Missing Audio Data Blockfile(s)

[rjc90]

I have version 1.3 Beta of Audacity and have recently recorded an interview with a person on their war experience that goes for quite a while. I created a copy of the original file and began editing the copy. I saved my progress, exited the program and later, when I tried to open the same file, a window appeared saying as follows:

"Project check detected 83 missing audio data (.au) blockfile(s), probably due to a bug, system crash or accidental deletion. There is no way for Audacity to recover these missing files automatically."

I have not deleted any files nor has my computer crashed recently. The recording that I had saved was of the utmost importance and therefore must be retrieved. Help ASAP would be very much appreciated.

[waxcylinder]

You have probably stumbled into the infamous Bug no. 137 (see http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137 it's a long read ... )-. It has proved a hard one for the developers to track down and is one of the two critical bugs that are preventing us from getting release 2.0 out the door. If you can provide the developoers with details of how this happened and on what computer platform and operating system and which version of Audacity they would be grateful.

Each of those blockfiles contains only a short piece of audio so you should find at worst that you may just end up with some tiny gaps in your audio.

You say that you made a copy of the original file - I'm assuming that you did this by saving an Audacity project. For future reference I strongly recommend that the first thing that you do after recording any one-off non-repeatable interview or preformance is to export a WAV copy of the project. That way you can always go back to that WAV file as the raw master capture.

And if all you are doing is editing a single stereo pair (and not doing multi-track recording) then I would also export safety copy WAVS at key editing points in the project so you can roll back to those points if required.

WC

[rjc90]

Thanks for that. I'm attempting to piece together all of the separate audio files from the folder containing the data which is still in tact. I will save it as a WAV as soon as it's completed.
Thanks again for the info

[waxcylinder]

In 1.3 Audacity should auto-recover for you on start-up (unless you tell/told it not to).

Trying to thread together all those files is hard work - in 1.3 they are not numbered randomly and not sequentially. For a straight capture it is usually best to sort them by date/time order - but I suspect you have been doing a fair bit of editing which will make the task harder.

WC

[Edgar]

Occasionally, these "missing" AU files are still on your computer but in a different location/folder. Try searching your hard drives for one of the missing files using the Windows search function, make sure you search hidden and system folders, just in case.

[Gale Andrews]

it's a long read

There is a more digestible précis on the Wiki:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Bug:137

I have version 1.3 Beta of Audacity

Sorry you had a problem. Please look at Help > About Audacity and tell us the exact thee section version number you have (for example, 1.3.13). If you don't have the current 1.3.13, please upgrade:
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

I created a copy of the original file and began editing the copy.

Please tell us exactly what steps you took after you stopped recording. Do you mean you did File > Save Project?

If you saved a project and made a copy of that, what file or folder exactly did you copy? If you did a second File > Save Project As, so that you have two separately named projects, did you have them open at the same time in Audacity? If so, can you open the original copy of the project?

I saved my progress, exited the program and later, when I tried to open the same file, a window appeared saying as follows:

"Project check detected 83 missing audio data (.au) blockfile(s), probably due to a bug, system crash or accidental deletion. There is no way for Audacity to recover these missing files automatically."

If you have two projects open at the same time, Audacity can save the .au files in the wrong project. If that happened, the missing files in this project will be stated as "orphans" in the other project. So don't delete any orphan files that are reported in other projects. You can look at Help > Show Log to get the names of the missing files and search your computer for them (as Edgar said).

I have not deleted any files nor has my computer crashed recently.

OK, so there is no autorecovery involved, because there was no crash.

1.3 Audacity should auto-recover for you on start-up (unless you tell/told it not to).

In the current 1.3.13 Beta, the Autosave option in the Directories Preferences has been removed so there is no way to turn it off. That will continue to be the case in future releases.

I'm attempting to piece together all of the separate audio files from the folder containing the data which is still in tact.

If this is a mono recording and you did not edit it before the problem occurred, you can resort the .au files into timestamp order, rename them then use an automatic utility to recover them. See the green panel on this page:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Crash ... very_tools

However as there was no crash I wonder what the purpose of piecing together the files is? If the missing files are correctly reported and no other corruption has occurred, then you should have the .au files in the _data folder in the correct order already - the only problem should be gaps in the audio. Are there gaps in playback or the waveform? If so, is the audio that is still there in the correct order? In that case your only task is to find where the missing audio files are and put them back in the correct subfolder in the _data folder for the project.

The fourth numeric character in the filename of the .au file (for example, a "2" in a file named e0002937.au)
tells you the "d" subfolder that file should be in. So the e0002932.au file should be in the "d02" folder for Audacity to find it.



Gale