Bug in "timer record"

[wombat99]

I set "timer record" for 2:10 hours the next morning. Twenty minutes or so after it should have stopped, I found it was still recording. It said "recording time 2:10," "elapsed time 54 min," "remaining 1:15," but if you looked at the scale on the waveforms it was happily recording on at 2:25 min. I hit cancel on the timer record box, but nothing happened -- it continued to record. Ten minutes later it still said "elapsed time 54 min," "remaining 1:15," so I guess it's going to go on forever. I'll have to restart & lose the recording. Or will it stop when I run out of hard drive space?

[waxcylinder]

Yup I've had similar (and reported it) - for me it normally happens when the recording time straddles the midnight hour.

What I have done is to use the Windows Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) to force Audacity to abort. Then restart Audacity - the crash recovery tools are MUCH better in 1.3 than 1.2 - so it's always recovered the project ok for me.

AND yes, I would stop it before you run out of disk space ....

WC

[bwoods]

Where do you report bugs?

I had this same problem. It straddled midnight. 7 hours later (!) I'm still recording and had to use the three-finger salute to stop it. Right now (I think) it is trying to process what must be this HUGE file as I write this because I opened Audacity, elected to recover the file, and now Vista says it is not responding. However, my HD is definitely hard at work doing something. Wait--it just came up. Yup, it was processing the file.

Where does Audacity keep this file? After I save it, I want to make sure that this temp file is deleted.

Brad

[waxcylinder]

Where do you report bugs?

Currently on the Audacity Wiki - But I've started thinking about a process for moving real bugs (sometimes folks report things that aren't actually bugs) over to the Wiki from here.

I had this same problem. It straddled midnight.

It's odd as this is not consistent for me - it ony seems to happen when the recording straddles midnigh - but it is not consistent, it doesn't always happen. Developers HATE those kind of bugs ....

Where does Audacity keep this file? After I save it, I want to make sure that this temp file is deleted.

It keeps the temp files where you told Audacity to keep them during installation. You probably accepted the default location. And BYW it's not just a single file, it's a cloud of thousands of little .au files managed by a .aup file. Audacity should clean up all the temp files when you exit (by closing Audacity) from the recovered project. You can view and change the temp files location from Edit>Preferences>Directories

WC

[jan.kolar]

Where does Audacity keep this file? After I save it, I want to make sure that this temp file is deleted.

It keeps the temp files where you told Audacity to keep them during installation. You probably accepted the default location. And BYW it's not just a single file, it's a cloud of thousands of little .au files managed by a .aup file. Audacity should clean up all the temp files when you exit (by closing Audacity) from the recovered project. You can view and change the temp files location from Edit>Preferences>Directories

It depends:
- with new unsaved (=unnamed) project - see above
- with a project that was saved, say under name PROJECT, it is in the PROJECT_data directory.

It is not one huge file, it is a number of files of approximately the same (small) size.

[Gale Andrews]

Where do you report bugs?

Currently on the Audacity Wiki - But I've started thinking about a process for moving real bugs (sometimes folks report things that aren't actually bugs) over to the Wiki from here.

Peter, bugs should *not* be reported on the Audacity Wiki, because it is not set up to handle them (if you reported this possible bug there, it was just missed I'm afraid).

Bugs noticed by users should be reported by e-mail to:

feedback AT audacityteam DOT org

after having read this page on the Wiki:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... rting_Bugs

Alternatively, just e-mail me or send me a PM.

We do need a process for moderators to notify bugs which have been reported by Forum users. Sometimes, bugs can be mentioned merely as an "aside" in a topic and easily missed. Generally, developers aren't going to have time to look here for bugs, even though I do try and keep an eye open.

Ideally our Known Issues page for Beta issues reported since the last release should be more up-to-date, but for now, checking the Release Notes for the latest Beta and then Release Checklist should give you a good idea if we already know about the problem.

Peter, if you found it easier, you could create a "Pending Bug Reports" Wiki page analogous to "Pending Feature Requests" for transferring reports of possible bugs from the Forum, but e-mailing me or the feedback address would work just as well I think, if not better.

I had this same problem. It straddled midnight.

It's odd as this is not consistent for me - it ony seems to happen when the recording straddles midnigh - but it is not consistent, it doesn't always happen. Developers HATE those kind of bugs ....

Yes we do, and we're very interested if anyone can produce a scenario for us that will let us reproduce the problem. Recordings carrying on past the scheduled time if they straddled midnight was reported back in previous Betas but not since, so I thought we had fixed it.

I have identified one issue that I can reproduce that might or might not be related. I reset the system time to 23:57 because it had already passed midnight, and scheduled a recording in Audacity 1.3.8 alpha on Windows XP finishing at 01:07. Everything was going fine until 40 minutes into recording when the utility I have that synchronises with an atomic clock reset the time to the correct 01:27. At that point the progress bar in Audacity Timer Record Progress reset to the beginning, the Elapsed Time and Remaining Time froze, and recording carried on after the intended 70 minutes. However I could click cancel in the Record Progress dialogue to stop the recording and save or export it.

I also tried resetting system time during recording so that system time was now close to the scheduled end of recording (rather than after it), and the progress bar jumped to reflect the changed system time and completed recording at the scheduled time even though the duration requested is not correct. This will need looking into if we can still use the timer that started counting even though the system clock changes during the recording.

Otherwise, can I just ask those doing frequent recordings with Timer Record to keep a note here of unusual behaviour.

* What is the Elapsed Time showing, if the dialogue freezes?
* Does the actual time of freeze (calculated from the Elapsed Time) relate to any system event, such as a change in system time, a Windows Update, a power saving event or anything similar?
* Every report I have seen of this so far has been on Windows, so if you are not on Windows, please state the operating system




Thanks


Gale

[kozikowski]

Audacity doesn't save sound files. It saves Projects which are show building blocks sometimes running into thousands of files. To get a single, stand-alone sound file requires you to Export one.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

Peter (or anyone) - has Timer Record frozen straddling midnight again? If I change system time to after end of recording in alpha from 2 days ago, Timer Record aborts instead of freezing, though Timer Record code has not changed since I tested at end of April. Would you be able to use 1.3.8 Alpha from now on, updating it every few days, to help us trace this? You can get it as always from:
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... -alpha.zip


Thanks

Gale

[waxcylinder]

No Gale it hasn't frozen for for quite a while now. I tried two different scenarios: 1) where I opened Audacity, then immediately Saved the empty project to a suitable directory (thus avoiding use of the temp directory/files) then set up the Timer - and 2) where I did not save the project until after the recording had happened. My original suspicion was that the latter case may be the cause of the problems. But both scenarios work fine recently. I test this at least once a week as there is a programme on BBC R3 Friday nights that starts at 11:15pm and finishes at 1am - so makes for a good test case.

WC

[Gale Andrews]

No Gale it hasn't frozen for for quite a while now. I tried two different scenarios: 1) where I opened Audacity, then immediately Saved the empty project to a suitable directory (thus avoiding use of the temp directory/files) then set up the Timer - and 2) where I did not save the project until after the recording had happened. My original suspicion was that the latter case may be the cause of the problems. But both scenarios work fine recently. I test this at least once a week as there is a programme on BBC R3 Friday nights that starts at 11:15pm and finishes at 1am - so makes for a good test case.

Peter, OK so the location of the recorded data does not seem to be a factor. Our best bet is still that a system time change is tied up with it somehow. If you're on XP or Vista, right-click over the system clock shortly after midnight while you are recording, and in "Date and Time (Properties)", click the "Internet Time" tab. Synchronise the clock now and see what happens to the recording. This will also make the system time update to the atomic clock automaticallyt at the same time every week.



Gale