Sound Disappears

[breakthru]

Hi

I'm using 1.2.6 Audacity. I've been importing voice recordings as .wav files. Editing them okay and all the sound seems to be there. I add music to the recording and still seems okay. Then, when I come back a few days later, parts of the voice recordings have disappeared. The sound waves can still be seen in the aup file, but there is just no sound at all, then after a few seconds the sound comes back. This has happened on more than one file. when I export the file to mp3 the blank spots are there and when I import the mp3 back into audacity the blank spots now have a straight line.

Has anyone had a problem like this before and if so, can you let me know what to do about it?

Thanks
Shelley

[kozikowski]

Yes. This happens to everybody. The AUP isn't a sound file. It's a Project Manager. It's job is to point to the thousands of other files on your Mac that make up your show. Capture clips, imported segments, external sound files, special effects tools. Everything you used to produce your show so far get set in stone when you Save a Project. You can't clean up, arrange, move, change, rename, or delete any of the original files. The first time you get an actual sound file you can email to your mum is when you use one of the Export tools.

We had one producer that didn't like the names of some of the files in her Project, so she renamed them. Audacity couldn't tell what she did and she reduced her hour long show to garbage. Two of the files in your Project draw the blue waveforms on the screen. It's entirely possible to have the wiggly blue lines and no show.

It's possible to get this effect if you used punctuation marks in the filenames. The only two punctuation marks acceptable in filenames are dash and underscore. Capture/Thursday may be a single file to you, but it means Thursday inside the Capture folder to the Mac. No end of confusion when you do that, especially if you don't have a Capture folder.

If you literally didn't change anything, that's even more scary because if the machine has been damaging files on its own, you may have a very serious machine problem. But it's usually the producer/editor.

Do an INFO on your hard drive and make darn sure you're not filling it up. Always leave 10% free.

Koz

[breakthru]

Hi Koz

Thanks - yes I had moved the entire folder from one place on my hard drive to another. So I'm guessing that is it - it didn't like the transfer. Now I know I will be more careful about setting it up.

Just to clarify though. I have a music clip that I use as an intro and outro on all audios - that I've got stored in a different folder from where I'll be saving my projects. Is it okay to import the clip from the folder it is currently sitting in or should I copy the clip to the project folder?

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me, I really do appreciate it.
Shelley

[kozikowski]

OK, now that you get it, here's a simple project file.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/aup1.jpg

You can open yours up in TextEdit and read it, too, although it won't be as cleanly laid out as this one is. I posed it for the photograph, got on its Sunday nickers and combed its hair.

Note that in about line 7, it says...

aliasfile='Users/koz/Desktop/piano2.wav'

That is precisely the file and folder where Audacity is going to expect to find my piano solo. Note that it's listed twice. The top listing is the "Left" audio and the bottom one is the "Right." "Why," you might well ask, "Can't I leave the sound file where it is and change the AUP file to match?"

You can. Make sure TextEdit is set to Plain Text instead of Rich Text (the ruler should vanish). AUP is just like any other text file. It's a Really Important text file...

Now you know more about the internals of Audacity than any other living human.

Koz

[breakthru]

Thanks for posing, Sunday nickers and combing it's hair! ))

Looks like secret men's business to me, will take the internal workings of Audacity to my grave

Appreciate you taking the time - have a terrific day

Love n laughter
Shelley