of clips and files and multiple outside sound files depending on what you were editing. You have to move all of them to get a Project to move.

In case I wasn't depressing enough, modern Macs do not support Audacity 1.2. You will need to download and install Audacity 1.3.12 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

If you use lame and FFMpeg, you should get those fresh from the same place.

Koz

[billw58]

Everything Koz says is true, but ...

The advantage of exporting versus moving the projects depends on the nature of the projects. If you have simple projects where all tracks start at time zero and have no label tracks, then exporting to WAV or AIF and then importing those into new projects would be fine. Safe and time-consuming.

Otherwise you'll want to move the projects themselves in order to preserve the stuff that will get lost when you export to WAV or AIF (tracks not starting at time zero, label tracks, gain and pan settings on the tracks, envelopes, etc).

Moving projects is fine, but there are things to watch out for:

1) Check your setting in Edit > Preferences, the "File Formats" tab, then under "When importing uncompressed audio files into Audacity". If "Read directly from original file (faster)" is checked, and your project depends on imported uncompressed files (usually WAV or AIF) you have two choices:
[How would you know if your project depended on imported uncompressed files? If the option is set as above and at any time you imported a WAV or AIF into your project, the project depends on those imported files.]
a) Upgrade to 1.3.12 on the PC, open each project, then do File > Check Dependencies http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Dependencies_Dialog Click "Copy All Audio into Project (Safer)", then save the project under a new name. Copy these new 1.3.12 projects to the iMac. This would be my preferred method.
b) Export the individual tracks to WAV files and import them into new projects on the iMac.

2) You must keep the .aup file and the _data folder together in the same folder. Don't just move the .aup files - move the _data folder with the.aup file and put them in the same folder. My preferred method for accomplishing this is to create a folder and put the .aup file and the _data folder into that folder, then move that folder - this guarantees that the .aup file and the _data folder will stay together.

Will you have the option of having both machines running at the same time? If so, you could experiment with moving projects to the iMac and opening them there - if there are any problems you can go back to the PC and fix the problem using option 1a) or 1b) above.

If you are at all unsure of what all the above means, then export your existing Audacity projects as WAV files (one WAV file per track - using File > Export Multiple). Create a new folder to hold the exported tracks from each project. The exported files will be named according to the track names in the Audacity project.

Good luck, and welcome to Mac-land!

-- Bill

[robmee]

Koz & Bill,

Thanks for all that information. I will try each suggestion to see which one works easier for me. At least knowing that I will be able to work with the Audacity for Mac should eliminate the necessity of re-recording all the material.

Rob

[billw58]

Rob:
If you have recorded all the material the projects should be self-contained, that is, no dependencies on external files.

-- Bill

[robmee]

Bill,

Good to know. All are recorded directly from vinyl or audio cassettes.

Rob

[kozikowski]

Just for fun, how does Audacity deal with the AUP file characteristics and external sound files between platforms? Even if you do manage to corral all your files and push them over to the "other" machine, the addresses are going to be wrong.

/koz/Music/piano2.wav on a Mac turns into kozMusicpiano2.wav on a PC.

One of those addresses is hard coded in the show's AUP file.

Koz

[steve]

Just for fun, how does Audacity deal with the AUP file characteristics and external sound files between platforms?

It doesn't handle it. You need to resolve dependencies before transferring the project.
With Audacity 1.3.12, "File menu > Check Dependencies"
When the project is self contained, then the .AUP and _data folder just need to be kept together. The easiest way to do that is to put them both into a folder, then move the folder.

[kozikowski]

Or wait for 2.0 which will have Copy Files as default.

Koz