Flat lining when exporting from audacity project

[kozikowski]

(bad battery and it is getting old resetting the time).

That's not all that battery does. It's the CMOS battery that keeps a working record of the computer environment. You can reduce a computer to trash with a bad battery.

Any chance you can get a new battery in there before the next test?

Koz

[ccernst]

The recorder machine is a pretty bare-bones Frankenstein type of machine...all it ever does is record LPs and cassettes. It's like a winter beater.

My LP recordings average around 400-500MB per side...sometimes I've seen them hit 700MB if I forgot to stop recording. Now that I think of it, sometimes I keep the recordings on an external USB hard drive. Could processing the files off of USB corrupt them during export? Maybe the USB piece of it is not performing enough I/O?

I used the recorder box to record a song off of Pandora. Project is at 53MB. I opened the project off of the network share and exported the whole project using my workstation which uses 1.3.14, then went back and selected most of it and exported the selection. On the export selection test, I even faded out the last 2 seconds. Both exports resulted in good MP3 files.

I've gone back to the source project of the screenshots above and copied them to the hard drive...it crashes at 1:28 into the song. I went to the source project at 1:28 and it looks absolutely normal. I can play the project just fine through the spot where it crashes.

I think I'm going to give up, update the recorder machine to 1.3.14 and re-digitize some albums. If you guys still want to run through scenarios or even have one of the LP recordings to play with, I'm game.

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks for the reply.

For all anyone knows there could be intermittent issues with the sound device or hardware on that computer and as Koz says, bad batteries don't help. Can it be run off the mains? I agree, update that machine to 1.3.14.

You haven't said which exact Audacity version that machine used before. If it was 1.3.9 or earlier, that is probably at least part of the explanation.

Recording should not be done to a USB drive unless the computer hard drive is slow or suspect. Saving the project to a USB drive should be OK as speed is not then so important.

I am not clear what action makes the project crash at 1:28 into the song. Are you opening that project in 1.3.14? You say you can play the project through the spot where it crashes.

The .aup file and the _data folder for that project might be useful, if you zipped them up and posted the zip to a file sharing service like sendspace or yousendit.

- How big is the _data folder for that project before zipping?

- Have you saved that project only in the older Audacity or now saved it in 1.3.14?


Gale

[ccernst]

I think I found my issue...or at least a clue.

I re-digitized an album on the recorder machine (XP SP3 x86, 1.3.14) and copied over the network to my workstation (Win7 x64, 1.3.14). I tried to export a track and it corrupted right at the beginning when encoding to MP3. For giggles I exported to OGG Vorbis and that went just fine. I looked at the version of LAME MP3 and I'm using 3.98.2. you guys have linked on your site 3.98.3 and there is a .4 version out there if there are problems. Tomorrow I'll try to update my LAME MP3 library and see where that gets me.

[PGA]

The machine that is recording is using an older 1.3.x version, Windows XP SP3, and the clock is off (bad battery and it is getting old resetting the time).

See that thin blue line way at the bottom of the sound channel at -1? That's DC or battery voltage which should never appear in the sound.

Two separate mentions of "battery": coincidence?

[ccernst]

The machine that is recording is using an older 1.3.x version, Windows XP SP3, and the clock is off (bad battery and it is getting old resetting the time).

See that thin blue line way at the bottom of the sound channel at -1? That's DC or battery voltage which should never appear in the sound.

Two separate mentions of "battery": coincidence?

Yes since koz was talking about recording issues and that was not where I was having problems.


I was too curious last night and updated my LAME MP3 dll file to 3.98.3 and out of the 1.3.14 project file I was able to export the selection successfully. Tonight I'll try the older project files and see if that works successfully.

[steve]

I re-digitized an album on the recorder machine (XP SP3 x86, 1.3.14) and copied over the network to my workstation (Win7 x64, 1.3.14). I tried to export a track and it corrupted right at the beginning when encoding to MP3.

Are you exporting to your local machine and then transferring the exported file across the network, or are you exporting across the network? Is the audio data on the local machine or on a remote drive? I'm not sure what you mean by "processing the files off of USB".

[ccernst]

I re-digitized an album on the recorder machine (XP SP3 x86, 1.3.14) and copied over the network to my workstation (Win7 x64, 1.3.14). I tried to export a track and it corrupted right at the beginning when encoding to MP3.

Are you exporting to your local machine and then transferring the exported file across the network, or are you exporting across the network? Is the audio data on the local machine or on a remote drive? I'm not sure what you mean by "processing the files off of USB".

If I'm working with a project file, I will either open it from my local hard drive, or a USB external drive. Either way, when i export my selection, it'll go to a folder on my local hard drive. My workstation is connected wirelessly which is too slow to work with that much data over the network.

In the quoted example, I copied the project files over the netwrok to a folder on my internal hard drive. Exporting was done into the same folder as the project (not the _data folder).

[kozikowski]

I'm not talking about a laptop battery. The CMOS battery is the little watch battery on the motherboard that keeps the clock and computer configuration in memory while the computer is off. The clock being consistently off is a major danger signal. If the battery goes far enough down, it will kill the system configs and the machine will stop dead. So you're complaining about unstable software on a known unstable computer.

There are known problems with editing of any sort, video or audio on USB drives. They have wonderful specifications, just not all at once. They're half-duplex. They go one direction only, then they reverse and go the other way. If your software isn't aware of that, you could get holes in the work or outright failures. It's not FireWire which is full duplex. It's a very similar problem with editing over a network. If your software is not aware of network delays, collisions and retries, it fails.

Koz

[ccernst]

I'm not talking about a laptop battery. The CMOS battery is the little watch battery on the motherboard that keeps the clock and computer configuration in memory while the computer is off. The clock being consistently off is a major danger signal. If the battery goes far enough down, it will kill the system configs and the machine will stop dead. So you're complaining about unstable software on a known unstable computer.

There are known problems with editing of any sort, video or audio on USB drives. They have wonderful specifications, just not all at once. They're half-duplex. They go one direction only, then they reverse and go the other way. If your software isn't aware of that, you could get holes in the work or outright failures. It's not FireWire which is full duplex. It's a very similar problem with editing over a network. If your software is not aware of network delays, collisions and retries, it fails.

Koz

Koz, not going to argue this point much, but I've been building machines quite some time. I know exactly the battery you are talking about. All it does is save bios configs. I'll say this, I know my bios is set to factory default settings except for time, FSB, and Clock Multiplier (AMD Athlon XP unlocked)...those are the only settings changed. So when the battery goes dead and the machine has been off for a while, my motherboard loses time, FSB goes to 100, and Clock Multiplier defaults down to 8x. I do not bother with time and I simply ramp the FSB back to 133 and the clock multiplier to 13...very stable at that speed...it'll run Prime95 torture test all day. The only thing time should matter to recordings would be the timestamp put on the files created.

Using my workstation (win7, 1.3.14, lame 3.98.3), I can successfully create MP3s using the project recorded using the recorder machine(xp sp3, 1.3.14).
Using my workstation (win7, 1.3.14, lame 3.98.3), if I go back and try to export/create MP3s using the project created when the recorder machine was running 1.3.11, the MP3s do not export correctly and flatlines just before 1:30. I've tried both from the external USB Drive and internal hard drive.
I've uploaded my project file from version 1.3.11 to Minus, anyone can have a look if they'd like. In the zip file, you'll have the project as well as the first track that was corrupted.
http://min.us/mbo9Q3tP5V